by Rick Mofina
“Were you alone?”
“Yes. So we’re talking about the book and how it showed how people can lose control when they’re isolated, or something; then he starts mumbling.”
“About what?”
“Well, something about his wife. I didn’t really understand. So I ask him, like, what’s wrong. And all of a sudden, he got angry, telling me I had no right to ask about his personal life. Then he just slapped me.”
“Show me exactly how.”
Cammi gestured a slapping motion to her face.
“Did it hurt?”
“It stung.”
“How were you positioned during this conversation?”
“I was against the wall looking up to him.”
“So he was very close?”
“Yes. It scared me. He called me stupid; then he slapped me. I think he was sorry the minute he realized what he did. But I ran away. Just got out of there. I didn’t know what to do about it. So I went to my principal. I don’t think it’s that big a deal, do you? I mean, are you going to tell my dad that my teacher slapped me?”
“Your parents are not together?”
Cammi shook her head.
“Divorced three years ago. My dad writes movies in L.A. He has a girlfriend and they’re getting married in a few weeks.”
“You all right with that?”
Cammi shrugged. “Sure. We never see him anyway.”
“How do you get on with your mother?”
“Sheila and I get along fine.” Cammi stood. “So are we all done then?”
Turgeon had a thought.
“Cammi, what do you think of Doug Baker’s daughter lost in the mountains now?”
“It’s terrible. What do you think?”
“Yes, it’s terrible.”
“I guess I do not want to see him get into trouble over this thing with me. I think he was sorry for it. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Well, leave it with us for now, okay?” Turgeon smiled.
On their way out, the two detectives spoke privately with Walton about keeping her apprised of their investigation.
“Thank you. I’d like to get to the bottom of this as soon as it is possible,” Walton said, passing them both cards with her cell phone number.
During the drive back to the Hall of Justice both women shook their heads in the wake of Cammi Walton’s strange account.
“Doug Baker’s looking real bad in my book right now,” Hicks said.
Turgeon could not figure it out. Doug Baker was either some kind of ticking time bomb, or Cammi’s version of events was a little out of focus.
“None of this makes sense,” Turgeon said.
TWENTY-NINE
After Molly Wilson’s call, Tom Reed tossed his cell phone into the tangle of maps, newspapers and take-out wrappers covering his passenger seat.
Emily Baker was undergoing counseling for the death of a child.
Wilson had succeeded with some impressive digging. It was up to him to see what he could do with the data.
He resumed writing today’s story on Doug and Emily. His laptop computer was balanced against his stomach and the steering wheel. In between composing paragraphs, he was keeping an eye on the command center.
Activity was picking up. Agents were trotting back and forth between the building and the FBI’s rented SUVs. Choppers were landing and taking off with more frequency. Something thudded on the roof of his car.
“Hey, Reed, what do you figure it is?” A friend with the Philadelphia Inquirer bent down to the driver’s window.
“Beats me.”
“Rumor is they found something out there.”
“Any idea what?”
“Nobody knows. Nobody’s talking. But the FBI guys are jumping around as if they were going to make a full-court press.”
“If they found the girl safe, we’d hear.”
“Yeah. I’m going to poke around. See ya.”
Moments later, Reed left his car to get a handle on whatever was happening. The area surrounding the command center had become a virtual media village with dozens of ensconced news crews largely corralled by the Montana Highway Patrol to one area. Lawn chairs, sunglasses, satellite dishes and cell phones--that scene blended with the scores of police, park, emergency, rescue vehicles and personnel at the other side of the center. This was an intense midway vigil that had overwhelmed the small lot and surrounding roads.
Reed noticed that the paramedics at the ground ambulances and medi-vac helicopter were stationary and calm. OK, if they had found the kid alive, those guys would be activated. And if they found her body? Reed walked on, coming to the roadway’s checkpoint and its two Montana Highway Patrol officers. One had a clipboard tally of the vehicles.
“Excuse me,” Reed said, “can you tell me where the county coroner is parked? I missed the vehicle’s arrival.”
“Coroner? The coroner is not here.”
“I was told they just arrived.”
The officer with the clipboard flipped through sheets. “No sir. Just a minute.” The officer made a radio inquiry about the coroner. His radio responded with some static the officer understood. “Negative, sir.”
“Sorry,” Reed apologized. “I was misinformed.”
No coroner. No paramedics. What could it be? On his return walk, Reed noticed two agents with the FBI’s Evidence Team nearly out of sight between two vans, talking on their radios. He strolled over to the far side of the paneled van, pricking up his ears, catching fragments of their low-key transmissions: “Soon as they’re done photographing the scene, it will be choppered to Kalispell. They’re holding a Northwest commercial. Sorensen’s delivering it to the lab in Seattle….”
The information was like found money, a recovered fumble. Reed scooped it and tucked it away.
This thing was going to bust open soon. He scanned the area for either Sydowski or a familiar FBI agent, someone he could pump. No one around.
Back at the car, he closed his eyes for three seconds. This and Wilson’s stuff could add up. He considered it along with Wilson’s angle.
Emily Baker was from Montana. She was undergoing counseling for the death of a child.
He called the Associated Press Bureau in Helena. He had friends there.
“AP, Larry Dancy.”
“Hey, Dance. Tom Reed.”
“How you doing, you old beach bum?”
“Older but no wiser. Yourself?”
“Can’t complain. We’re expecting our third next month.”
“Congratulations, Dad.”
“Thanks. So what’re you up to? Still the big gun in San Francisco?”
“Sure, a really big gun. Say, Dance, I am out here in Glacier on this missing girl story and I thought I’d give old Chester a call, say hi. You know how I can reach him quick?”
“406-555-3312. Got a beautiful little place in Wisdom. He still does some anniversary pieces for us.”
“Thanks.”
Chester Murdon was a living legend who had put in forty-two years as a reporter with the Associated Press in Montana. He knew every inch of the state and its history because he had reported on much of it. He was a walking encyclopedia on Montana. Librarians for the state and universities throughout the country often consulted him. Chester retired several years ago but continued his series of state history books. Reed recalled when he was a summer cub reporter at the Great Falls Tribune. People in the Montana press were talking about Chester researching a book on summarizing every murder in the state’s history, A History of Murder Under the Big Sky.
If Emily Baker’s counseling was for a child’s death related to a murder in this state, Chester would know. Reed heard his line ringing clearly. Finally, it was answered.
“Hello?
“Chester Murdon?”
“That’s me. How can I help you?”
THIRTY
In his Deer Lodge motel room next to the Four Bs Restaurant on Sam Beck Road, David Cohen flipped through the nightstan
d Bible while contemplating the lonely diesel whine and rush of air brakes of rigs negotiating Interstate 90, a quarter mile away.
An hour earlier, the clerk of the United States Supreme Court had alerted him to standby for a response to Isaiah Hood’s petition to the appeal of his death sentence. Not a hint of the decision in the call.
Cohen accepted the insurmountable odds of a favorable decision, but he could not restrain his human nature to search for hope.
His room phone jangled. It was the clerk in Washington, D.C., confirming Cohen’s fax number. The response was coming now. His eyes went around the room, to the TV muted on CNN, the two double beds, one unmade, the other buried under legal briefs, files, records, newspapers. Then to his portable fax, connected to his cellular phone, which trilled and blinked dutifully as his machine came alive, clicking into receiving mode.
Paper curled out of the machine. Cohen read it before the transmission was completed.
The decision came like a blow forcing Cohen to sit on the cluttered bed, clutching the pages. It’s over. I’ve lost him.
There was no reason given for denying the appeal. They never give one. Cohen shut his eyes. The ashes will be distributed in the Livingston Range. He then opened his eyes to the room’s closet, seeing his dark suit hanging there, the one he would wear to witness Hood’s execution, evoking the Grim Reaper as another solitary rig growled into the mountains. He stared blankly at the news pictures. He would have to tell Isaiah it was over. He was going to die. He was sorry, so sorry. And when it was over, he would fly back to Chicago and struggle to put it all behind him. He would go to a ball game. Friends would console him over beers at bars and parties. Others would change the subject. He’d take a trip, maybe Bermuda, in a Pilate-like attempt to cleanse the blood from his hands.
Soon he would have to stare into a man’s eyes and tell him he had failed to save his life. He would watch him die and then carry his ashes in his rented car to the Rocky Mountains.
His motel phone rang. He knew who it was.
“David, it’s Lane. I just got it. We tried everything. We knew going into this how hard it would--”
“Lane. Please understand, I don’t feel like talking right now.”
Cohen hung up, then swatted his files across the room. They scattered as he thrust his face into his hands. He sat in silence, listening to the trucks for a few minutes. Come on now, get a grip. He collected himself and his papers.
Much of the spilled file was that of the sole witness, the thirteen-year-old girl whose testimony sealed Hood’s death warrant. There were pictures of her in a yellowing portion of the folder that Cohen had almost forgotten. Black-and-white images. Almost like police mugs. Maybe taken by Goliath County Sheriff’s Office when she was first questioned. Cohen was not sure of the source. Pretty kid. Looked familiar.
Cohen lowered the photograph, just as his attention was pulled to the muted TV and the report of the search for Paige Baker. A still color photograph of the lost girl flashed as the report played excerpts from her mother’s news conference. Cohen’s concentration pinballed at the speed of light to her face, her daughter’s picture, the picture in his hand.
His jaw dropped.
He scrambled, rummaging through the newspapers for the lost girl stories, studying the news photos there, comparing them to those in Hood’s files.
It’s her. How could I have missed this? Emily Baker is the witness. It was her testimony that convicted Hood.
Cohen snapped through the files. The names were different. The firm had hired private investigators to track her down. But they were unsuccessful. Her mother had taken her from Montana years ago. They could not locate her. The investigators reported no record of her death, convictions or military service. She may have changed her name, her date of birth, her Social Security Number, or lied on records about eye and hair color. All the usual identifiers. But why would she or her mother go to such lengths?
In the early part of the case, Isaiah had said little in his own defense. Cohen flipped through the old records. Now he maintained his innocence in the death of five-year-old Rachel Ross.
Emily Baker’s eyes stared at Cohen from the Missoulian splayed on the bed and from the old black-and-white court photo of her taken at the time of Rachel’s death. He pored over her statement and the transcripts of her testimony.
Three people were on that ledge in the backcountry that day twenty-two years ago.
Isaiah Hood was back water trash, the product of pitiful circumstances. He had less standing and sympathy in the community than a stray dog. No one was interested in the truth of the tragedy. Guilt suited Hood like his worn clothes. His court-appointed attorney barely performed his fiduciary duty. He never really challenged the testimony of the county attorney’s sole witness, a thirteen-year-old child.
Cohen shuddered. Throughout his handling of the case, he had secretly doubted his client’s innocence, choosing to believe Hood’s conviction was based on elements that violated his constitutional rights. They were enough to mire his case in year after year of appeals, in what was the judicial equivalent of false hope for a dead man.
But now, staring at the old pictures and those in the news stories, knowing that Emily Baker’s ten-year-old daughter was missing in the same region and under similar circumstances as the case with her sister all those years ago, with the clock ticking down, Cohen feared--for the first time--the state of Montana was about to execute an innocent man.
His motel phone rang again, reminding him that the attorney general’s office would be calling after receiving its copy of the U.S. Supreme Court decision.
“David, John Jackson in Helena,” said the AG’s senior counsel.
“You got it.”
“As you know, the case can now go to the Board of Pardons and Parole for executive clemency.”
“It’s done, John. I’ve set the mechanism in motion.”
“As expected. But as I’ve told you, nothing has surfaced to give the governor reason to intervene. You and Ms. Porter must brace yourself for the inevitable likelihood that your client’s sentence will be carried out at the date and time indicated on his warrant. We’ll send you paper on that. I have your fax. We’re issuing a press statement immediately. I am sorry, David.”
“Hold on there, John,” Cohen’s voice was wavering, his eyes going to the TV screen and Emily Baker’s face.
Could she have killed her sister and now her daughter? They cannot execute Hood. Somehow he had to stop it.
THIRTY-ONE
She is holding her little sister Rachel’s hand. It is smaller, softer with the trust and vulnerability of a younger child, feeling like it belongs in hers forever.
All is right in their world. They are walking down the lane from their house near Buckhorn Creek to wait for their dad’s pickup. Sitting in the summer grass, Rachel looks up to her, blinking in the sunlight.
“I love you, Lee.”
“I love you, too, Sun Ray.”
Sun Ray. That’s what Emily called her. She loved how Rachel had trouble pronouncing her name. She loved everything about Rachel. Little blue eyes twinkling from an angel’s face, snow-white teeth, a sprinkling of freckles, tawny hair, which Rachel let her braid on long winter nights. They shared stories and dolls. They cried when their mother read them Charlotte’s Web.
Emily would never forget those terrifying summer storms, pounding the mountains with thunderclaps rattling the house; lightning illuminating the sky as if the Rockies were collapsing. On those nights, Emily’s bedroom door would crack open. Rachel would be standing there in the doorway holding her teddy, the lightning streaking her face.
“I’m scared, Lee.”
She would lift her blanket, inviting her into her bed. Put her arm around her protectively, inhale the sweet scent of her little sister’s hair, feel her warmth as she snuggled against her. Together, they were safe.
“I don’t feel scared anymore.”
The storm would subside and the whispering rain w
ould lull them to sleep. How Emily would listen to it, wishing they could stay that way. Freeze time. Then the monster came.
“Guess what I’m going to do.”
She is in the church now. The scent of candles, the polished wood of the pews, the oak floors, the fragrant flowers. Rachel’s white casket is open. She is walking toward it. Her sister is lying inside, looking smaller. She is wearing a cotton dress with lace trim, her church dress their mother has made. Hands clasped and fingers entwined. Her teddy is tucked under her arm. The sleeves cover the bruises.
“Back of her head was split. Much of the damage was internal.” The sheriff’s deputies and some local men were behind the church, passing a small bottle, and talking.
Rachel’s face is clear. Her eyes closed. Lee reaches in and takes her hand. It is cold. So cold. My Sun Ray.
“I don’t feel scared anymore.”
Rachel’s death had fractured Emily’s family. Her father never smiled. Every ounce of happiness had left him. Her mother would sit alone for hours in Rachel’s room, not allowing anything to be touched. In their grief, her parents were melting away from her when Emily needed them.
The words were never spoken, but in their anguish they held her responsible for her sister’s death. They branded her with blame, searing it into her soul.
It was her fault.
She was there.
It is the annual summer camping trip with the Buckhorn Creek Girls Club. Four days and nights in the backcountry of Glacier National Park. Mothers and fathers are dropping girls off at the Town Hall. Lee and Rachel’s folks giving them hugs and kisses.
“Remember to watch over your little sister.”
“I will.”
Hauling their sleeping bags and packs from the car, waving good-byes from the bus. Her parents waving, smiling for the last time.
The group hikes deep into the park. The mountains, the fragrant trees and clear water streams sparkling in the sun. This must be the way to heaven, Lee thinks. Everything about the trip is perfect. Rachel loves it. They pick flowers, make crafts, sing songs by the campfire, toast marshmallows, tell ghost stories, count stars. It is perfect.