HYBRID: A Thriller

by James Marshall Smith

  “Six, last official count. We do keep track, you know.”

  “What about here on the western border?”

  Another calculated pause, this time a lip pucker was added for effect. “None are anywhere near Colter, if that’s what you’re getting at. Most are radio-collared. We use telemetry and flyovers to keep track of them.” He turned away and looked at Josh. “I didn’t come here to get into a debate. I just volunteered to come out and give you my opinion.”

  “We ‘preciate you driving down from Mammoth,” Josh said. “Just wish you had more experience with wildlife. To understand them, you’ve got to live among ‘em.”

  Without answering, Corey rolled back his shoulders and stood for a moment contemplating the scenery. He then stuck out his hand to shake with each of them as if from a sense of duty. All of the earlier feigned pleasantries had disappeared.

  After the two rangers pulled away, Molly spoke first. “Helluva nice guy, huh, gentlemen?”

  Dieter was stunned by the entire performance of the chief park ranger. “That’s what you call a public servant?”

  “It’s the kind of response,” Molly said, “we’ve grown accustomed to around here.”

  “How do you appeal?” Dieter asked.

  “Those wolves transferred into the Park,” Josh replied, “are Jack Corey’s kinfolk. You don’t appeal his verdicts. Least not without risking the wrath of God.” He waddled with the hint of a limp as he led Dieter and Molly across the field to his living quarters.

  The steel-gray trailer stood on a cinderblock foundation with yellowed Venetian blinds hanging in a large picture window, one strip bent in the middle and another missing. As Dieter walked inside the floor gave way with each step. An open counter of hunter green linoleum separated the compact kitchen from the homey living room that had the musty smell of age. A tall lamp sat on a side table, its base a woodcarving of two bears sitting back to back. A bronze post ran up between the bears and disappeared into a lampshade.

  A holstered revolver hung from the wall in one corner. Josh pointed to it when he noticed Dieter’s stare. “Blackhawk Colt forty-five.”

  “Is that thing loaded?” Molly asked.

  “Safety’s on,” Josh answered and flung a hand in the direction of a low couch.

  As Dieter and Molly sank into it she mumbled, “You’d think that steel barrel was extension of his dong,”

  Dieter leaned back into an orange and black afghan, his rear end too close to the floor for comfort. Through a window at the back wall, he watched a herd of llamas cavorting and marveled at all the shades and patterns of black, white, brown, and gray. No two animals appeared to have the same mix.

  Molly said, “Doc here delivered a colt early this morning over at the Loudermilk farm. Would’ve been breech if he hadn’t straightened out the little thing before it popped out.”

  “Loudermilks, huh?” Josh replied. “Now that old man has something going there, don’t he?”

  Dieter had no idea what he was hinting at, but it didn’t feel like the right time to get into a deep discussion about the Loudermilks. In fact, he’d rather avoid the subject and the family altogether. Josh walked into the open kitchen where he could work and still take part in the conversation. “I’ll fix us up some seng tea while Molly fills you in on what’s been going on.”

  She leaned back into the sofa and looked over at Dieter with a wrinkled brow. “The number of livestock kills reported around our area is frightening. I hardly know where to begin. I mean, there’s the Henderson ranch down on Aspen Loop. They had two sheep killed just like Josh’s llama. Then there’s the heifer on the Jennings’ spread, down by Cougar Creek.”

  “I didn’t know about that one,” Josh shouted from the kitchen.

  “Do you want to let me talk?” she asked. “Or you gonna come in here and tell the stories?”

  When there was no reply, Molly leaned over to Dieter and whispered. “Lonely son-of-a-pistol.” She sat up straight and spoke louder. “The Stewarts live next to our property and they lost two calves in a way that looked darn similar to me. That’s only the ones we know about. I keep getting reports of wolf kills above old Route thirty-six and even down near West Yellowstone.” She shrugged as if it was all beyond mortal comprehension.

  The teakettle whistled and Dieter watched Josh pull a mason jar with dried root from a cabinet. While the tea brewed, Josh commented on how much harder it had become over the years to find a good ginseng crop. Damn stuff was so popular with the herbal crowd, everybody and his brother was harvesting it. When he poked around with his stick last time out looking for seng, he ran into a diamondback coiled up right there in the underbrush. Thicker than his forearm.

  “Six feet long if it was an inch,” Josh added. He dribbled honey into each mug and served both before settling opposite them into his overstuffed easy chair with a coffee stain on the arm the size of a silver dollar. Josh lifted his cup and tilted it so the steaming tea rolled over the rim and down into the saucer. After swishing the puddle around, he brought the saucer to his mouth while he blew across it. He then perched his lips against the tilted saucer and slurped.

  Molly turned to Dieter. “We go back a few years with Jack Corey.” She said they’d become acquainted with the chief ranger when Washington started talking about bringing wolves back to Yellowstone, of all the crazy ideas.

  Josh shook an index finger at Dieter. “And you know why the wolf population had dwindled to zero in the Park?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Because the feds killed every last one of ‘em decades ago.”

  “The National Park Service in Washington was determined to return the wolves to Yellowstone,” Molly said. “They couldn’t have cared less what the ranchers and people who lived here thought about it. What with the terrible winters, the number of stillborn, disease, mountain lions, and now they were talking wolves?”

  “Did they hold any public hearings?” Dieter asked.

  “A slew of them,” Molly said. “Josh even spoke at one.” She nodded his way.

  “I told ‘em that I never worried about wolf packs troubling us,” Josh said. He slurped the last puddle of tea from his saucer. “They’d have plenty to feed on in the Park, what with all the elk and deer. What you can’t guard against is the wolf that strays. The wolf forced out of the pack and becomes a loner left to fend for itself. The history of the West is filled with the tales of renegades like that . . . and the hell they raised.”

  SEVEN

  It was all news to Dieter, he thought as he drove back to his cabin. He had no idea what he’d stepped into with Molly’s call that morning. He only knew that he was going to have to find a diplomatic way to back out of getting involved. It was all too risky for a new veterinarian in town to take sides on an issue as big as that—wolves from a National Park attacking livestock of local ranchers. Best to stay low key and just perform the service he had come there to do and do that well. That would take up enough of his time, especially with two young kids to raise by himself.

  A horse trail in the distance meandered through an open meadow.

  He’d grown up riding horseback on weekends at a small farm in the Amish country west of Philadelphia. And during summers in Idaho he’d learned to ride with confidence from Uncle Cleve, the same man who had taught him to love and care for animals. He could recite from long-buried memories the stories of the West that Uncle Cleve used to tell as they rode Appaloosas along stony trails beneath vast blue skies that spanned heaven and Idaho. Each summer he’d listen to the same accounts again. They would come alive with new twists, like hamburgers served up with different trimmings. He often wondered if Uncle Cleve just made up the stories as they traveled but it didn’t matter diddlysquat. Even before he knew cars or girls, those brief summers of his youth with Uncle Cleve shaped his love for nature, God and creatures of the earth.

  Dieter wasn’t going to make it home before emptying his bladder. After crossing the bridge over the Madison, he pulled off to the roadside. Usually h
e’d see a fisherman or two that time of day but none was in sight, although an SUV was parked ahead. Leaving Rusty in the truck, he dashed out and hid behind a stand of aspen to relieve himself. When he headed back, his side vision caught an object bobbing downstream.

  He stopped to get a better look. A glob of green camouflage had drifted into a shallow eddy where the swifter water foamed. He strolled down to the bank and hopped onto a flat boulder, stooping to pick up a canvas hat. It was green camouflage and well-worn with artificial flies hooked into the soft cloth above the brim. Any angler would appreciate getting it back. If he placed it up high near the bridge, it would be easily seen. He flipped the hat over, revealing a dark red stain.

  Blood?

  He began to hike upstream along the shoreline and squeezed the hat as he trampled through heavy brush and thicket, pausing every few steps to search ahead. A well-traveled footpath ran close to the opposite bank but there was no part of the wide stream he could easily cross. He turned to head back to the truck before second thoughts came on. Someone could be in trouble. Something might have happened only a short time before. He had to press on at a faster pace. Rounding a bend, he startled a flock of ravens along the shore. As they took flight, his eyes locked onto a strange feature across the river—a large object partly submerged in the water.

  A body?

  Ravens fluttered about it, tearing shreds of flesh from a carcass. A human body was seeping blood that the crystalline water captured in swirls. Although less than twenty yards across, the narrow stream was too deep to wade. He walked upstream where more shallow rapids riffled over rocks. Deeper pockets of water were scattered among the rapids and would make for a tricky wade. When he stepped into the river, the frigid water soaked his boots and his trousers up to his knees.

  He sloshed forward, surprised by the brute force of the current against his thighs. Staring directly down into the flow, he began to sway, the river to spin. Before losing his balance, he turned quickly around and splashed back toward the bank where he fell into the field grass and scampered on all fours away from the water. He lay still with his head buried in the weeds and dug his fingernails into the dirt. When he rolled onto his back, the sun warmed his face and he placed an arm over his eyes for shade until his breathing returned to normal.

  Blood stains.

  Blood splattered on the sidewalk and curb and street. Fran’s lifeblood in a Philadelphia gutter. But she was just another big city statistic, another thirty-second clip on the Channel Six news. Her attacker’s nine millimeter brass-jacketed hollow point round had penetrated four and a half inches into her brain. If only he’d taken the time to drive her downtown that day. If only he had taken the Dodge wagon in for transmission work the day before. Or the day after. For the rest of his life he would live with a million if onlys. Francine Duval, the only woman he had sworn to have and to hold until death ripped them apart.

  He jumped up and trotted for the truck, his boots squishing with each jolt on the ground. Rusty barked a welcome back through the open window and he drove up the highway until he found the phone booth he’d passed earlier. The Gallatin County Sheriff’s office answered: they would send out a squad car, pronto. He should meet it back at the bridge.

  EIGHT

  The deputy sheriff dispatched from Big Sky stuffed the blood-stained hat into a plastic bag and tossed it into his patrol car. He had walked with Dieter to the point across the river from the scene, using the same route Dieter had traveled. After returning, the deputy asked him to explain his whereabouts since he’d left his cabin that morning.

  While Dieter spoke, the deputy took meticulous notes on a small spiral tablet. He asked him to talk through every detail of locating the body, beginning with parking at the bridge. He asked Dieter to repeat twice why he didn’t take the cleared trail on the other side, why he was trying to wade across the river, but then turned back.

  After running out of questions, the deputy got all of Dieter’s contact info and dismissed him. Dieter dashed to his truck and as he pulled away, he spotted a National Park Service truck arriving behind him. He hit the accelerator and sped away.

  ***

  Ranger Bantz Montgomery hiked behind the Gallatin County deputy sheriff along the trail that followed the Madison River. Chief Ranger Jack Corey brought up the rear. Montgomery had received the call on the radio as he and Corey returned from the Pendleton llama ranch back to Mammoth Springs headquarters. Someone had reported a bloody body on the banks of the Madison, three miles northeast of Colter. Although the body was located inside park boundaries and technically within Yellowstone and federal jurisdiction, it was also in Gallatin County. In the case of a violent crime, the county provided assistance to the Park whenever requested and it always was. The Park had no problems letting the county take charge in these cases that could go on for months.

  When the three men reached the yellow crime-scene ribbon, they stooped for a closer look at the body. Judging from the size of the crimson slurry along the shoreline, the pallid body had lost most of its blood. Where once there was a neck, there was now only a tangled mass of blazing scarlet flesh.

  The deputy sheriff flipped his cigarette into the weeds and crushed it out with the toe of his boot. He spoke with the raspy voice of a chain-smoker. “Slashed up pretty bad. First murder around here in nine years. Do you recall the Skeeter Wilkins crime up in—”

  “Was there a vehicle around?” Corey asked.

  Interrupted in the middle of his yarn, the deputy changed his expression to one of all-business. “We found a white Suburban with an Arizona license plate.”

  “How about footprints?”

  The senior deputy broke in. “Only the victim’s were fresh. At least on the side of the river where we located him. The guy who spotted the corpse had hiked along the other bank.”

  “Who was that guy?” Corey asked.

  “The new veterinarian in Colter. He’s got an office over on Bridger Avenue. I let him go just before you got here.”

  Montgomery glanced at Corey, who stared down at his feet and rubbed the back of his neck.

  “I’ll call Bozeman,” the senior deputy said. “We’ll store the stiff at Winslow’s until the autopsy. The ME won’t likely be here before Saturday though. He’s just part time. Works mainly weekends.” He looked over at Montgomery. “What do you think of all this?”

  Montgomery preened his mustache as he thought. “Well, it looks to me—”

  “We don’t have any idea,” Corey said. “We’ll wait and see what the pathology report says. Right now I’m afraid we have another appointment.”

  Corey focused on the senior deputy. “Tell me more about this guy.”

  “Apparently a photographer. I found his professional-looking camera and tripod.”

  “No, I mean that veterinarian who found the body.”

  “Told you what I know, Chief.”

  Corey scratched at his neck. “What do you suppose he was doing out here?”

  “Told me that when he stopped to take a leak, he spotted a hat floating near the shoreline. When he picked it up, he saw the blood stain. He followed his curiosity upstream until he was startled by the discovery of the body on the other shore. He certainly didn’t appear to be holding anything back.”

  “You didn’t consider taking this guy in for questioning?” Corey asked.

  “No real reason to.”

  Corey held his stare on the deputy long enough to make his point.

  The deputy nodded. “I’ll give the sheriff your suggestion.”

  “You do that. And be sure he knows where it came from.”

  ***

  Corey rode shotgun while Montgomery drove back through the Park along Yellowstone’s Grand Loop. He steered with one hand resting on the wheel and the other fidgeting with his blond handlebar mustache which curled twice at the tips. In his fifteenth year as a law enforcement ranger, Bantz Montgomery was in his early fifties, ten years older than his boss. At one point in time he figured he had
a good shot to be the next chief ranger. But when the job became available eight years before, the Yellowstone superintendent selected the senior ranger at Glacier National Park—Jack Corey. Within a month Corey appointed Montgomery his deputy when he’d discovered that both had served in Nam and fought in the Easter Offensive.

  Montgomery knew the ropes and the local politics. But he was too close to all the aggravation the chief ranger endured. The hours he had to put in. Having attended too many of Corey’s briefings, he’d memorized the numbers. The chief commanded fifty-eight rangers responsible for patrolling the highways, campgrounds, and backcountry trails scattered throughout a two million acre national park, twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year. The rangers provided all the emergency services for millions of Park visitors and investigated thousands of criminal incidents every year.

  Montgomery wanted no part of the headaches that Corey took home most days, sometimes not getting to bed until after midnight, even though he was on duty every morning of the workweek by seven. When he had to work on Saturday or Sunday, which was at least twice a month, he usually slept in and arrived at seven-thirty.

  He glanced over at his boss, annoyed by his lockdown attitude and never certain what his cold attitude meant. “That new veterinarian in Colter must get around.”

  The truck’s radio blared out the classic country voice of the senior Hank Williams. Leaning back against the headrest, Corey stared straight ahead with his arms folded, bobbing his head to the beat.

  Montgomery said, “Sounded as if the deputies weren’t much interested in him. You think the sheriff will consider him a suspect?”

  “Be a fool not to.”

  “Wonder if Milburn or Hartwell know they got new competition?”

  “They’ll find out soon enough.”

  “We better write up what we found,” Montgomery said.

  Corey let out a dreary sigh and stared out the passenger window. “Yeah. You take care of it.” He cranked up the volume on the radio, sank low in his seat and jammed his knees against the dash.