by Rick Mofina
“Mr. Cohen, your client was convicted under the laws of this state. His conviction was upheld by the supreme court of this state. Your attempt to appeal it in the highest court in the nation failed. The Montana State Board of Pardons and Parole has not found merit in your petition to recommend executive clemency for your client. A lot of people have studied this file before it came to me. I cannot interfere and undermine the laws of this state and nation. As you know, I do not retry cases. I am limited in what I can do.
“The case of Paige Baker, the little girl from California, is tragic. She has been reported missing and every resource, every effort, is being utilized to locate her. For you, at this stage, to attempt to draw a hideous connection between the case of your client, convicted of the cold-blooded murder of a child, a case which is all but concluded, and the tragedy endured by a family in Glacier is at best, tenuous, and at its worst, morally abhorrent.”
“I am sorry you see it that way, sir. I disagree.”
“That is your privilege. What I will do is take your concerns, as weak as they are, under advisement. I’ll make my decision known to you tomorrow.”
The governor stood, signaling that Cohen’s time with him had ended. The young lawyer took in the gazes of the other men. He shook the governor’s extended hand and left. Jackson saw him out, through the house, to the front steps.
“I’ll say one thing for you, David. You better have brass ones. After pulling a disgraceful stunt like that.”
Cohen stopped, turning on the step.
“Why’s that, John?”
“Because you just squeezed the governor’s balls. Now he’s likely to squeeze yours”--Jackson winked--“so hard, they’ll hear the scream in Chicago.”
Cohen took the comment, tapping his fingers on his briefcase, chuckling to himself. “You’re forgetting something fundamental here, John.”
“I am?”
“My client and I are already fucked. Got nothing to lose. It is all on the line. Now the Grayson Nye, on the other hand, well, let me put it this way, when’s the last time your boss had his picture on the front page of the New York Times?”
A scowl emerged on Jackson’s face.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Cohen stepped into Jackson’s space.
“Watch me. And when your boss screams, they’ll hear it in Washington.”
Jackson returned to the study, where the governor was on the phone. Upset. The attorney general raised a hand of caution to Jackson. The Governor dialed a number but slammed the phone down, abandoning the call. “Why the hell did we not know about the mother’s connection to Hood?”
The attorney general was on his cell phone demanding someone commence emergency research. “Sir,” he said, snapping his phone shut, “I was just getting a status report from Glacier. They’re no closer to finding the girl.”
Grayson Nye shook his head. “This is a goddamn mess.”
“You are clear on the execution on all legal grounds. Cohen presents nothing in the way of solid evidence that warrants clemency. The U.S. Supreme Court has green-lighted you here.”
“And politically?”
The attorney general cleared his throat.
“If you delay this guy, you will be seen as being soft on crime. He is a convicted child killer. If you delay under the suggestion it is linked to the tragic ongoing case in Glacier, you risk offending the state of California in the perception you are convicting an anguished woman in a time of torment, based on what? A Chicago lawyer’s strategy of smoke and mirrors?”
“I could delay for thirty days.”
“Based on what?” the attorney general said. “You’ll be pegged as soft and indecisive. Not assets to national aspirations, Grayson.”
“What if she is guilty of harming her child in Glacier?”
“Then she will be prosecuted,” Jackson said.
“And we’ll have executed an innocent man.”
“You cannot retry his case. She would have to confess and provide some sort of irrefutable evidence,” the attorney general said.
The governor thought of his family.
He had an eighteen-year-old daughter heading off to Yale. The study’s grandfather clock began chiming. Time was the factor. Hood’s execution was scheduled in the next forty-eight hours. The FBI found a bloodied T-shirt, a bloodied ax. The mother was undergoing counseling. As far as he knew, the investigators knew nothing of Cohen’s claim, were unaware of who the mother really was. Not yet. Jesus, please let them find that kid alive.
“I’ll decide in the morning.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
FBI Special Agent Tracy Bowman watched the helicopter’s blinking strobe lights shrinking, vanishing into the dusk after Zander and Doug Baker left the command post.
She would leave later on the last flight before nightfall.
Bowman scanned the mountains, feeling the temperature drop. She pulled her jacket tighter and bit her lip. She reviewed everything so far.
What had befallen this family?
Emily had tried to escape her torment by crawling into her daughter’s tent. A tense calm descended upon operations. No sounds could be heard, except for the low crackle of radio traffic as searchers throughout Grizzly Tooth prepared to dig in for the night. Each of them privately tabulating the time and conditions surrounding Paige Baker’s disappearance, then calculating her odds of survival. Coming up on sixty hours. Not good.
Snow and rain were forecast for part of the night.
Suddenly, Bowman felt alone. She had not talked with her Mark since rushing here. She took an FBI satellite phone, went to the edge of the campsite, called her home in Lolo. It had been, what? Two days? No, one. It felt like a lifetime. She just needed to hear his voice.
No answer at her home. She dialed the home number of her friend, Roberta Cara.
“Roberta, it’s Tracy. I can’t talk long. How is everything?”
“Fine, but you sound funny.”
“It’s a satellite phone, wait a beat before answering. I’m on a mountain in Glacier. How’s Mark?”
Roberta counted one Mississippi.
“He’s fine. He’s here. We tried to call you on your cell. He wanted to stay at our house with the boys. Lord, I pray they find that little girl. Wait, I’ll put Mark on.”
Static, beeping, commotion, overhearing Roberta, explaining how the phone worked, then Mark. “Hi Mom. You’re really on a mountain. Cool.”
“Hey there, Marshal. Yes, I am. You having fun?”
“Yeah. I saw you on the TV news. In the background walking with some people. How long before you’re done, Mom?”
“Hard to say. Are you taking your medicine?”
“Yup. And Lance is teaching me how to whittle with a penknife.”
“You be careful with that knife. I’ll be home as soon as I can, but I got to go. I love you.”
“Love you too, Mom. Hope you find the little girl.”
Bowman felt a bittersweet rush of warmth and heartache pass through her. Sitting on the mountain miles from Mark, cradling the phone, she counted her blessings, gazing upon the tent where Emily wept as wind rustled its walls.
What happened to this family?
Bowman felt Emily was on the brink of opening up to her. She was learning more about her past, her childhood in Montana. If she could only get her to continue talking so she could pull the curtain back on the truth of what happened out here. The clock was ticking. It was critical.
Succeed here and she could move Mark to Los Angeles and better treatment. Did she even know what she was doing? Was she handling Emily Baker the right way? Zander gave her no indication. He was icy. “Keep pushing it, Bowman.” Why was he so cold?
She had overheard other agents gossiping about how Zander was haunted by a screw-up in a Georgia child murder case years ago. Then a female agent from Seattle said Zander was in need of comforting, that he was going through a wildly ugly separation back in DC. That might have been why he behaved like a jerk, thoug
ht Bowman.
Stop it, Tracy. What are you doing? This is inappropriate. Not right.
Bowman admonished herself, studying Paige Baker’s tent flapping in the cold wind. Like a burial shroud. Would they ever find Paige?
Bowman had a few hours before her flight. Exhausted, she checked with one of the agents assigned to keep the early-night watch on Emily, then crawled into the tent the rangers had set up for her. As the wind did its work, she fell asleep dreaming of Mark, California and Carl. They were there together walking in the sun happy…until the screaming….
Screaming?
Bowman scrambled from her tent.
Emily Baker’s demon had returned.
THIRTY-EIGHT
A dark wind had taken Emily as the night neared.
Seized her at the command post and took her back…forced her back to the days of Buckhorn Creek…back to that day.
The day of the monster.
Butterflies. Darting. Fluttering. Leading her and her little sister, Rachel, through the forest to…the monster.
Suddenly standing there at the cliff, waiting for them.
“Hello,” he says, “want to play a game?”
Seeing trouble, she squeezes Rachel’s hand.
“No thanks, we can’t. We have to go back.”
Rachel giggles. She wants to play.
The monster is beckoning.
“Stand closer to me. Watch me.” He laughs.
“No. We should go back.”
“It’s just a game.”
Rachel pulls her hand away; the warmth of it vanishes. She goes to him.
“Rachel, no, don’t.”
He turns, takes two steps. “Guess what I’m going to do. Watch.” He disappears off the cliff before them.
“He’s dead!”
Rachel stands there, giggling. Peering over the cliffside. Giggling! It is all horribly wrong!
Now Rachel is Paige standing there.
Emily screams…and screams…until--
“Emily!” Hands on her shoulders. “Emily!”
The FBI agent. Bowman. In her tent, shaking her.
“It’s OK, Emily. Wake up Emily!”
Her heart is throbbing against her chest. Her hands are moist with sweat, fear. Bowman is rocking her as she weeps.
“I think I am losing my mind. It’s happening again. I cannot--”
Others have come, murmuring concern outside the tent. Everything’s fine. A bad dream, Bowman tells them.
“I cannot take it anymore….If I lose Paige, I--”
“Shh-shh. You need rest. Talk it out. Tell me, whatever it is you’re carrying inside. It’s OK Emily. It’s time to tell someone. Shh, it’s OK. It’s time.”
A game. That was how it began. A game with a monster.
Emily struggle to talk. It was so painful. It hurt so much. In the weeks, months, and years after Rachel’s death, she was gripped by a dark obsession to understand what her sister’s final moments were like.
Did she suffer?
My Sun Ray.
Her sister’s death destroyed everything. While she searched to understand why it had happened, her mother and father withdrew into prisons of pain, leaving her under a cloud of accusation.
“Why didn’t you save her?”
The wound would not heal. About a year after the trial, her father confronted her with the rumor slithering through Buckhorn Creek
“It’s going around that you lied about what happened out there that day.”
Lied? No.
He was working in the corral on his horse, a big bay that seemed uneasy.
“I told the truth, Daddy.”
“That’s not what I’m hearing. People are saying you pushed your sister.”
“You pushed your sister.”
His words had burned like a branding iron into her soul.
“It’s a lie!”
“Is it?”
His horse was snorting and jerking. He yelled at it, “Settle down there!”
The blow of her father’s words brought her to her knees.
“You’re my father. Why are you saying such a horrible thing?”
“Because a man has been sentenced to die, goddamn you!”
Goddamn you. Was that directed at her? Or his horse?
It began bucking wildly, throwing her father from his saddle, the animal’s hind legs kicking. It’s hoof like a sledgehammer to his temple, killing him instantly in front of her, his accusation hanging in the air, rising up to the mountains with her terror.
“Daddy!”
Her mother rushing from the house, throwing herself on the soft earth. “Winston! Winston! Oh sweet Jesus!” Her eyes turning to Emily, filling with horror, hurt, blame.
It was as if her father had bequeathed his suspicions to her mother. He died, never knowing the truth; while her mother lived, refusing to hear it, taking her first drink the night after they buried him next to Rachel.
Not long after, her mother sold their ranch. Their perfect, happy home nestled against the Rocky Mountains. They moved to Kansas City, where she changed their names.
Natalie Ross no longer existed, except as a headstone for a beautiful life that died in Montana.
She was now Emily Smith.
“We’ll start over. New people. New life. No past.”
They moved into a stifling apartment above a shoe store. Her mother waitressed in a small diner six blocks from a school and they never spoke of Montana. Sometimes at night, when she heard the chink of glass, Emily would slip from her bed to see her mother, sitting in the dark, talking to her dead sister and father.
They stayed in Kansas City for a year or so, then moved to Toronto. Changing their names again; her mother drinking more. Next, it was Dallas, then Miami. They fell into a haze of moves, staying in one city long enough to get bus fare to take them to the next.
There was one night she heard her mother muttering incoherently about the country attorney debating whether to reopen the case.
Finally, her mother took her to San Francisco where they stayed with her mother’s sister, Willa. But that didn’t last. One morning, her mother was gone. Vanished. A year or so later, Emily’s aunt got a telephone call from Toronto. Emily’s mother had died of a heart attack in a women’s shelter, clutching pictures of her family taken when her daughters were little.
Her aunt claimed her mother’s body. The service was in Buckhorn Creek, Montana, where they buried her next to her father and Rachel. Emily refused to attend the funeral. She stayed in San Francisco, staring at the Pacific Ocean, thinking her parents died suspecting she was responsible for Rachel’s death.
She was sixteen years old. She was alone.
No one knew the truth about what happened that day.
Except the monster.
“You can tell me, Emily.” Bowman was listening. “You have to tell somebody before it is too late.”
Emily stared into the night, forcing herself to go back to the butterflies that led them to the cliff.
The monster.
He is just there. Waiting. Dirty jeans, boots, layers of shirts, frayed. In his teens. Tall, brown hair pasted to his head. Small, dark animal eyes hidden deep in a face lined and scarred so badly it looks like he is in pain. His smile reveals jagged brown teeth that have never known a toothbrush.
She knows his name.
Isaiah Hood.
The kids in town speak of him as if he were a myth, a spirit in the Rockies. Some sort of psycho. His father has hooks for hands. They live in a shack in the forest near the Blackfeet Reservation and the Canadian border. People rarely see him. But on this trip there are whispers around the campfire that he is out there.
And anyone with any sense knows, you do not ever go near him.
In fact, no one in Buckhorn Creek wants anything to do with the Hoods. They are regarded with scorn for what they are, pitiful.
But the butterflies lead her and Rachel to him that day, stopping them dead in their tracks.
“Hel
lo. How about a game? Want to play a game?”
Tightening her hold on Rachel’s hand.
“We should go back.”
Rachel giggles. She wants to play.
“No,” he says. “Stand closer to me. Watch.”
“No. We should go back.”
Rachel pulls away, steps closer to him. Closer to the cliff.
“It’s just a game. Guess what I’m going to do. Watch.”
He turns and steps off the cliff before them.
“Oh no! He’s dead!”
Rachel is peering over the cliffside. Giggling! Looking back at Natalie.
“It’s just a game, Lee, see?” She’s laughing.
He’s sitting cross-legged on a large flat ledge, a few feet below, grinning at having fooled her into thinking he had jumped from the mountain.
“OK, very funny. We have to get back. Time to go, Rachel.”
He stands. “No. The little one wants to play. Come on. You try it, Rachel. I’ll catch you down here.”
“OK.” Rachel giggles nervously. Counting one-two-three. Jumping from the higher cliff. “No, Rachel!” She is reaching for Rachel’s hand but she is not fast enough. Rachel is now on the lower ledge with him. Laughing.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ve got her.”
They are sitting on the sun-warmed ledge. It is as big as a large bed.
She extends her hand to her sister.
Time to go, Rachel. We’re not supposed to play with you, Isaiah Hood.”
Hood’s smile disappears and his face darkens, cold black eyes burning into hers.
“You think you’re better than me and my dad, don’t you?”
“No, that is not what I mean,” she lies.
“All of you in town think you’re better than us. We hear it. We know it.”
“Rachel, come on. We have to go.”
“Not yet,” he says. “I say when you can go. One more game.”
He stands with animal swiftness. Takes Rachel by the wrists, pulling her arms straight up--“Owww”--lifting her. He is so tall, strong, baring his dirt-brown teeth. Scarred face grimacing. She is a small doll in his grip, light and easy to play with.