HYBRID: A Thriller

by James Marshall Smith

  The door of the broom closet closed.

  Footsteps were creeping down the hallway.

  Dieter’s teeth chattered. He didn’t know which was worse, the numbing cold or the nauseating reek of embalming fluid. One arm was already asleep from being pinned against frozen steel. The finger bitten by King Tut throbbed.

  What was he going to do if somebody came in the room and pulled out the slab? Play dead? Say “Sorry, sir” and trigger a heart attack?

  The footsteps stopped outside the door. A voice shouted something unintelligible. The voice had strained to be a command, but there was a more tentative edge to it.

  The door opened and a spasm erupted from Dieter’s gut. Bile burned the back of his throat and gushed upward. God, of all times. He turned his head to the side and panted. It was too loud. He took deep breaths through his nose. If he began to puke, he could choke to death.

  ***

  Preston Cody searched the parlor with his flashlight. He assumed the damn light switch would be near the front door. Maybe it would be better to go outside and search the perimeter. He should’ve done that first anyway. As he headed for the front, he wondered why he was walking so quietly. A hushed clamor arose in the back.

  He stopped and turned around, not certain that he’d actually heard anything. He held his breath to sharpen his hearing while he shined his flashlight along the walls. Choosing the hallway on the left, he walked toward it as he swung his light from side to side. The doors to each room he passed were closed, but he recognized the stench coming from the next room and assumed it had recently been opened. With one hand on his flashlight and one on his holstered Glock, he yelled. “Anybody in there?”

  No response.

  “If anybody’s in there, you’d better come out now before I blow a hole through you.”

  He reached for the knob, slowly twisted it, then gave a shove and stepped inside. The flashlight beam moved across the room until it reached a steel table where a sheet covered the shape of a body. He’d never seen a dead body, not one up close anyway except for his grandmother’s. His Mama didn’t let him linger over it though. His Grandma looked so different from his last visit at the nursing home. Caked makeup had smothered her face and the corners of her lips bore the likeness of a smile, but he’d never remembered seeing her smile before. He took his hand off his pistol and advanced to the table. Using only the tips of his index finger and thumb, he pulled the top of the sheet away.

  ***

  Dieter held his breath as footsteps approached the prep table. He suddenly heard a roar.

  Jesus Christ Almighty!

  The words were so loud that he jerked his head up and bumped it against the top of his steel tomb.

  Dammit.

  The door to the room slammed shut and the rush of footsteps faded down the hallway.

  Silence.

  The closet door opened and then the refrigerated slab was finally being yanked out. “Get me out of here,” Dieter growled, his words echoing as if inside a cave.

  “You okay, Doc?” Josh began rubbing Dieter’s shoulders.

  He was too frozen to carry on polite conversation.

  “Stay here and warm up,” Josh said. “I’ll make sure the cruiser’s gone.”

  While Josh investigated, Dieter rolled off the steel table and paced rapidly, his arms locked across his chest massaging his shoulders. Gradually, his shivering subsided and his anger was replaced by a crazy sense of achievement, like a schoolboy who had pulled off a prank. He moved toward the prep table just as Josh returned. The green sheet was bunched around the cadaver’s head. He grasped the top of the sheet and pulled it down, then cringed and turned away. Against the victim’s shoulder lay a half-eaten head. The face was covered in swirls of burgundy and black surrounding dark caverns where once loomed eyes.

  As Josh watched from behind, Dieter used his penlight to examine the excavated throat, a jumble of slashed arteries and veins, minced cartilage, and a shredded windpipe. The odor of decomposing flesh arose—rotting, yet a certain sweetness mingled with it. The stench of death, a haunting blend of sweet and rancid. The neck had been chewed away, gnawed down to the cervical spine. He strained to look, holding the penlight into the open wound. Teeth marks were whittled on the ivory surface of the bone.

  He pulled the sheet farther down and revealed the rest of the torso covered with lacerations and dried blood. The naked chest was carved with penetrating scratches.

  “Do you see anything resembling a stab wound, Doc?”

  “Nothing.” Dieter held the light closer and pointed to a wide abrasion about six inches long under the cadaver’s left nipple. He looked at Josh, who was nodding with recognition.

  “No question about it,” Josh said. “Four evenly spaced claw-marks. See how they dug in beneath the skin. Must be almost an inch.” He held up his curled fingers and raked at the air. “But that ain’t near deep or wide enough for a bear. Only one creature scrapes and claws with a pattern like that, partner.”

  Dieter pointed the light to a clear bite mark with evidence of fang penetration just below the neck at the upper edge of the clavicle. He made a fist and formed the familiar goalposts with his fingers. The width looked identical to that found on the llama carcass.

  “What about these pockmarks? Look at them. How can a wolf do that?”

  Josh bent low to examine the tiny gouges that covered the decaying face. “My guess is that’s the work of ravens. They can’t rip open a carcass, so they let the wolves do the hard labor. I’ve always thought those birds a hell of a lot smarter than the coyotes and eagles that can only come across a kill by chance. Ravens follow wolves around like a whore after a sailor. They work as a team. The wolves do the hunting while the birds do the spotting.”

  They had spent too much time and were pressing their luck. Dieter placed the sheet back over the corpse, leaving it crumpled over the body with the head partly exposed, exactly the way the deputy had left it. “I think we’ve seen enough.”

  Josh nodded and they moved quickly back through the building. Dieter checked along the way to make sure nothing was out of place before they exited into the dark toward the pickup.

  When they headed back to Josh’s ranch, Dieter’s mind raced with thoughts of how narrow their escape.

  “You okay, Doc?”

  “Just thinking . . . it would be a good idea if we kept in touch.”

  “You got my number?”

  Dieter reached into his pocket to grab Mrs. Manning’s business card to write on. He found his keys, a ballpoint pen and spare change. But the card was gone.

  FOURTEEN

  Molly Schoonover knew him as soon as he walked into the General Store that morning—the tall man with a wild patch of hair dangling like a bird’s nest from his sharp boney chin. A wide-brimmed straw hat hid his eyes as he moved with elbows splayed out and hands jammed inside deep pockets. An overseer, too high and mighty to touch the merchandise.

  She had talked the Judge into driving up to Colter to shop. Although September hadn’t yet arrived—Labor Day was coming soon—signs of an early fall abounded. Golden aspen peppered the green forests along with the fire-red maples. The air had that distinctive chill even in the middle of a sunny day. Before long, the summer onslaught of park tourists would disappear in time with the first snows of the season.

  Three women wearing dresses to their ankles accompanied old man Loudermilk. The entire family moved together as if tethered, whispering to one another and paying no heed to other customers; all tuned into themselves. She never quite determined what went on with that peculiar family. She remembered Dieter mentioning the colt delivery at their place and wished he’d learned more about them to share with her. The rumors about the family were rampant, but she made it a point to give little if any credence to gossip about families that were different. God knows she and the Judge were different in their own ways. To be fair, she’d heard favorable accounts of the Loudermilk family as well, favorable accounts suggesting they were
good people despite their quirks. They not only worked a ranch, but did odd jobs on the side. The women were outstanding seamstresses, she’d heard, who made wedding dresses, curtains and the like and that they worked at reasonable rates to boot. Given the miserable state of the drapes throughout her house, it crossed Molly’s mind that maybe she should politely inquire about their services.

  Joseph Vincent Loudermilk pointed at something on a shelf occasionally, and one of the women would pick off a box or can or bag and drop it into the basket that another pushed along the aisle. The two younger women each had their hair braided into a strand that wobbled below their waist as they strolled.

  Molly leaned down to the Judge in his wheelchair and whispered. “Do you remember the story on the Loudermilks over there?”

  He looked up. After a pause and a nod, he said, “Sure. He s-sued the Helena newspaper a few years back b-because of the story they did on them. Best just to avoid them, Molly.”

  The Judge rarely said that sort of thing about anyone and people never spoke an unkind word about the Judge. Everyone admired the Honorable Bradford Schoonover and how well he managed to get about. A judge in the Eighteenth Judicial District of Montana for sixteen years, he was best known for his fairness in the courtroom and his eloquence in putting into words the reasons for rendering his verdicts.

  What a polished speaker he was. Until the day came that his John Deere tractor rolled over him. Why he wasn’t crushed to death still no one could explain. Not only did he break his pelvis, collar bone, a femur, three ribs, and become paralyzed from the waist down, it did worse. Regaining consciousness three days later, he spoke with a stutter, the beginning of the end of his career.

  With one eye on the Loudermilks, Molly pretended to help the Judge in selecting winter wool shirts. Then she moseyed around the corner and sidestepped down their aisle as if searching for something. The oldest of the women moved in her direction. When she was close enough, Molly turned and smartly arranged a gentle bump. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t see—”

  “No problem, ma’am, I’m sure.”

  “My goodness,” Molly blurted. “Aren’t you the one who did the fine drapes for Sally Pritchard last winter?”

  “Well, yes. My sisters and I, that is.”

  “I’d love to talk with you sometime about doing up a pair for my living room picture window.”

  The woman caught Mr. Loudermilk glowering from a nearby aisle.

  Molly tried to steal her attention. “I hope the colt that Dr. Harmon delivered for you is doing okay?”

  The woman started to speak when the old man called out. “Miss Katherine?”

  She lowered her head and moved away from Molly without answering.

  Well, thank you very much. Next time I’ll bend over and—

  “What are you up to?” the Judge asked, as he wheeled up behind her.

  She shrugged, put on an air of innocence, and followed him back to the men’s shirt rack where he showed her three selections he was pondering. She vetoed each in turn.

  On a nearby shelf, Sam Phillips adjusted stock, a ritual the store owner spent the better part of each day practicing. He greeted the Judge with a broad smile. Hard to miss, Sam hovered midway between six and seven feet. His shirtsleeves climbed high on his biceps for the likely purpose of either flaunting them or revealing tattoos of the Holy Cross on one arm and a faded likeness of Jesus on the other. “Been a while, Judge,” he said.

  “Just came in to browse for s-s-some hiking boots,” he replied with a wink.

  Sam smiled and returned to work, never looking at Molly. She once went before the Colter Town Council and complained about business owners fixing prices in the summers to take advantage of tourists—of course, punishing the locals in the process. It had been three years and he hadn’t spoken to her since.

  Three damn years. At least he hadn’t spoken to her directly, only through the Judge. After loading up on household staples and checking out, Molly and the Judge returned to the truck. She opened the passenger door and helped him struggle into the cab, then collapsed his wheelchair and carried it to the rear of the truck, heaving it upon the tailgate. Before she climbed into the driver’s seat, she grabbed a folded note between the wiper blade and windshield:

  I did not mean to be rude, my dear. Please call me at your earliest convenience: 555-7035.

  Katherine Belle Loudermilk

  You can bet your sweet ass I’ll call, Molly thought.

  FIFTEEN

  Bantz Montgomery pounded for the third time on the front door of Jack Corey’s home. One good thing about working at Yellowstone headquarters was the commute between home and office. The Park Service provided a modest house within walking distance of the offices for each of the senior park rangers and key staff. All were built from the same locally quarried stone as the office complex.

  Already 8:15, Corey was supposed to meet him an hour earlier at the office. Montgomery suspected a problem and had an inkling of it. He stopped knocking and took off to find the maintenance super for the Park homes. It was rarely better than a fifty-fifty chance to locate the guy, but this time Montgomery lucked out. The super, a thin-framed former cowboy had grown up in Casper and was a jack-of-all-trades. He complained about his long arthritic fingers while he jostled the master key around in Corey’s front door lock, then gently twisted the knob and cracked open the door.

  “Thanks, Karl,” Montgomery said. “I’ll check on him.”

  “I can’t keep doing this, Bantz. If the Big Wigs knew I was—”

  “I’m sure Chief Corey just has a virus this time. He was coming down with something Friday.”

  “It’s a damn shame about his wife and all. A man needs someone to take care of him. Don’t know what I’d do without Lenora.”

  Montgomery shoved on the door. “Be sure and give her my regards, Karl.” Inside, he called out Corey’s name in a low voice at first, then louder as he walked through the living room.

  No answer.

  A newspaper spread out in sections on the seat of a stuffed easy chair and on the carpeted floor beside it. Three crushed Budweiser cans lay on the table next to the chair.

  Corey’s wife Anne had called Montgomery from her apartment in West Yellowstone late the night before. That wasn’t unusual, she’d called him a dozen times since the breakup. She wanted others to understand that none of it was her fault. She had grown to hate Jack Corey’s twelve-hour days. He was more than a workaholic—he didn’t have a single interest outside of work. “Not a single damn thing, Bantz!” she’d yelled over the phone. Nothing other than the Park interested him. He didn’t know how to live or love anymore. Montgomery never told his boss about the calls. He gradually came to understand Corey’s mood swings, but didn’t totally sympathize with his plight.

  The bedroom door was ajar. Corey lay sprawled out on the bed on top of the covers, snoring and smelling of hard liquor. When Montgomery picked up a glass tumbler from the bedside table and sniffed, his hunch was confirmed. He grabbed Corey’s shoulder and shoved, but he might as well have been a sack of flour. Calling out his name, he shook him harder and the bed began to rock. He placed his mouth down to Corey’s ear and shouted again. “Jack!”

  Corey jerked up from the pillow as if someone had yanked him by the hair. “What the hell,” he groaned.

  “I’ve been waiting for you at headquarters. You’re late. Remember our job this morning?”

  After sitting up on the edge of his bed, Corey squeezed the sides of his head.

  “The superintendent wants you to report to him by noon, Jack. He wants to know what we find out about the poacher.”

  Corey rolled back onto the bed and over onto his stomach. “I don’t give a shit what Gilmer wants or when he wants it. I’m resigning.”

  Montgomery walked into the bathroom and picked a damp towel off the tiled floor.

  Corey called after him. “Did you hear me?”

  Montgomery turned on the cold-water spigot and soaked the towel.


  “I said I was resigning. Answer me, dammit!”

  Montgomery returned to the bedroom and tossed the wet mass at his boss’ head. “Come on, Jack, get up. We’ve got this scum nailed. We can’t let him get away from us again.”

  Corey rose up slowly while wiping his face on the towel. With Montgomery supporting him on one side, he staggered into the bathroom. Montgomery reached in and turned on the shower.

  “You’ve done your job, asshole,” Corey muttered. “Now get out of here.”

  “I’ll wait for you in the kitchen and make a pot of coffee. We’ve got to move on this, Jack. It’s already—”

  Montgomery ducked in time to miss the shampoo bottle flying at his head.

  ***

  Montgomery sat in silence as his boss sped down the highway toward the town of Red Lodge.

  “Tell me the name of this guy again,” Corey demanded.

  “Dietz. Nathan Dietz.”

  “Sounds like a kraut.”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “You’re sure he’s at home?”

  “Can’t be absolutely sure. But we’ve—”

  “You got me outta bed and you’re not sure he’s home?”

  “Look, Jack. We’ve determined that weekends are the best times to hit. That’s all we can do under the circumstances.”

  Corey shook his head with a mock-grin.

  “You might want to slow down a little here,” Montgomery said. “The local cops pay their bills with their radar gun.”

  Corey was doing 65 in a 35 zone and didn’t let up. Down one of the gravel roads was the home of the suspect, Montgomery’s best guess as to the poacher of wolf labeled 10F, which had strayed from the Rose Creek pack. Its radio-collar had given off a signal indicating total absence of motion for twenty-four hours. Whenever Montgomery brought such warning signs to Corey’s attention, Corey directed the rangers to drop everything—everything—locate the wolf’s body, and give him a full account.

  They had found the radio-collar near Highway 212, west of Cooke City. Those investigating the incident told Montgomery that the collar had been slashed with a knife and the body missing. Dried blood splattered the ground along with casings from .30/.30 shells. The missing mom—10F—left a den of pups. Only half survived. The others were found rotting. But it was not just a den of pups they’d found. She also left behind a grieving male, the same wolf often seen at the site where the slashed collar was found.