Cold Fear

by Rick Mofina

  No one beyond the people atop the cliff and the task force knew about the probe. The massive search operation for Paige Baker in all other sectors was ongoing and would not be officially terminated until Clovis and the evidence team concluded their work here.

  Clovis surveyed the area, again grappling between his professional expectations and private emotions. It was an ideal location to dispose of a body. A small body. The mouth opened wide to swallow it into an eternal abyss. He tried to block out the images of her slipping and scraping down into the darkness. He had two granddaughters about the same age as Paige Baker.

  Imagine the condition her corpse will be in. What kind of monster would…

  Clovis shifted his thoughts to inventory the equipment, anxious about its reliability. Much of it had been put together urgently for this emergency by the high-tech company in Mountain View. The stuff was not field-tested. There had been no time.

  The generator was a new model with a microprocessor that controlled its sine-wave inverter, greatly reducing voltage fluctuations and wave distortion. It had an output of 3,000 watts to power the highly sensitive remote-controlled fiber-optic probe and video transmission system that was linked to a network of satellites. The two thousand feet of flexible hybrid cable was coiled on a spool straddled over the crevasse. Controls for it and the tiny camera at the end of it were linked to a powerful computer and monitors.

  Clovis watched as the technician, wearing a headset microphone to narrate, used the keyboard to command the drop rate of the camera, pivot and focus, retrieving images and displaying them on the computer screen and monitors at the work table, which were connected in tandem. At the same time, with a two-to-three second delay factor, the images and his narration were transmitted to the large TV in the task force room at the command center.

  “We’re ready,” the technician advised Clovis, who nodded.

  This better work, Clovis told himself, hoping he could trust the untried system.

  He heard a dog’s yelp. It was Lola, the shepherd who found the site. Her handler, the kid from Colorado, soothed her. He sat off to the side with the rangers, SAR people and paramedics. All were somber.

  Clovis knew the work from this point on would be meticulous. The process would be agonizingly slow, moving at a rate of a few inches or feet every few minutes.

  The screen showed nothing but sweating black rock as the tiny camera slowly descended.

  Clovis and the task force at the command center were riveted to their monitors.

  Yes, this was a perfect place to dispose of a body.

  Perfect.

  SIXTY-THREE

  Isaiah Hood stood in his death cell and rubbed his stomach tenderly, taking comfort in feeling the small lump of hardness near his navel.

  Soon. Very soon.

  “Feeling alright, Isaiah?” his deathwatch guard asked.

  Hood nodded, careful to display the precise measure of discomfort on his face.

  Biting his lip, studying the closed-circuit TV, the guard was wary. Determined to have no incidents of any sort on his watch, he reviewed his options. He knew Hood’s medical history and risk of seizures. Most officers in the death row housing unit did. He heeded DOC policies and procedures.

  “Want the nurse or Medical Services, Isaiah?”

  Because the law requires we keep you healthy for your execution.

  Hood shook his head.

  The keyboard clicked as the guard entered the small development into the death watch activity log. Then his phone rang. “Really?” he said. “Fine, I’ll ask him.” He replaced the handset. “Isaiah, seems your lawyer is live on CNN discussing your case. Would you like to watch it?”

  Hood nodded.

  Then David Cohen was there before him, telling America about his case.

  “…the governor to reconsider his position on the fate of my client, Isaiah Hood, whose execution is set to go ahead at midnight tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “On what basis, Mr. Cohen?”

  “What’s your reason for...”

  “You’re referring to her so-called confessional letters?”

  “Sir, are you are implying that Emily Baker murdered her sister?”

  Yes, that’s right, David. Hood smiled to himself.

  The cameras captured Emily Baker escorted by the FBI from a helicopter; then they once again showed Hood’s picture, Paige Baker’s picture, the prison, the gurney, and an old photograph of the dead girl from over twenty years ago.

  The only girl who ever agreed to be Hood’s friend.

  He stared at her eyes, feeling everything around him dissolving into a bright light.

  The guard’s jaw dropped.

  Isaiah’s eyes rolled back. Just the whites were visible. His arms rose from his sides, extending before him.

  Jesus Christ he’s going into one of the friggin’ trances.

  “Isaiah!”

  He feels her little wrists in his hands. Smell the sweet forest-scented breezes sweeping up to the cliff as she gasps, sobs and pleads for her life. She is so light in his large hands. Her little feet dangle, kick.

  It is just a game. One where he can strike fear in the heart of a weaker thing. He has learned that from his father.

  The hooks.

  Those rounded, steel, hard hooks hammering his forearms, his shoulders, his neck, his head. One day, a direct blow connected like lightning, exploding in his brain. His eyes blinded with a painful white flash.

  He ran from the house and spent the next few days alone in the mountains. So painfully alone. All of his life he had no one but the mountains. His head hurt so god-awful bad he thought his skull had split and his life and thoughts were leaking out. He had a hard time concentrating. Forming a thought. The whole time he ached to be with someone. Anyone to play his game.

  Just a game.

  He’d played it before with the dog, then the rabbit.

  But it didn’t feel right.

  They did not walk on air.

  Then he came upon the butterfly girls with bright eyes.

  The big one did not want to play. But the little one did.

  She comes to him right away.

  Eager.

  But the big one pushes him. Snotty. Stuck up.

  “We’re not supposed to play with you.”

  Like they walk on air. Go to church every Sunday and treat people the way they do. It was their doing. All of them in town.

  “We’re not supposed to play with you.”

  Well, he was going to play with them. He’d show them.

  The little one weighs nothing at all. Surely, she does not walk on air, like the rest of them. That was the game. She plays it well. How she kicks and screams. But the big one tries to stop him. She was trying to ruin it, trying to ruin everything. Like she is now. It was just a game. Just the game of a lonely boy in the mountains.

  Now they want his life for it.

  They could not have it.

  No. He is tired of paying. He had given them twenty-two years. That is enough. Maybe Emily, the big one, should pay something for what she took from him. She knew it was a game, but she never told them that. He knew why she came back.

  To watch him die.

  Well, that is not going to happen.

  It is time for her to learn.

  “Isaiah!”

  Someone was calling him. Far off and far away.

  It was time.

  Hood’s heart began throbbing, slamming against his rib cage. His brain began pulsating. Bringing this one on could kill him. That was one secret he kept from the doctors. He could bring on his seizures and almost control them depending on the magnitude. They were dangerous to control. This time, he needed to bring on the largest fit he had ever summoned. It was time. It was coming. He felt it rising from within his brain waves, popping like broken malfunctioning electrical circuits. His heart stalling, galloping…

  “Isaiah!” the guard yelled.

  Hood’s body was quaking and flopping on th
e floor like a fish jerked from a lake to a dock. His head was banging against his cot, his chair, he was growling and howling, his head twitching spasmodically.

  “Open the cell! Open the cell! one of the male nurses shouted. The guard had summoned medical help. Two nurses and two guards arrived, one pushing a defibrillator. They worked on him swiftly. Check vital signs. One nurse opened the medical bag, placing a rubberized tongue guard in Hood’s mouth. “He’s going into cardiac arrest!”

  They prepared an injection.

  “Call the warden! He better alert the director,” said one of the nurses.

  “His heart has stopped! I’m getting nothing!” said the nurse with the stethoscope.

  “Get him out of the cell. Set the machine! Pass me the paddles! Clear!”

  They worked on Hood on the floor outside his death cell.

  After two attempts, Hood’s heart resumed beating. One of the guards quickly cuffed Hoods hands and put restraints on his ankles.

  “He’s in bad shape. He’s got to be airlifted to Missoula.”

  Everyone stared at each other, then down at Hood.

  The guard on the phone passed it to the senior nurse.

  “The warden needs to talk to you.”

  SIXTY-FOUR

  Emily Baker’s world turned black.

  Voices. Yes, she heard voices.

  The FBI agent was talking to her. The technicians at the mountain on their radios. Everyone distant, distorted, like people talking underwater, drowned out by the beating of her heart ringing in her ears.

  “…we’re at one hundred feet now…”

  Every iota of Emily’s being was focused on the TV monitor and the tiny camera searching the crevasse for her daughter. The horror was clawing at her; the camera was dropping deeper and deeper, its intense light reflecting the slick, sweating rock walls, like the throat of some overwhelming evil entity.

  “…one hundred twenty…”

  Did she fall here?

  Was Emily’s only child devoured by the mountains that haunted her for much of her life?

  The camera was descending.

  Darkness into darkness.

  “Every family has secrets, Emily,” Zander’s attention, like those of the others in the small task force room, was on the monitor. “Tell us what you think happened.”

  Doug?

  Where is Doug? What did they do to him? He has that cut on his hand. He has a lawyer. He was the last to be with her. Emily sobbed. Her body convulsing.

  “…one hundred ninety…”

  This time, no one comforted Emily as she wept.

  “Oh, Paige,” she whispered through her tears.

  Inspector Walt Sydowski glanced at her briefly. He was troubled. Zander was the lead and he was very good, but Sydowski did not like this approach. Something about the pieces just didn’t fit. It was close but it wasn’t there. Hood’s case was forcing them to accelerate. Lives and careers were on the line. The entire file was a national, political time bomb ticking in their hands. But what they had so far didn’t feel right to Sydowski. It gnawed at him yet; he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  “Maybe we should consider removing Emily from the room for the time being, Frank, since we don’t know what’s coming.”

  Zander’s attention remained on the monitor.

  “…two hundred ten feet…”

  Zander did not respond.

  “Frank?”

  “You can step out if you like, Walt,” Zander didn’t turn from the TV. “Emily, are you prepared to tell us what happened? It might help you.”

  “I don’t know what happened.”

  “…two hundred twenty—wait, we’ve got something…”

  Everyone in the task force room froze as the three-second delay passed. The FBI agent operating the probe narrated as a white fabric-looking object came into view. “It looks like a…wait--” The camera turned and moved in, then pulled back. The object was hung up on a small, sharp edge.

  Emily groaned. “It’s her sock.” She thrust her face into her hands.

  “Should I bring this pair, Mom?” White cotton with pink frilled ankles. “Will these work in the mountains?” Purchased one night a few weeks ago during a mother-daughter shopping expedition to Stonestown. Oh, my baby.

  The camera resumed its descent.

  Emily trembled; someone said something.

  “It would be in your interest to tell us what happened, Emily,” Zander continued to work on her. “To tell us what you think happened?”

  “…two hundred forty…”

  “Doug told us things.”

  Emily sniffed.

  Tracy Bowman passed her a tissue. She didn’t know what to think, couldn’t believe what was happening. Was Zander a genius, or a monster?

  Was Emily the monster?

  “… three hundred feet…three hundred ten…hold it! Got something--”

  The images floated on the TV screen. It was impossible to determine what it was. Then, yes, it was a backpack. A small backpack. The task force members knew it from the photos of the Baker family.

  It was Paige Baker’s backpack.

  “Everybody got that? A backpack?” The camera operator’s voice crackled over the radio.

  Emily moaned, raising her palms slowly from the table, replacing them silently as if in unbearable pain, as if begging for an end to it.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Oh, please.

  The camera descended.

  “Emily, how do you think Doug hurt his hand?”

  She did not answer Zander.

  “We understand he can be a violent man some times.”

  “…three hundred seventy…”

  “What happened twenty-two years ago with your sister? What really happened?”

  Her monster, Isaiah Hood, was laughing.

  “Why did your mother change your name? It seemed like you were running from something. Show her the old report from the attorney general, Tracy.”

  Bowman slid an FBI file folder to Emily, opening it for her. But Emily did not need to read it. She knew about the letters she had written all those years ago.

  “…four hundred feet…”

  Paige. Rachel. Oh, why?

  “…four hundred twenty—wait. Christ! You see that? Jesus--”

  The task force room tensed. The three-second delay passed and something shining fluttered on the monitor.

  A pair of eyes.

  Dead. Soulless. Reflecting the light. Not quite in focus. Strange-looking.

  “Dear God,” Bowman said.

  And a row of white teeth near the eyes. Slammed tight against the rock. But the transmission was unclear. A blizzard of static hissed. The image vanished.

  “What the hell happened?” Zander said.

  “Stand by. We’ve got satellite trouble.”

  Emily’s breathing quaked. Her skin and scalp prickled with horror.

  Please, God. Not again.

  Her soul was screaming.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  In his newly restored office in the neoclassical capitol building, which dominated Helena’s skyline, Montana’s Governor Nye was grappling with a crisis.

  His stomach tensed as he witnessed the early morning news reports of Isaiah Hood’s eleventh-hour claim for clemency.

  It churned watching Hood’s Chicago lawyer, David Cohen, tell the country live on every network that Montana was going to murder his client.

  That cocksure SOB had pushed him into a corner and he didn’t like it.

  Every news organization in the nation wanted the governor to state his reaction and intentions.

  He sat at his desk, studying the framed photograph of his wife and their daughter.

  Two quick knocks on his door were followed by his attorney general and John Jackson, his chief counsel. The governor had been talking and meeting with them since 6:00 A.M. when the Washington Post called him on his personal cell phone. How the Post reporter got the number was a mystery to him. He had declined to comment u
ntil he had reviewed the latest events.

  The AG and Jackson seated themselves. The governor gritted his teeth, then exhaled. “I am not backing down here.”

  The two men exchanged quick glances. The governor had given the wrong answer.

  “Sir, there are many considerations,” the attorney general began.

  “Cohen went public with his claims; as I see it, that’s it.”

  “You have to take into account the Glacier situation,” the attorney general said. At least what we know of it. Not a trace of the little girl has surfaced. Investigators have mounting evidence of criminal intent.”

  “My feeling at this point is that we cannot link the two cases,” the governor said. “What if Doug Baker killed his daughter? Or someone else? That has nothing to do with Hood’s case. Tragic for Emily Baker. But Montana convicted Hood fairly. The letters after the fact were in the possession of the county attorney who felt no compunction to reopen the case.”

  “Of course he didn’t. It would have been political suicide. An admission of failure, to point at the little sister and free the person whose blood the community wanted for the death of this child. It is understandable the county attorney would have downplayed or diminished the role of the letters. Would you like to follow that course, in light of what is now happening in Glacier?”

  The governor sighed, sitting back in his chair, looking at his daughter’s face.

  “You seem to be singing a different tune from the other day,” the governor observed.

  “I just think this is a dreadful case and we should not push too fast in any direction that is not reversible.”

  “Be indecisive? Soft on crime?”

  “Be responsible, respectful and responsive to facts at hand.”

  The governor turned to Jackson. “What is going on in Glacier, John? The last we had was the ax, the T-shirt, Dad on the polygraph.”