Big Sky Lawman

by Marilyn Pappano

  The thermoses held hot coffee and cocoa, and there were foil packets of oatmeal raisin cookies, fresh-baked banana nut bread and brownies. Winona packed the good stuff, he thought with a grin. Caffeine and sugar.

  By the time they finished their snack, they were warm and the windows were fogged over. He was thinking idly of the fun they could have making sure the windows stayed that way when Crystal spoke.

  “How are we going to find out about the road if it’s not on any maps?”

  “Homer. He knows the county better than anyone, and unless it makes a hairpin turn somewhere, it’s got to run within a mile or two of his house. Let’s see if we can catch him at home.”

  They did. In spite of the wet day, the old man was out in his yard, arranging his collection of cans as if their order was of the utmost importance. He stopped to watch Sloan park, then greeted them with a wide grin as they got out. “Ain’t it a beautiful day?” he asked as rain dripped from the brim of his old straw hat.

  “It’s beautiful,” Sloan agreed. “Think we might get some snow?”

  “Nah. Too warm for it.”

  “Too warm, huh?” Sloan watched the fog that formed with each puff of breath. Warm compared to what?

  Homer turned his faded blue gaze on Crystal. “UFO ain’t gotcha yet, I see. Be careful, or they will. You see a bright light in the skies, best be hidin’.”

  “I saw a bright light streaking across the sky last night,” Crystal said. “It was a shooting star.”

  “Didja wish on it?”

  “Yes, and it came true.”

  Sloan smiled at her before he moved closer to the old man. “Mr. Gilmore, Crystal and I were over in the woods at the trail head where the road dead-ends. You know the place?”

  His old gray head bobbed as if it were on a spring.

  “We came across an old road up in there. Thought it might be a logging road. Do you know where it goes?”

  Homer’s head continued to bob.

  Sloan noticed that Crystal had wandered off toward the house and the shelter of the trees there and didn’t blame her. Getting sensible answers from Homer could be a long, tedious process, and even when he gave them, there was no way to know whether they were truth or fantasy. “Can you tell me where it goes?”

  “Off through the woods it goes. It surely does. Uphill and downhill, over streams and under trees. Through the woods, yessir.”

  “Where does it start?”

  “At the beginnin’.”

  “And where would that be?”

  “Why, where it starts, of course.”

  Sloan took a breath for patience. “If I wanted to drive on that old road, how would I get to it?”

  Homer took his hat off, sluicing water over his head, and scratched his ear for a minute before asking, “Why would you wanna do that? They’s better roads in the county. Paved ones, and all.”

  “I know, but I want to drive on that road.”

  “Well now, I don’t rightly know. If I was gonna do it, I’d likely go down past the Walker ranch, where the road starts, or maybe out to the reservation, where it ends. But I don’t drive, so I cain’t really tell you how to do it.”

  They were closer to the ranch than the rez, Sloan estimated. Surely someone there could point out the road to them. “Thank you for your time, Homer. I appreciate—”

  “Sloan.”

  The odd quality to Crystal’s voice made him turn to face her. She stood next to the raised porch, where the contents of a canvas duffel bag had been dumped out for sorting. More of Homer’s junk, he supposed.

  Except for the item she held between both palms. He recognized the thin metal as a license plate right away. Then she turned it upright so he could see it was a Montana tag. A personalized Montana tag.

  Chris 37.

  “Christina Montgomery,” he murmured. “Her birthday was March seventh.” How many times had he seen her driving too fast down the highway with that tag attached in the rear? State troopers who worked the local roads had commented that it was her way of warning, Don’t dare give me a ticket or Mayor Daddy will make you sorry.

  The tag may have protected her from tickets and soaring insurance rates, but it’d done nothing to save her life. It could go a long way toward destroying Homer’s.

  “Ain’t that purty?” Homer asked, following Sloan to the porch. “You know, lots of aliens have numbers for names. I ain’t never knowed a Chris 37 before, but ya’ never know. I might meet one, and then I’d have me a purty gift to give ‘im or her.”

  “It’s short for Christina, Homer. Do you remember when I came here two days ago? I asked you about a girl from town who was missing—a girl named Christina.”

  His expression blank, Homer shook his head. “I weren’t home Monday last. Was over at my friend Winona’s place, I was. Do you know Winona?”

  “You were there yesterday,” Sloan disagreed. “Remember? With me and the two detectives from town?”

  The old man stiffened, and his hand gestures grew agitated. “Don’t wanna talk about them. Bad men tellin’ bad lies about Homer. I’m puttin’ it outta my mind.” He pressed all ten fingertips against his forehead, then jerked both hands away with a flourish. “Gone. Outta my mind. Didn’t happen.”

  “Can you show me where you got this?”

  “I found it. It’s mine. Finders keepers, losers weepers. You cain’t have it.”

  “If you show me where you found it, I’ll get you a tag that has your name on it,” Sloan offered.

  The idea obviously intrigued the old man. He considered it a moment, then said, “All righty. Can we turn on the lights and si-rene this time?”

  The turnoff to the old road was several miles past the entrance to the Walker ranch and was nothing more than a narrow gap in the bushes that lined the road. If Crystal had been creeping by at a mile an hour looking for it, she would have missed it.

  For a seldom-used road, it wasn’t in bad shape. There were a few jarring bumps, but for the most part the travel was smooth enough for any car. She sat in the middle of the back seat and gazed ahead, trying to tell if anyone had used it in the last few months. Was the yellowed grass beaten down a little more in places, or was that merely her imagination?

  No, not imagination. The farther they went, the more certain she became of it. Someone had used this road—someone besides Christina.

  In the front seat, Homer was droning on about cattle, Martians and Incans and actually making some sense. She was grateful for his chatter, for the distraction that helped her ignore the clamminess of her hands and the knot in her stomach. This trip was significant. They were going to find something, but what was difficult to guess. Something that might make the detectives’ case against Homer? Something that might take away the Montgomery family’s last hope?

  No bodies, she silently prayed. She didn’t want to be present when Christina’s body, or that of her baby, was discovered. She didn’t want to add that to the memories that already haunted her.

  They’d been on the road for more than half an hour when Homer commanded, “Stop here.”

  When Sloan obeyed, they all climbed out of the Jeep. “Do you know exactly where we are, Homer?” he asked.

  The old man tilted his face up to the sky. “The boy don’t have a clue where he’s taken hisself, and people say I’m crazy. We’re on the old Blue River Timber logging road.”

  “Where is your house from here?”

  Homer took a good look at the woods, then decisively pointed to the southeast. “Not too far thataway.”

  “And where did you find the tag?”

  “Up there.” He turned and pointed ahead. “’Bout fifty yards or so.”

  “How did you find it?”

  “I was walkin’ along, lookin’ for treasure, and there it was. Chris 37. I thought maybe Chris 37 was the alien what tried to shoot me with its ray-gun that night. Maybe next time I meet up with one of ’em, it’ll be Chris 38.”

  Sloan laid his hand on the old man’s arm to
get his attention. “Homer. Was the tag just lying in the road? Could it have fallen off the car it belongs to?”

  “Don’t b’long to no car. B’longs to me. Finders keepers, losers weepers.”

  “Okay. You were walking down the road—”

  Homer gave a great exaggerated sigh. “Nope. I was walkin’ through the woods, lookin’ for treasure. That’s when I saw the tag, right there on the ground, like it’d fallen from the sky.”

  “So someone had thrown it into the woods,” Sloan remarked to Crystal. “It’s not unusual for car thieves to ditch the tags one way or another.”

  “Wouldn’t it make better sense to just switch tags with another car in town?”

  “Crooks don’t always show good sense.” His grin faded as he turned to Homer once again. “Homer, if you found the tag in the woods up the road, why did you tell me to stop here?”

  “’Cause the car’s across the road.”

  They turned as one to look at the opposite side of the road, where the ground sloped away into a thicket of trees, both evergreens and hardwoods. The yellowed grass and hard ground showed no sign that any person or vehicle had passed that way recently, but if Homer was telling the truth, both had.

  They started walking in that direction. Sloan was quiet, Crystal apprehensive. Even Homer fell silent. With the advantage of knowing what to look for, he spotted it first, some thirty yards away from the road, and alerted them with a whoop, followed by a cackle of laughter. “See? I told you so. There it is.”

  Sloan seemed to realize immediately what they were looking at, but Crystal needed a moment to look beyond the piled-up brush, to see that the dusty silver underneath wasn’t gray sky showing through. There was a car under there, well-hidden, difficult to see from the ground and impossible from the sky.

  Sloan stopped them some distance away and walked on by himself. He removed enough branches to check the license plate on the front bumper and to see the vehicle identification number, then pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

  Crystal moved close enough to hear his end of the conversation. “Quick question, Rafe. Have you got the VIN on Christina’s car handy?… Read it to me, would you?”

  He checked the number visible at the bottom of the wind-shield, his expression growing grimmer with each second. Looking at Crystal, he nodded once, and she turned away.

  She’d believed from the first vision that Christina was dead, but some small part of her had wanted to be proven wrong. She’d wanted Christina to be alive and well, wanted her own psychic abilities written off as just so much bunk.

  Not much chance of that happening now, because those same abilities were telling her that the last person to drive the car hadn’t been Christina. He—or she—had been excited, both panicked over what he’d done and, at the same time, oddly remorseless, untouched by it. It was just one of the costs of doing business.

  Still on the phone, Sloan came to stand beside her. “We’re out on the old Blue River Timber logging road that starts near the Walker place. Are you familiar with it?” He listened for a moment before grimly going on. “We need the evidence guys out here. We’ve located Christina’s car.”

  Within an hour, the remote country road looked like a parking lot for a convention of cops. The sheriff and his senior investigators showed up, as well as the two deputies who routinely handled evidence collection. The police chief was there, along with his two detectives, Wilkins and Blakely, and other officers, and the district attorney came, too, with Ellis Montgomery and his son in tow.

  Crystal sat in the back seat of Sloan’s Jeep, her fingers tightly knotted together. Homer was in the front seat. The sight of the detectives had frightened him into silence. Their frequent dark scowls weren’t doing much for her peace of mind, either.

  The brush had been pulled back and the car had been photographed, dusted for prints, examined and searched. Now it was being loaded onto a wrecker for the trip into town.

  “Don’t like it here,” Homer said abruptly. “Too many people. I’m goin’ home.”

  He was out of the Jeep before Crystal could react. She jumped out, too, and hurried after him. “Mr. Gilmore, wait. Sloan and I will take you home.”

  He shrugged off her hand. “Don’t wanna wait. Bad people here. Gonna go home and tend to my supper.”

  “Why isn’t that man in handcuffs?” Ellis Montgomery’s voice was loud, sharp, angry. It cut through all the chatter, through the very air itself, and it brought both Crystal and Homer to a sudden stop.

  They turned to find everyone watching them, their expressions ranging from sympathy to outright hostility. Sloan was the first to respond, casually moving between them and the others. “Mr. Gilmore isn’t a suspect, Mr. Montgomery.”

  “That’s not what the chief tells me.”

  “Well, the chief is—”

  Rafe Rawlings stepped up and smoothly broke in. “Mr. Gilmore found the car, Ellis. He came out here to show Deputy Ravencrest where it was. He’s just a citizen cooperating with the authorities.” His smile was equally smooth. “We generally try not to lock up cooperating citizens without probable cause.”

  “I want him behind bars until he tells us what happened to my little girl,” Montgomery insisted.

  Sloan’s scowl matched the detectives’. “He can’t tell you what he doesn’t know. This is the first real clue we’ve found since your daughter disappeared, and we wouldn’t have it without Homer. If we lock him up for helping us, anyone else who might know something will think twice before sharing.”

  Montgomery looked ready to argue, but his son murmured something to him that made him back down. He wasn’t done yet, though. He merely redirected his attention. “What is that woman doing here? Is she also just a citizen cooperating with the authorities?” he asked snidely.

  Everyone turned to stare at Crystal except for Sloan. She felt her spine stiffen and her face color.

  “Crystal is a friend of Homer’s,” Sloan replied. “She came with him as a favor.”

  “If you’re through asking questions,” Rafe said, “we need to get this road cleared so Tiny can get his wrecker out. Mr. Gilmore, Crystal, would you wait in Sloan’s Jeep?”

  Homer let her lead him back to the vehicle and help him into the front seat. Not more than a minute after she settled in the back seat, both driver’s side doors opened. Sloan slid into the front while Rafe climbed in beside Crystal. He fixed his dark gaze on her and mildly asked, “What are you doing here, Crystal?”

  She looked at Sloan, whose face was impassive, but his eyes were active. He was trying to come up with some explanation that his boss wouldn’t recognize as an outright fabrication. She saved him the trouble. “You know about the vision.”

  “Ms. Cobbs’s vision about Christina?” He nodded.

  “For reasons I’d prefer to not go into now, my aunt and I decided to pass it off as hers, but the vision was mine. Sloan figured that out and asked for my help. I’m not like Aunt Winona. I consider my psychic abilities a curse rather than a gift. I didn’t want people here to know, so Sloan agreed to keep my name out of it as much as possible.”

  “So, while he’s been out in the woods looking for clues…?”

  “I’ve been helping him.”

  Sloan spoke up then. “That’s how we found this road. We went over to Homer’s to ask him about it, and Crystal saw the license plate there. He brought us here.”

  “Anything else you haven’t been putting in your reports, Deputy?” Rafe asked mildly.

  “No, sir.”

  “I hope not. When I get back to the office, I’ll be organizing search parties to check out the woods here. Do you want to help, or would you prefer to continue with what you’ve been doing?”

  “I’d rather continue what we’ve been doing, if that’s not a problem.”

  “As long as you keep me informed—or start keeping me informed—it shouldn’t be.” Glancing out the window as the last of the other vehicles drove away, Rafe opened the door. “Mr. Gil
more, Crystal, thanks for your help. Sloan, can I speak to you out here?”

  Crystal watched through the glass as they took a few steps toward the sheriff’s car. They talked earnestly for a minute or two before Rafe went to his car and Sloan returned to them. He fastened his seat belt and started the engine, then waited for Rafe to drive away. When he pulled out, though, he didn’t back into the clearing to return the way they’d come. He headed on down the road as yet unexplored.

  After long minutes passed in which he didn’t speak, she did. “I’m sorry if protecting me has caused problems with Rafe.”

  “We’ll get over it.” His dark eyes were guarded when he looked at her in the rearview mirror. “You didn’t have to volunteer the truth.”

  “Yes, I did. It was something Aunt Winona said the other day—that when you told me Homer was in trouble, I should have volunteered my help rather than making you break your promise and ask for it. She was right. I was so hurt that you’d gone back on your word, but you did it only because I left you no choice.” She smiled faintly. “I may be slow, but I do learn.”

  They drove another few minutes in silence, then Homer abruptly demanded, “Stop here.”

  Sloan automatically obeyed before asking why.

  “I’m goin’ home. Gonna tend to my supper.”

  “We’ll take you right up to the house, Homer.”

  The old man gave him a patronizing smile. “You cain’t drive right up to the house, not through these here woods. If’n you was to do that, you’d have to go all the way to the reservation, then come all the way back. Why should I wait that long when my house is right through them trees? I can be home and sittin’ down to my supper before you even git off this road.”

  “Thanks for your help, Mr. Gilmore.”

  The old man started to climb out, then abruptly looked back. “Don’t forgit. A tag with my own name on it. You promised.” Then with a grin, he added, “I’m kinda partial to red and gold. You know, with sparkles.”

  “I won’t forget.”