by Rick Mofina
Got to keep moving. Get out to the open. Find water, food, help. Something.
Carefully, Paige eased out of her tight shelter, gripping her water bottle at the proper angle to ensure the few remaining ounces did not leak out of holes made by the bear.
She went to the crevasse which had almost claimed her.
My death spot.
Her backpack was lost.
She wrapped Kobee’s leash around her hand, the way she did when they went to Golden Gate Park, then found a branch for a walking stick.
No sign of the bear. Thank you, God.
They headed for the low country.
In a few hours, they came to a small river. Maybe she could find berries or something. Paige set her bottle aside, knelt at the bank, washed her face and hands, feeling a little energized by the ice-cold mountain-fed water. She cupped her hands, letting Kobee drink from them. Then she drank a little herself, feeling the cold liquid fill her stomach. She gasped with pleasure, wiping the back of her wet hands across her lips.
Maybe she could find a shelter here.
She scouted around when she heard splashing.
A fish was caught in a small, shallow pool. Kobee barked. Paige went to it, not knowing what kind it was, but her stomach quivered.
Food.
It was about as long as a large submarine sandwich.
Its tail swished water as if objecting to being stared at.
Unconsciously, Paige began licking her lips.
Her stomach was roaring.
What do I do?
Stab it with a stick, like those island fishermen did on the education channel. Paige swallowed and looked around. She found a pointy, hand-size stick. She stood over the vulnerable creature.
Kobee yelped impatiently.
“It’s not going to be like the fillets and fries at Skipper of the Sea.”
Paige stood there, staring at the fish.
She could not cook it. She did not know how to clean it. What was she going to do?
Paige licked her lips.
She had eaten sushi with teriyaki sauce, rice and cold shrimp. Mom and Dad liked it. She aimed the stick; saw the fish, its little mouth opening, and closing, its fins waving in the pool, awaiting death.
Kobee suddenly lunged at it, gripping it in his jaws as it writhed and slipped free. Flopping on a stone, it wriggled back into the river, escaping.
Paige stood there, still gripping her spear, feeling more hungry than she ever felt in her life.
She sat by the river and wept.
Through the blur of her tears, she saw the grizzly approaching. She was mesmerized by its majestic blond-chocolate fur, its powerful menacing hump, its upturned snout that released a snarl.
This time, she was too tired to fight.
She sat there frozen, sobbing; her arms hurt as Kobee tugged at the leash to flee.
“Oh God, somebody save me, please.”
SEVENTY
Helicopter pilot Shane Ballard knew how the air could get rough whenever Mercy Force flew near the Bitterroot Mountains.
Today was no exception.
The twin-engine air ambulance began shuddering.
Deer Lodge vanished in a shaky blur behind them; soon the ride was smoother.
“That’s better,” Ballard’s tin like pressurized voice sighed as an alert came from Missoula tower, requesting their ETA.
“Eighteen minutes,” Ballard said. Funny, procedure is for me to call in. I already did that upon liftoff. Why are they calling me?
“Standby for a patch-through from Montana General Mercy.”
Now they really had Ballard curious. He searched for an answer atop the mountains, painted with gorgeous, big blue sky between the peaks. Breathtaking but no answer.
“Montana General to Mercy Force?”
“Mercy Force copy.”
“You are on alert for a possible trauma transfer from Glacier. Can you copy coordinates?”
“Mercy Force copy.”
Ballard took down the location. It was a northernmost region of Grizzly Tooth Trail, which could mean something was up in the Baker case. Ballard had to ask.
“They find her?”
“May have, that’s why we’re alerted.”
“What about the on-site unit?”
“Called to a horseback riding accident.”
“Mercy Force copy and out.”
Ballard switched on the intercom informing McCarry, Wordell and the officer. “They think maybe Paige Baker’s alive at the northern edge. They just gave me the coordinates. We’ve been activated to standby to bring her in.”
Hood’s eye’s flickered.
He could hear Ballard’s loud, enthusiastic report leaking through McCarry’s helmet headset as she removed his oxygen mask to adjust it.
“Oh my word!” McCarry did not believe her eyes. “You’ll never guess who our customer is.”
Ballard tried to look over his shoulder. No use, he could not see.
“It’s Isaiah Hood.” Wordell was looking over her friend’s shoulder.
“No way!” Ballard was incredulous.
McCarry glanced at the young guard, who nodded. Suddenly, she wished the second larger guard was also aboard. She swallowed, replacing Hood’s oxygen, ensuring his flow was satisfactory and his signs were stable, blinking with a modicum of relief at the shiny metal cuff linking his wrist to the stretcher. The young guard had never seen the Rockies from a chopper before. Fascinated, he gazed out the window as McCarry checked Hood.
“Well, he’s stable and he’s out cold.”
McCarry was wrong.
Hood slowly worked his free hand under the sheet and inserted his pinky finger forcefully into his navel, drilling and twisting it toward the hardened lump.
Some years ago, during one of the appeals of his conviction, Hood was jailed in the cells at the Goliath County Courthouse. Security was laughable there. As usual, Hood’s senses were heightened for opportunity.
On that day, as it turned out, one the guards was retiring. Near the end of the guard’s shift, in the moments before Hood was to be returned to his death row cell at Deer Lodge, the old-timer’s utility belt gave way, falling just outside Hood’s holding cell. Everything spilled from it.
“Don’t you move, son!” the old fart wheezed, quickly collecting everything. Making it worse, the guard’s glasses slipped from his head too.
“Damn fine way to retire,” the guard bitched.
“You missed this, sir.”
Hood showed his brown-toothed smile, handing the guard his notebook.
“Well, thank you now.”
The old coot never figured that a more important item also fell into Hood’s cell.
His handcuff key.
It felt like a ticket to heaven, for it matched the key issued by the Montana Department of Corrections to its officers. Since it was in the days before high-tech scanners, Hood swallowed it, retrieving it later in his cell, washing it thoroughly. He concealed it within a small chip in the steel hinge mechanism of the door to his cell for several years.
Two nights before he was to be moved to the death cell, Hood fetched the key. After lights out, he endured the painful process of working it through his navel into the bullet track of his old wound until it brushed up against the bullet fragment. To its loop, he had affixed reinforced thread taken from a pair of dark socks, letting it mingle with his body hair surrounding his navel.
Now, as Mercy Force thundered toward Missoula, Hood worked swiftly, looping the thread around his thumb, easing the key out with his pinkie, feeling the flow of warm blood and puss come with it. Success was painful. He gritted his teeth, feeling as if he had just extracted a truck from his stomach.
The young officer was staring out the window, which pleased Hood, who eyed his cuffed wrist and visualized his motions. Then in an instant when McCarry turned away, he unlocked the cuff. She did not hear the gentle click over the aircraft noise. He left the cuff open, but with his hand in place, and began
to convulse. In one herculean effort, he rolled the stretcher to its side onto the floor.
“Oh my God!” McCarry’s first thought was that Hood was having a seizure. She and the young guard watched in horror as he stood, holding the cuff, the stretcher strapped to his back, knocking over equipment as he began ripping open the straps with his free hands.
“Shane! Take us down!”
Ballard’s eyes widened; the chopper shifted.
“Jesus, hang on!” he began descending. Nothing but mountains beneath them. He heard the thud of Hood swinging a small fire extinguisher against the side of the young guard’s head, sending him to the back, unconscious.
Wordell screamed.
“Shane, get us down, get us down!”
Hood shoved McCarry violently to the back, forcing her to fall over equipment. Hood’s hand ripped open every strap and unshackled the cuffs from his ankles. He came at Wordell.
“Please, no! Oh, Please!”
Ballard anticipated his move and banked the helicopter. Hood lost his footing, smashing his head against the steel frame. His hands shot up to steady himself, reaching for the rapid-open latch of the rear clamshell doors.
“Jesus, no!” Wordell screamed. “Shane!”
Sweat was burning into Ballard’s eyes, blurring his vision. He kept rocking the Mercy Force chopper to keep Hood off balance. It was futile. Hood locked onto Wordell’s throat with his large hand and dragged her to the rear, gurgling, choking, swatting in vain at his arms.
Hood snapped one of the cuffs on her wrist, and then locked its mate into a steel ceiling loop. With relative ease, he then lifted the young guard, stretching his wrist, opening Wordell’s free cuff, slamming it through the steel loop, slamming it tight around the guard’s wrist.
Ballard, rocking the helicopter, was losing. Hood was too fast and too strong, lifting McCarry’s right ankle, snapping a shackle around it, then locking its mate to the same loop holding Wordell and the guard. Then he was in the cockpit with a pair of medical scissors pressed into Ballard’s throat.
“I am going to die!” Hood shouted. “I’ll take you with me if you don’t do as I say. Understand?”
Ballard nodded. “Did you kill my friends?”
“I will. Depends on you, asshole!”
The young pilot struggled to keep calm, leveling the aircraft as a show of good faith.
“What do you want?”
“Fly directly to the girl.”
“Why?”
Hood pushed the scissors a quarter inch into Ballard’s neck, puncturing his skin and surface veins, blood began cascading.
“Tell me what you’re going to do, or I go back there and fetch you an eyeball. Asshole.”
“OK, but I have to radio ahead.”
Hood immediately moved for Wordell, triggering her screaming.
“Shane! Oh God, Shane.”
Eyes ablaze with rage that had twenty-two years to fester locked onto her pierced ears and the small golden loops. He yanked on one, stretching the lobe. Wordell screamed. He let go, leaving the ear intact.
“OK!” Ballard shouted. “Don’t hurt them. We’re on our way!”
Ballard checked his position and banked, making a dead reckoning for the U.S.-Canadian border. Why not go there with this monster? It had to be crawling with FBI, park rangers and locals.
Hood was rifling through the chopper, filling a bag with supplies, happy to find a small backpack and an extra flight suit. Hood changed out of his orange Montana State Prison overalls into the suit. He would need boots. He eyed the guard’s feet. Looked too small. He liked Ballard’s. They looked to be about the same size.
“Hey!” Ballard shouted at Hood. “I am being called. Put on the radio headset and listen!”
“Missoula Tower to Mercy Force. Mercy Force, come in. You are way off course.”
“Well, Mr. Isaiah Hood, what do I tell them? Do I tell them Mr. Hood that you’re hijacking us to Glacier?”
Realizing Ballard had just transmitted that exact message, Hood reached over and ripped Ballard’s helmet and radio set from his head, tossing it to the back as Mercy Force screamed at top speed over Glacier National Park, roaring over Lake McDonald, coming up on Flattop, making straight for Grizzly Tooth and the Boundary Creek area. Pilots of aircraft involved in search operations were dumbstruck, scrambling to avert Mercy Force, figuring the air ambulance was on a top-priority medi-vac mission. It was a clear, fast trip to the upper reaches of the park. Looking down at the rolling forests, the valleys, glaciers, Hood could feel his life returning and the helicopter descending.
“Take me down away from anybody,” Hood ordered.
Ballard found a flat, grassy slope, offering a clearing within its lodgepole pine, and began his landing approach. Concentrating on putting down, he had about two seconds to wonder why Hood was tossing his little pack out the window. Less than fifteen feet from earth, Hood seized the controls.
“Hey, Christ” was all Ballard managed as Hood forced the chopper to crash down hard on its side, its rotors whipping wildly, clipping tree tops, slicing earth, sparking against rock patches. The aircraft bucked like an angry mechanical animal amid the crash and squeal of metal, the screams, the pungent odor of hydraulic fluid and fuel as everyone was slammed and smashed.
Ballard and McCarry were unconscious. Wordell’s moan would turn into screams when the small fire ignited. Hood had a gash in his leg but was determined to escape, working at removing Ballard’s boots and socks. He searched his pockets for anything useful and was pleased to find a Swiss Army knife.
He took the young guard’s high-band radio. He would try to monitor emergency frequencies. He emerged from the wreckage, found his pack, then disappeared into the mountains. He was home.
SEVENTY-ONE
“Going to pour on the magic now.” That’s what Frank Zander’s old man used to say to him.
On rainy summer nights, when Zander was just a little boy growing up in Shaker Heights, his old man would play the shell game with him. He’d place a pea under one of three walnut shells on the kitchen table.
“Keep your eye on the one with the pea, Frankie.”
Sliding the shells in meshing circles, stopping to quickly reveal the pea, then resume. “Are you watching, Frankie? Where’s the pea?”
Even at a tender age, Zander was acutely perceptive. He never missed finding the pea, until one night his dad had a cool glint in his eye.
“Going to pour on the magic now, Frankie.”
After his tabletop juggle of the shells, his father lifted Zander’s choice, then began laughing. No pea. Nothing. Zander was stunned. That was the shell. It had to be. He lifted the others. Nothing. He lifted his original to find the pea wedged inside. His old man, a Cleveland robbery detective, beamed.
“You’re a natural investigator, Frankie.” His dad winked and tussled his hair, then finished his Old Milwaukee. “You never know the truth until you hold the facts in your hand. Never forget that, son.”
Zander clung to his old man’s advice now as the task force began debating its next move.
Tracy Bowman had taken Emily Baker outside the command center for air while Zander and the others analyzed the circumstances.
“I think we have to really consider that the Bakers have told us the truth, Frank,” Walt Sydowski flipped through his file.
“And what is that?”
“That she ran off.”
“What if they took her out there to perish?”
“That’s a theory. Where’s the hard evidence?”
“The region is littered with it. Blood, articles from her. And the whole business with Emily’s sister and Isaiah Hood. Come on, Walt. It is too early to cave on anything. Until we know the truth about Paige Baker’s disappearance, her parents are suspects.”
“I just don’t know Frank,” Sydowski twisted a rubber band. “It just doesn’t fit for me. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s just my read on the parents. I think they were a family in crisis hit with
horrible misfortune.”
“How did her pack and sock get down a crevasse?”
“She could have been taken by an animal.” Pike Thornton had seen it before. “The goat carcass is a strong indicator, plus the fact that whole region is bear country.”
“What about the ax, her T-shirt, Doug Baker’s wound?”
“Frank,” Sydowski said, twisted his pen cap, “it could have happened just like they said.”
Zander flipped through his clipboard with updates from the park’s SAR people, the county attorney’s old report on Emily’s letters, Isaiah Hood’s claim of innocence, the complaints with SFPD concerning Doug Baker’s temper, the New York cop’s account of an outburst the day before Paige vanished.
“There are too many red flags.” Zander shook his head, remembering how the deranged young mother in Georgia fooled detectives, including him. He recalled the face of the little boy he talked with, played with, while on the case. Killed by his mother on their watch because everyone let their guard down. Oh yeah, that psycho had poured on the magic. Zander made a vow that he would never be fooled again.
“You never know the truth until you hold the facts in your hand.”
Zander ran his hands over his face. “We’ll go back to Doug Baker for an explanation of Paige’s sock and backpack in the crevasse.”
Someone rapped on the door. An FBI agent stuck his head in.
“Inspector Sydowski? An urgent call for you from San Francisco. It’s Inspector Turgeon. Can I put it through here?”
Emily Baker and Tracy Bowman walked in the shade of lodgepole pines behind the cabin dorms for the park’s trail and fire crews. Half a dozen FBI agents formed a security circle around them, watching from a distance.
Emily reached under her sunglasses, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. “You know, I used to put her hair in pigtails when she was just learning to walk.”
Bowman nodded.
“She was so adorable, the way they bounced when she toddled all over the place. I must’ve shot a thousand pictures. The way her eyes just radiated joy and then that camera in the crevasse and those dead eyes--oh God.”
“Emily, it was not her.”