Cold Fear

by Rick Mofina

  “I’m awaiting word from our people on the task force. Indications are some new evidence has surfaced.”

  “Something indicating she is alive?”

  “Not sure. I expect to hear soon.”

  “What was the reaction from David Cohen’s boss in Chicago? They going to rein him in? Not that it matters now--the damage is already done.”

  “No is the short answer. They’re proud of him.”

  “I don’t like this. Not one damn bit.”

  The intercom buzzed.

  “The U.S. Attorney General’s Office in Washington, Governor.”

  It was a short conversation with the Governor politely but forcefully let the attorney general know how “Montana is going to do the right thing here. After we examine all the facts, separating reality from rhetoric. I am sorry--what was that? Right. No, we did not know that. We are awaiting word from Glacier. An update? Yes. They are certain it’s her? I see--”

  As the call ended, John Jackson’s cell phone rang. It was word from Glacier that they are ninety-nine per cent certain they had found the corpse of Paige Baker at the bottom of a crevasse nearly two miles from her parents’ campsite.

  The governor was nodding, his finger caressing the frame of his daughter’s picture. He ran his hand over his face, stood, walked to his window, looked out to the mountains.

  “They suspect the parents,” the governor said. “The case is virtually sealed against them.”

  He asked the attorney general if he could still invoke executive clemency for Hood after first refusing it.

  “Yes, the statutes allow for it when new evidence surfaces,” the attorney general had answered. “You can intervene and grant thirty days of relief for Hood’s case to be investigated in light of events. If he has a case, he can make a new appeal to the Board, or he can go right to court with it.”

  The governor nodded at his advisers.

  “I’ll do it. I’ll call the director of DOC. I suppose I have to sign something, then fax it to Deer Lodge. Better alert Pardons and Parole, too.”

  “I can arrange all that, Governor,” Jackson said.

  “Thanks. And call Cohen. He’s probably going to be on with Larry King tonight. We better schedule a news conference, say in three or four hours here. Let the pack at Glacier get here.”

  The attorney general checked his watch.

  “Wait, Governor. You’ve got well over fourteen hours yet.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why not wait a few more hours? See what happens. We can keep everything in this room for the time being. See if someone plays a card. If charges are formally laid and the FBI announces it, then you are not seen as too eager but reacting accordingly. A few hours one way or the other are not going to matter much.”

  Governor Nye considered the suggestion and agreed.

  “We’ll give it a few hours.”

  SIXTY-SIX

  “Yes, it’s one of his seizures. A massive one. His vital signs are deteriorating.” The anxious senior nurse was talking to the warden from the death watch guard’s phone as he stared at Isaiah Hood.

  “Can he be treated on-site?” the warden asked.

  “Not a chance.”

  “Give me odds.”

  “Ninety-five per cent likelihood he’ll be dead within two hours if he’s not airlifted now to Montana General Mercy.”

  “Is he secured?”

  “Yes, but he’s convulsing again. I have to go.”

  The warden immediately called DOC Director. Hood was high profile and it was imperative he alert the director so they could weigh the ramifications of transporting him.

  “I’m sorry sir, the director’s in a meeting,”

  “Interrupt it now--”

  “But--”

  “Now!”

  The director came on the line, annoyed until he caught the urgency of the situation.

  “Are you going to give this one to the governor?” the warden said, aware of the director’s legendary contempt for the man. The dislike was mutual, stemming from embarrassing grillings the director endured during corrections review committees chaired by the future governor.

  “The governor does not run the prison. I do.”

  The director analyzed the situation. Hood’s case, its entanglement with the Baker drama, was tainting the governor’s administration and his aspirations for national office. If Hood died now, the crisis facing the governor would vanish. Or worsen if Hood was proven innocent or was wrongly convicted. The director considered the ramifications. He was bound to follow the laws of the state. That is what he would do.

  “We can’t execute Hood unless he’s healthy. That’s our law. I urge you to give him immediate medical attention, as is the policy under the Corrections Act,” he told the warden.

  The chain-of-command decision took just under two minutes.

  An air ambulance in Missoula was dispatched. ETA was twenty minutes.

  Under the warden’s order, security escort procedures would be followed to the letter. Two uniformed officers would accompany Hood, who would be restrained. They would have radios and a cell phone. One would have a prison-issued firearm. The county sheriff’s office was advised and confirmed two deputies would be standing by to assist at General Mercy in Missoula.

  “I want a news media blackout, understand?” the warden told the security supervisor.

  Johnson-Bell Field was situated on an expanse of flat terrain at the edge of Hellgate Canyon at Missoula’s northwest edge. The air ambulance service for Montana General Mercy was known as Mercy Force. All flights were dispatched from its hangar where a crew stood by twenty-four hours a day, seven days a weeks. They could be airborne in eight minutes.

  Park rangers had an air ambulance chopper out of Kalispell on-site for transport. The Mercy Force was on standby for backup. Shane Ballard, the pilot of Mercy Force, had just come on duty. The tanned, thirty-one year old, former U.S. Air Force pilot knew the terrain. He had flown Mercy’s twin-engined chopper to scores of scene calls for hiking accidents within the park.

  Like most Americans, Ballard was consumed by the live televised news reports on the case of Paige Baker and now Isaiah Hood, trying to decide what to make of it all.

  “What do you think happened out there, Mya?” Ballard called to the on-duty paramedic, Mya Wordell, who was pouring coffee for the crew in the lounge. She was engaged to be married in two weeks to an emergency surgeon at Mercy.

  “I just think it’s so tragic.” She passed coffee to Ballard. He was going to be one of the ushers at her wedding. Earlier, he showed her pictures of himself being fitted for his tux.

  Wordell then passed a cup to Jane McCarry, the emergency nurse, who was her best friend in college and now her maid of honor.

  “It’s just a horrible thing to watch.” McCarry sipped from her cup as Mercy’s hot line rang. Ballard grabbed it, jotting notes.

  “On our way!” Ballard slipped the note into a zippered pocket of his blue flight suit, then clapped his hands. “Let’s go ladies. Traumatic incident at Deer Lodge.”

  Isaiah Hood’s medical records were pulled from Montana State Prison files by the nursing supervisor and clipped to the stretcher as they wheeled Hood through the penitentiary.

  En route to the front gate, they were met by several officers and the grim-faced security chief, who was wearing a suit. He had cancelled a departmental meeting and was gripping his own clipboard of checklists, hastily authorized offender-transfer sheets. He was relieved to visually confirm that Hood was restrained by straps, cuffs and shackles. No SNAFU’s on my watch. No sir.

  “I want him scanned on his way out,” the security boss said as they rolled Hood along the exterior walkway from death row toward the main gate. Hood’s head bobbed. An oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose. He appeared unconscious. Inside the main gate, they wheeled him near the prison’s high-tech security equipment.

  A state-the-art X-ray system, able to detect metal or drugs hidden anywhere, was connected to a c
amera wand with a high-definition screen. An officer passed it slowly over Hood’s body as half a dozen pairs of eyes watched the monitor. Anything contraband would stand out on the screen and trigger a warning bell, which began pinging and displaying a metal object in Hood’s lower abdomen, in the vicinity of his navel. The sound mixed with the beating of the approaching air ambulance. The security boss frowned.

  “What the hell is that?” He pointed to the object on the screen.

  “Bullet fragment,” the nursing supervisor said. “Hood was shot as a teen. Hunting accident.” The medical official was flipping pages of Hood’s records. “Here, see? It’s in his file.”

  The security chief studied the record, then the screen, slipping on his glasses. “It looks fairly large.”

  “Read his file.”

  Sure enough, a bullet fragment was duly noted, twenty-two years ago when Hood was first processed. He took drugs for it to prevent blood poisoning. Doctors recommended against it being removed. The discomfort was minimal but the surgery was risky.

  The helicopter was nearing.

  “Fine,” the security boss said. “Let’s move him. We’ve got an LZ in the parking lot.”

  Ballard brought the blue and white Mercy Force helicopter to a soft landing, keeping the rotors idling as Wordell and McCarry lowered the aircraft’s rear clamshell doors. Prison staff helped load their patient into the compact interior, which was crammed with advanced life-support equipment.

  Ballard flinched when he saw the two corrections officers squeezing in. No way! The weight will kill us. It’s too risky. All Ballard could do over the noise was wave them away.

  The security chief hurried inside to joust with Ballard in the cockpit, his face a scowl of authority.

  “No damn way can they come,” Ballard shouted. “We can only carry the patient. It is a weight issue and not one for debate.”

  “This is a security issue.”

  “Is he restrained?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve taken prisoners before. You have police at the other end?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’re wasting time. You want him to die right here?”

  The security chief thought it over. It was in contravention of policy.

  “I’ll send one officer.”

  Ballard considered it.

  “Just one, unarmed. “Your lightest guy. Make it quick, I’m burning up fuel here.”

  “How long is the flight?”

  “Twenty minutes.”

  McCarry was talking to Ballard on the intercom.

  “Shane, we’re losing him and we’ve got to remove one of his arms to fix an IV.”

  Ballard nodded, informed the supervisor of the urgency of leaving now and freeing one of Hood’s wrists.

  The supervisor summoned a young uniformed officer in his early twenties with a slight build. No more than 150 pounds.

  “Sign here,” the supervisor shouted in the officer’s ear. “You’re the escort. You will not be armed. Just take the radio and the cuff key. County deputies will pick up him at the hospital. We’ll send the van after you.”

  The young officer nodded, watching his chief personally free one of Hood’s wrists, then secure the other to the stretcher. The supervisor double-checked to ensure Hood’s ankles were shackled together, then patted his officer’s shoulder and exited.

  The helicopter ascended over the prison.

  As it banked, Hood’s head turned; his eyes flickered open, glimpsing the prison shrinking below while they soared alongside his beloved mountains.

  Hood rubbed the hardened lump near his navel.

  He would never return.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  Two lifeless eyes stared from the TV monitor.

  Zander had replayed the video recording of the crevasse probe to the task force members.

  The blurry eyes frozen on the tape locked onto Emily Baker.

  She stared back, motionless, feeling nothing but the awful crushing weight of pain.

  Her heart had been pierced.

  Paige.

  At the bottom of that dark, cold crevasse. Alone. Dead.

  Rachel. Her falling eyes.

  Oh, Paige. Falling. Did she think of me? Did she cry out to me? When was the last time I held her, told her I loved her?

  God, why? Why are you punishing me?

  Zander took a seat across the table from Emily, his blue eyes searching hers for answers.

  “Are you ready to tell us what happened to Paige?”

  How can you ask me that now?

  She looked into his face.

  How can you?

  “Emily, make it easier on yourself. Unburden your conscience. It is clear you and Doug are involved. Maybe things got out of hand. Maybe it was not meant to end this way but it is clear something went wrong.”

  Words would not come to her.

  Her life had ended at the bottom of the crevasse.

  Inspector Walt Sydowski was astounded.

  As much as he struggled with the case, deep in his gut he could not get the pieces to come together. Zander was masterful. It appeared to be over. Sydowski regarded Emily, then the eyes on the screen. He thought about a little girl from San Francisco who had set off only days ago to see the Rocky Mountains with her mom and dad. Going home in a body bag. Sydowski blinked, gazing through the window, through the trees to the peaks.

  Bowman thought of her son, Mark.

  Zander reflected on two little graves in Georgia, knowing he could never make up for the one he lost.

  Pike Thornton shook his head slowly, knowing he was right to trust his gut on Doug Baker’s hand wound. But why, he wondered, hadn’t they found any trace of her little dog, Kobee?

  Emily’s mouth started to move and a mournful sound followed.

  “What’s that Emily?” Zander said.

  “I did not harm my daughter.”

  The temperature of Zander’s gaze dropped. His eyes narrowed.

  “Was it Doug?”

  “No. No, he would never harm her.”

  “He has a temper.”

  “No. He yells because of coaching.”

  “The San Francisco Police were summoned to your house because of his temper.”

  “That was a misunderstanding. We were arguing. People argue.”

  “A student complained of an assault before you came here. Doug was on edge.”

  Emily shook her head, her facing contorting with anguish.

  “”People witness you and Doug in a full-blown argument the day before Paige vanished.”

  “Oh God, please, my baby’s dead! Why are you doing this?”

  “I want you to tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t know, she must have fallen, it’s--its--I”

  “‘She must have fallen?’ Do you know that is the most common thing a parent says in child abuse cases? ‘They must have fallen.’”

  Zander slammed his hands on the table. Emily flinched.

  “What happened!”

  “It’s not what you think, please.”

  “You tell me what to think, Emily. Your sister died here and you were there.”

  “No, please.”

  “The only other person there at the time says you’re responsible.”

  “He’s lying!”

  “He’s going to be executed for something he says he didn’t do!”

  “Please, I did not harm my sister, I was trying to save her. He passed her to me. She was slipping…. He knew what he was doing…. I see her eyes…”

  “You wrote letters admitting your guilt! Your daughter disappears while you and your husband, Doug, the man with the violent temper, are out of sight with her.”

  “Please, no.”

  “He has a wound on his left hand. He’s right-handed. The wound is consistent with someone swinging an object that slipped. We find the bloodied ax; we find your daughter’s blood-stained T-shirt.”

  “God, nooooo,” Emily sobbed.

  “At the cr
evasse we find traces of her blood and hair.”

  “Stop.”

  “Deep inside we find her sock.”

  “No.”

  “Her backpack!”

  “Pleeasse.”

  “Her corpse.”

  “Paige…I’m sorry…”

  “You saw it with your own eyes, Emily!”

  “No I can’t. Please please--”

  “Now, Emily, you tell me what to think!”

  Emily dropped her head onto her arms and sobbed. Bowman resisted patting her shoulders and looked away. The entire room was silent except for Emily’s weeping. Zander turned to the windows, running a hand over his face, gazing off toward the mountains. He had won. He was indifferent to Emily’s weeping. He had her in a vise. He would keep tightening it, forcing the truth out of her.

  The radio from atop the crevasse came to life, a welcome intrusion.

  “Clovis to Zander, come in. Over--”

  Zander picked up his radio. “Go ahead.”

  “We’re up again. Is your monitor on?”

  “No, we’re reviewing the previous search.”

  “Better turn it on.”

  The camera was now moving, resuming its transmission of more images from the grisly discovery of the eyes. Thornton was the first to utter a sound, half gasping, clicking his tongue.

  The camera probed the eyes, the area near them, sharply bringing the context into focus; something white, her face was way too white, wrong, in fact, furry-looking; the eyes too wide apart, and the teeth too pointed with blackened lips; not human at all, elongated jaw with a…

  “Mountain goat,” the probe’s operator said. “And we’re at the bottom. Absolutely nothing else here. It’s a mystery.”

  Emily lifted her head, dizzy with emotion, struggling to comprehend.

  “It’s not Paige?”

  Zander was stunned.

  “No, it’s not.” Sydowski said, feeling as if someone had just collapsed a house of cards.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  Sergeant Greg Garner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police poured clear, cool water from his canteen into a tin bowl he’d set on the ground for his partner, whose lapping appreciation made him smile.

  “We’re really pushing you today, buddy.” Garner knelt down, kneading the shoulders of Sultan, his purebred German Shepherd.