HYBRID: A Thriller

by James Marshall Smith

  He quickly grabbed the cloth again and began to rub the mare. “Two. Michael’s ten and Megan’s six.”

  “Your wife must have her hands full.”

  He paused. “She’s not around anymore.”

  Charlene turned her attention away from the colt. “Might take you a while to get your business going here.”

  “I’m getting to know more—”

  “Most people use our vet, Doc Hartwell. Or Homer Sellars from Butte. Some use Lester Milburn in West Yellowstone.” She shook her head and snickered. “But I wouldn’t trust a goldfish with him. Now don’t you tell nobody I said that. Word gets around here as fast as roadrunners.”

  He put down the cloth and wiped his hands with a towel. Penny struggled to stand and allow the colt to nurse.

  Charlene scooted closer and laid a hidden hand softly on his forearm. “If you need help with your kids . . .”

  Startled, he leaned away.

  She rose to her knees, pleading with her eyes and wrinkled forehead.

  When he stood, she threw her hands on his chest and grabbed onto his jacket with her fists. “Please, Dr. Harmon.”

  He recoiled and knocked over the bucket of hot water with his foot.

  She quickly let go and backed away as she lowered her head in shame like a child caught sneaking candy.

  He turned to see a man, maybe in his sixties, with a straggly beard that covered only his chin. He glared from behind dark eyes that sunk deep into his skull below the eyebrows. “Exactly what you trying to do, Doctor?”

  For crying out Jeezus! What was that supposed to mean? Absolutely ridiculous. Dieter quickly offered his hand to shake; he had to nip this one in the bud here and now before matters got out of control.

  His hand was ignored.

  “Sir, I know what this looks like,” Dieter stammered.

  “I thought I could trust a professional like yourself.” The man spoke as if making a clinical observation.

  “Oh, yes sir, you see—”

  “If I was you, I’d just shut my mouth and get out of here.”

  Dieter scooped up his scattered supplies and quickly tossed them into his satchel. When he stood, Charlene had her back to him and her head down. He hurried back along the path off the hill. As he drew near the house he had to step carefully to avoid a clutter of toys—a fire truck with the ladder broken off, a rusted ambulance, a yellow steam shovel—and two small bicycles, one with blue ribbons that streamed from the ends of the handlebars. On the home’s second story, he caught the fleeting faces of kids, tykes to teenagers, scattered between curtains and windowpanes. They stared as if looking down on an animal in a zoo.

  When he reached his pickup truck, he hopped in and slammed the door, then drove along the graveled driveway to an open gate. Katherine Belle stood there, holding onto the chain and lock.

  He lifted his hand and gave a sheepish wave as he passed. The anger on her face told him there was going to be trouble ahead.

  THREE

  “Don’t eat the grass, Megan,” Dieter commanded when he returned home from the Loudermilk ranch.

  “It’s not grass . . . it’s flowers,” the six-year-old replied, too occupied plucking blooms from a fistful of clover to look up. His daughter lay in the front yard dressed in jeans, a pink top with a yellow sunflower on the chest, and worn sneakers that were likely too small if he took the time to check.

  The rented log cabin of western cedar that he called home stood aged and isolated among the aspen and cottonwoods. His nearest neighbor was at least a half-mile away.

  “Please, I don’t want you eating anything from the lawn. You could get sick.”

  “Amy said it’s okay.”

  No doubt Amy was lecturing the kids again about the glory of nature and the nourishing benefits of wild flowers. “But I’m saying it’s not okay,” Dieter said, a little firmer this time.

  “What do you know about this kinda stuff, anyway?”

  “Because I’m a dad. Dads know these things.”

  “But Amy’s a nanny. Don’t nannies know something? You told me she was smart.”

  “Let’s go inside, honey.”

  When Dieter walked through the front door, a golden retriever yanked at his trouser leg and growled. He reached for Rusty’s muzzle and nestled his face into the dog’s while rubbing its fur.

  Exhausted from the Loudermilk ordeal, Dieter was glad the nanny had arrived early to take them to her parents’ home on Hebgen Lake for the weekend. He needed the time to focus on his practice—in reality, to continue the tireless ritual of seeking clients. He had to take some time to get creative about the search now. It was becoming critical and no doubt the cause of his nervous stomach.

  Amy stood tall at the sink rinsing breakfast dishes. Her charcoal hair, pulled behind her ears, fell straight to her narrow shoulders. High cheekbones and bronze skin gave away her Indian heritage. She opened the oven door and reached in with a large quilted mitt. “I saved a plate of eggs and sausage for you.” She smiled back over her shoulder.

  Dieter sat at the table and began to cut up the mystery meat to test it one small piece at a time, aware that Amy and her relatives frequently ate organs from unfamiliar critters. “Is the sausage from Bentley’s?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You mean, it’s not pork sausage?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Is it elk again?”

  “Exactly!”

  “I believe I’ve told you before, Amy. You can never be sure about these concoctions that local hunters make up.”

  “You don’t need to fret. Dad made up this batch. Pretty good, huh?”

  Dieter put down his knife and fork and wiped his mouth. “Megan was eating clover in the front yard again.”

  “I told her to be careful where she picks them.”

  “The way she was going after it, Amy, I don’t think we’re going to have a lawn left. The dog pees out there you know. And that’s not all.”

  She flicked the side of her hair that had fallen free. “I always let Rusty out in the backyard. And I didn’t tell her to eat weeds.”

  “Never mind. It’s not that important.” He had quit keeping score. She was much quicker on the draw than Fran had ever been.

  She remarked that he looked bedraggled, as if he’d been up all night. While he nibbled the sausage—rather spicy and tasty, it turned out—he told her about the delivery and that it had taken place at a strange ranch.

  “I’ve heard about Loudermilks,” she replied. “I suppose everyone around here has. But I always assumed talk about them was more gossip than fact.”

  The colt would have died without his skilled hands, no question about it. He left out the part about the attack by the youngest woman. Her stupid reaction—was it Charlene?—wrecked it all. She was crazy. He should have seen it coming with her smiles. Old man Loudermilk would probably call the law.

  “Where’s Michael?” he asked.

  “In his bedroom. He’s looking forward to the lake this weekend. But his biggest concern right now is getting his Boy Scout uniform before the troop meeting. You didn’t forget that, did you?”

  “Uh . . . no.” He didn’t forget the uniform, it was just another item that wasn’t budgeted. Those were matters Fran had always handled and now landed in his hands. He had to learn to deal with it. He was learning to deal with a lot of things he’d never bothered with in the past.

  As if waiting in the wings, listening, Michael strolled into the kitchen. “Yeah, when can we get my uniform, Dad?” Built of fair skin and thin bones, the boy was small for his age.

  Dieter paused for a beat. “We’ll drive up to Bozeman next week.”

  “But I need it now.” Michael sulked back to his room.

  With Amy’s encouragement they had visited the local Boy Scout troop leader, Leonard Farmington, at his home two weeks before. Good-natured and persuasive, Farmington radiated enthusiasm for Scouting. His zeal was topped only by his love of chatter. He had good news.
Because Michael received the Arrow of Light award in Cub Scouts back in Pennsylvania, he was eligible to join the Boy Scout troop in Colter, even though he was only ten. Then and there, instead of waiting until the next year. Everything was settled . . . except for purchase of the uniform.

  Dieter peeked into his son’s room and found him cowering on his bed with a closed suitcase by his side. He plopped down next to him and started to place his arm around his shoulders when Michael quickly stood and walked to the dresser. Dieter recognized the stubborn streak. A characteristic no different from other Harmon family traits, like the wavy brown hair, the thick eyebrows and setback eyes. He opened the suitcase and stuffed another T-shirt into it while Dieter repeated the usual lecture on behavior.

  ***

  Packed for the weekend trip, Amy bent her long neck slightly to keep her head away from the Datsun’s roof and thrust herself behind the wheel. Dieter waved goodbye as the car pulled away, but it stopped suddenly and returned. Megan jumped out and ran to get another hug.

  When the car disappeared, Dieter rushed inside to the bathroom cabinet and grabbed the bottle of aspirin. In the kitchen he splashed tap water into a glass tumbler, then sat at the table and tossed four tablets into his mouth. He squeezed his temples with his fingertips, then folded his arms on the table and rested his throbbing head.

  As he closed his eyes the scenes played out again. The tiny colt sprawled on the ground, the mare preening it. The troubled face of the Loudermilk woman as she clung to his jacket. The ugly expression of the old man. The more he thought about it, the more he realized it was just a matter of time before the old man would report the incident.

  The phone on the wall suddenly rang out like a fire alarm. When he answered, Molly Schoonover’s voice boomed out of the earpiece. “How you doing, Doc?”

  He mumbled something back.

  “Didn’t wake you, did I? It’s the middle of the day.” Molly always arose at dawn to begin her ranch chores.

  “No, I mean, yes. I was awake.”

  “Can you come with me to the Pendleton place? You know, the llamas. Last night one was attacked. Brutally killed.”

  He leaned against the wall. He’d heard of the llama ranch, but what was he going to do? He didn’t treat dead animals. “I really don’t know what I could do for the Pendletons, Molly.”

  “It’s Pendleton. There’s only one of the old cuss. Please hurry over and I’ll take you there. This is the final friggin’ straw. This crazy stuff has gone on too long. It’s gotta stop.”

  FOUR

  Gus Parsons had driven due north from Tucson for one thousand and sixty-seven miles. The cost at that point was three tanks of regular gas and two nights in motels. The food was fast and the lodging cheap. Yellowstone National Park was Mecca for many who made a living his freelance photographer’s way. Parsons drove up I-15 following a treeless landscape that went on forever and snow-covered mountain peaks far enough away to be only a blur on the horizon. His speedometer read eighty, but it felt like fifty. He thumbed through the Park pamphlets scattered on the front passenger seat as he drove, storing the facts a phrase at a time.

  Yellowstone occupied the northwest corner of Wyoming and small portions of Montana and Idaho. The Park supported the largest concentration of free-roaming wildlife in the lower forty-eight. He flipped through pages with pictures published by his competition: bighorn sheep perched high on the Obsidian Cliffs; a wolf pack attacking elk in mid-winter in Lamar Valley; a Grizzly with her cubs feeding off the carcass of a moose calf in Hayden Valley.

  A lone Amoco gas station south of Idaho Falls made for a rest stop. He needed to call home to check on Lily, his wife of forty-two years. Her health recently took a turn for the worse. When the door of the phone booth jammed, he kicked at it until it freed. After trying quarters, he banged twice on the phone box with the receiver to get a dial tone and the operator. His home phone rang eight rings before he hung up.

  Parsons drove onto the highway and approached the ramp at the I-15 intersection, then swerved to the side of the road to stop. A trucker in an eighteen-wheeler behind him blared on his air horn. He could take I-15 South and head back to Arizona or continue north to Yellowstone. He took a deep breath then exhaled as he watched the cars speed by. What he was yearning to do wasn’t right. He should turn around and go back home. He belonged with Lily.

  If only I could get some photos to make an editor sit up and take notice.

  They needed the extra income, especially if they were going to have more medical bills. Lily would understand that. He pulled back on the road and took the ramp to I-15 North. Only two hours from Yellowstone and the wilderness.

  God, how he needed the solitude.

  ***

  Dieter Harmon parked in the gravel at the front of the white wood-framed home, shaded by tall cottonwoods. A porch wrapped around it and stiff rocking chairs stood tall, eager for company. The Schoonovers owned the largest spread around Colter, thanks to Molly’s inheritance he’d learned about when they first met.

  Molly and the Judge’s dachshunds jubilantly yapped at the prospect of a visitor. Big Mac did his best to hop up and down, but the combination of weight and miniature legs stymied him from lifting off the ground. When he reached down to scratch the perky dog behind his ears, Rusty barked in protest from the open window of the nine-year-old Chevy pickup.

  Dieter rushed up the steps to the front entrance as Toby and Big Mac waddled behind on his heels, their legs shuffling twice as fast as they moved. Dieter announced himself and entered through the screen door. Molly threw aside bulky window drapes that covered her lap and jumped up from the floor. Somewhere in her forties, she was as agile as any woman he knew twenty years younger. Her dark hair curled tightly to her head atop a solid frame.

  Dieter tossed a white business envelope with a check inside on the coffee table. “That’s for October.”

  “A little early, thanks,” she said.

  “Where’s the Judge?” he asked.

  “Have you ever noticed that twenty-foot antenna sticking up from our roof? He’s in the back room with his ham radio operation. I try to tell him that stupid antenna’s going to attract a lightning strike and blow us up one of these days. He shrugs it off. But I can tell you that this thing I called you about has him spooked. Let’s get out to the Pendleton ranch. Josh is expecting us.”

  Dieter and Rusty followed Molly out the door to her battered ‘84 Dodge Ram. When she turned on the ignition, the engine responded with a cough.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Just needs the carb cleaned out. Got it on my list.” She drove too fast down the dirt road that followed the fence line. He held onto the armrest, trying to avoid sliding around on the hard vinyl seat. She turned onto the highway that crossed the foothills of the Gallatin Range. Rusty sat in Dieter’s lap and hung his head out the window into the wind, his ears flapping and tongue dangling like a strip of raw bacon.

  A group of Holsteins had gathered in a gulch by a small pond. “So, tell me, which one of you has driven the other crazy by now?” Molly asked.

  “You mean, between Amy and me?”

  “No, I’m talking about you and James Fennimore Cooper. Now who do you think I mean?”

  At the beginning of the summer, Dieter was uneasy about following up on Molly’s suggestion to hire an Indian for a nanny. Not that he didn’t trust an Indian with his children. Just an unfamiliar culture, that was all. Molly had told him that he ought to take with a grain of salt the stuff he used to see in the movies. He’d learned later that his feelings of anxiety were mutual. Amy Little Bear had told Molly “I don’t care what kind of doctor he is, he’s a stranger from two thousand miles away. He’s single, unemployed, and wants a woman around.”

  When Molly arranged a meeting between Dieter and Amy, neither impressed the other. He thought her much too young. She thought him much too serious. But both had in common one thing: Molly’s friendship. The deal was struck. Amy rented a bungalow in Colter but spent we
ekends at Hebgen Lake with her family. There, Dieter had been told, she enjoyed her favorite hobby of flying a small plane out over the big sky country of Montana.

  Dieter said, “The kids love Amy. That’s the important thing.” He didn’t want to comment any further. He swallowed a yawn and then spoke about the early morning delivery of a colt.

  “I’ve never met the Loudermilks,” Molly said. “But I’ve heard most people don’t have much to do with them. I hope you got cash on the barrelhead from the old man.”

  “Not yet.”

  She chuckled. “Good luck with that.”

  While she drove, Molly chatted about Josh Pendleton, the rancher they were meeting. He’d been a good friend of hers and the Judge’s for the past twelve years, ever since Pendleton moved just outside Colter and started a llama farm. A good bit older than she, he lived alone. His great-grandfather was one of a flock from Germany who followed the gold rush to the West. When he gave up on panning, he discovered real gold in peddling merchandise.

  “Josh never married, never held a real job, and never intended to do anything about either,” she said. A genuine Rocky Mountain roustabout, he told tales of living the life of a wildcat miner, trapper and occasional guide. “He trapped or hunted wolf, coyote, Grizzly, wild cat, and who knows what all for thirty years all over the Rockies.”

  They finally arrived at the ranch to the sight of a big man riding a palomino in a small corral. The over-sized cowboy, muscle-bound in his ragged denim overalls, brandished a lasso overhead as the horse cut for a calf. He threw the loop forward, but at the last moment the sprite animal dodged the snare. The rope struck it in the rump and splashed dust when the lasso slapped the ground. The cowboy cussed and pulled up the slack, coiling the rope into his free hand.

  “Yep,” Molly said, “that’s Ol’ Josh.”

  While Molly parked at the fence, another lasso sailed toward the calf with the same result as before. The rider dismounted with a look of disgust and tied the palomino’s reins to the top rail.