Snaggle Tooth

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  “Trish . . .” Ben said.

  But it wasn’t her voice. Patrick called, “Hello—who’s out there?”

  “My name is Alicia.” The voice was sounding closer. “I was camping on Highland Park when I heard shots. I saw an explosion and the rockslide. Then a climber came running through my camp shouting that people were caught in the slide. He said he was going for help and sent me to check the situation out.”

  Alicia. The name was familiar. Patrick remembered the black woman he’d seen hiking. It felt like a lifetime ago, but it had only been earlier that day. Something about her words jogged his memory. A climber. He’d seen one, twice. Could it be the same person?

  “What climber?” he said.

  “Some guy in a Denver Broncos cap with a lot of gear hanging off his backpack.” Her voice was closer still.

  The hair rose on the back of Patrick’s neck. The same one he’d seen earlier. “It’s bound to be unstable out there, Alicia. We’re all fine. Get to where it’s safe.”

  The friendly but embarrassed face he’d seen earlier poked into the opening of the overhang. “If it’s unstable for me, it’s unstable for all of us. I’ll be careful.” She smiled. “Hey, didn’t I see you on horseback during the storm?”

  “You did. Where’s your trail buddy?”

  She rolled her eyes. “He went on to try a morning ascent without me.”

  “Hopefully he was well above the slide, then.”

  She nodded. “He left hours ago. I’m sure he was.”

  Henry and Eddie had pushed up close behind Elvin. Eddie’s hands were still bound behind him. Patrick made introductions.

  Then Patrick eyed Alicia, thinking about their descent. With him and Ben carrying Elvin down the slide on the travois and Henry holding on to Eddie, an extra to their party would be a positive. “Do you shoot?”

  She smiled at him. “I’m on leave from the Army. I work in munitions.”

  “That’s music to my ears. Take this—” he handed her Eddie’s revolver, “and keep it aimed at that guy.” Patrick pointed at Eddie. “If he tries to make a run for it or goes after any of us, shoot him.”

  Her eyes widened. “What did he do?”

  Patrick thought about Bruce. About Beartusk, the informant who he suspected Eddie had killed, or helped kill. About Eddie leaving Elvin for dead. About how he had turned on them and would have killed Patrick if Henry hadn’t shown up. About the money and the mobsters, and how clear it was that Eddie’s involvement was far from innocent. “It’s a very long list. I’ll tell you all about it on the way down.”

  Chapter Forty-five: Free

  Johnson County Courthouse, Buffalo, Wyoming

  Friday, August 19, 1977, Noon

  Patrick

  The judge cleared his throat. His voice was thready. His gray hair was unkempt, a far cry from the first time Patrick had seen him in the courtroom a few weeks before. He’d seemed younger then. This trial and Lamkin’s escape had aged him. Patrick had felt younger then, too. So much had happened in such a short period of time. John’s tragic death. The rescue at the plane crash. The rockslide. And arriving home to find that his wife had chased a murderer across the state to take her friends’ baby back. He was sure the judge had been having a rough time, but he’d put the Flints’ week up against anyone’s.

  “Has the jury reached a verdict on sentencing?” the judge said.

  The jury foreman—a thick-bodied woman in a worn sweater buttoned up to her chin—stood. “We have, Your Honor.”

  The long-legged bailiff took the verdict from the foreman and delivered it to the judge.

  The judge read it and sent it back. “Go ahead and read it aloud, please, foreman.”

  The paper fluttered in the foreman’s hand, but her voice was strong. “In the charge of murder in the first degree, we the jury sentence the defendant Barbara Lamkin to life in prison without possibility of parole.”

  Patrick squeezed Susanne’s hand. A smattering of applause rang out from the gallery. The judge, who’d been a stickler for order throughout the trial, let it go. Patrick couldn’t help checking Lamkin for her reaction. All he saw was the back of her platinum blonde head, but she seemed to be holding it high. She’d escaped the death penalty. After the jury’s guilty verdict on Monday, death or life in prison had been the only options on the table.

  “So say you all?” the judge said.

  The jury answered as one. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  He nodded. “The defendant will serve her sentence in the Wyoming Women’s Center in Evanston as soon as transport from county jail can be arranged. Bailiff, please escort the defendant from the courtroom.” The bailiff ate up the space between him and Lamkin in three strides. He took her by the arm. The judge continued. “Jury, thank you for your service. Court is adjourned.” He banged the gavel, stood, and exited the courtroom in a shuffle of black robes.

  The bailiff hurried Lamkin through the defendant’s door. She never looked back. To Patrick, the sentencing and her departure were so quick that they felt anticlimactic. But he’d take it.

  Susanne exhaled, her shoulders rising and dropping. “It’s finally over.”

  “I wish she’d gotten the death penalty.” Perry hadn’t gotten used to his missing tooth, and his speech was still strange and whistly. He’d have a long time to adjust. Their dentist had recommended waiting for Perry’s mouth to mature before implanting a false tooth. Until then, the boy would make do with a retainer that had a false tooth attached, which wasn’t ready yet.

  Patrick closed his eyes for a second. Perry’s injury resurrected the mountain in his mind. All that had led up to the rockslide. All that came after it. Getting off the mountain from Highland Park had been easier than getting up it, until they’d run into a literal logjam—a small mountain of downed timber erected by Henry, Ben, and George to slow the mobsters down in case they doubled back again. It had been there, as they removed the trees from the trail, that they’d encountered Search & Rescue en route. Henry had finally told Patrick everything that had happened. If Patrick could have grown wings and flown home to comfort his son and be with John’s parents then, he would have. The many hours it had taken to finally get to them—even with George, Wes Braten, law enforcement, and ambulances waiting at Hazel Park to drive the group out—had nearly ripped his heart out. It was there they’d thanked Alicia for her kindness and generosity and bid her farewell. Henry, George, Wes, Alicia. Their very existence reminded Patrick that for every Herod, Lot, Jezebel, or Judas he met, the Good Samaritans outnumbered them a thousand or more to one.

  Back at home, Patrick and Susanne worried night and day about their son. Perry’s mood hadn’t been exactly black, but it was definitely a dark gray. Loss was a hard, hard thing to come to grips with. John’s parents were so shaken by their son’s death that they’d declared their intention to move back east, away from the place that had robbed them of their boy. Patrick had wanted to try to convince them that mobsters from Chicago had been responsible, but, after years of delivering bad news to families, he understood grief couldn’t be reasoned with. It just had to be endured. Perry wasn’t immune to it. He had started threatening to drop out of football. Patrick and Susanne had persuaded him to hold off on a decision. The best way Patrick knew to honor the dead was to keep living, and they were determined to make sure Perry did that, with their help.

  The living and the dead. Patrick’s mind went briefly to the mysterious climber on the mountain. Two days after their return, he’d been drinking coffee on the deck and reading an article about their ordeal. It had laid out Black Tooth’s deadly past and included a picture of Rocky Perritt, the Sheridan County deputy who’d fallen to his death less than two weeks before. Patrick had dropped his mug, scalding his leg. The man in the picture was the climber who’d helped Patrick find the easier trail, down to his Denver Broncos ball cap. There was no doubt in Patrick’s mind. Patrick wouldn’t have believed his eyes if it weren’t for his past experiences, like the Shoshone man�
�seen separately by every member of the Flint family—who’d come to their aid in the Gros Ventre Wilderness.

  Patrick had stared at the picture. Thank you, God, for sending me a guardian angel. If it hadn’t been for Rocky, there wouldn’t have been any way he could have gotten Elvin and the travois down the slope under fire from the mobsters. He smiled and looked up at the sky. Cerulean blue, without even a wisp of a cloud. For someone who didn’t darken the doors of His church as often as He probably would have liked, Patrick got more than his fair share of help from the big guy up there.

  His mind returned to the present. To Lamkin’s sentence. To Perry’s disappointment in it. To his rebellious daughter who hadn’t said a word. He looked over at her. She hadn’t really said much since the showdown she’d had with Susanne and him about her secret relationship with Ben. Wasn’t it akin to the Stockholm Syndrome? He’d thought Brandon Lewis was bad, but Ben was even worse. How could a girl as smart as his daughter make such terrible choices about boys? True, Ben had shown incredible merit on the mountain. The boy had “try”. Try, truthfulness, and honor. He deserved at least some of the credit for the multiple rescues. Could he be wrong about Ben? It wasn’t something he was ready to think about just now. But their initial confrontation with Trish was nothing compared to the blowup they’d had after the school counselor called to get Patrick and Susanne’s blessing to put Trish on an accelerated graduation program. For no better reason than to follow Ben. They’d said no, of course. And she hadn’t spoken directly to them since.

  It was a painful time for their whole family.

  Patrick put a hand on his son’s shoulder. He could empathize with Perry’s desire to see Barb punished, although he had mixed feelings about the death penalty—the black and white he’d seen when he was younger was looking more and more like a million shades of gray. “Barb Lamkin is not our problem anymore. It’ll be fine, Perry.”

  Patricia walked up to the family. She was leaving the next morning, and Patrick would miss her. With all the distractions, he felt like he’d hardly had a chance to reconnect with his baby sister. “Well, congratulations. I guess that’s the right word for a situation like this? I don’t know how you guys do it.”

  “Do what?” Patrick asked.

  She made a two-hundred-and-seventy-degree gesture around her. “Wyoming. It’s like the Wild West out here.”

  Before Patrick could defend his chosen home state, Max Alexandrov approached. The county attorney looked nervous. Patrick hadn’t noticed him leaving the prosecutor’s table. “Excuse me, Flints. A word?”

  The defense attorney was with him, a young, earnest-faced guy named Stu Ryan. The two attorneys bid each other goodbye. Then Ryan turned to the Flints, his gaze direct. “I’m sorry for what your family had to endure. Congratulations on the sentence.”

  Patrick nodded, but his brows drew up. A defense attorney showing empathy for the victims. Would wonders never cease?

  Ryan walked away.

  Max bowed slightly to Patricia. “Ms. Sand.”

  Patricia looked like she was sucking a lemon. “Mr. Alexandrov.”

  “Please. Call me Max.”

  Patricia nodded but didn’t respond in kind.

  Patrick shook the prosecutor’s hand. “No bad news, I hope?”

  “Oh, no, no. I just wanted to tell you again how sorry we all are that Barbara escaped custody.”

  “And knew how to get into your house and take your truck,” Patricia said, under her breath, but loud enough that the group all heard her.

  Max’s cheeks colored. “Yes. And that, too. We dated briefly, but it was a long time ago. She hoodwinked me.”

  “She hoodwinked a lot of us,” Susanne said. “Me included.”

  A strangled sound escaped Trish’s throat, but she kept her eyes down.

  “And I’m sorry for what she put you all through as a result. Susanne, you have the county’s undying gratitude.”

  Patrick put his arm around Susanne. He still shuddered when he thought about his unarmed wife going after Lamkin and the baby. And all the while suffering through a blinding migraine, no less. She was amazing. Always had been. The county was almost as lucky to have her as he was. He hated that she’d put herself at risk, but he wasn’t the one to cast stones when it came to that.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Max rolled his lips. “Anyway, I thought I’d also let you know that Eddie will be charged with enough federal crimes to keep him behind bars the rest of his life.”

  “No surprise there,” Patrick said. “The others got off too easy.”

  Orion, Luke, and Juice, whose real name, it turned out, was Giuseppe, had escaped punishment. Luke, dead from the shot George had taken in self-defense. Orion and Juice, buried in the rockslide. Patrick hadn’t, for once, put his own life on the line to try to dig them out. The Search & Rescue team had pinpointed their location later, but recovery of their bodies was deemed futile. Fragments of the plane and even paper scraps and a few intact bills of the money were recovered, however, in exactly the location Patrick had identified.

  And, according to Elvin—who, minus one amputated foot, had been singing like a canary in exchange for a reduced sentence—it had been a lot of money. The second of two equal loads. One delivered the day before, successfully, and this one, which had ended so badly. Nearly a million in cash per load, which jived with Patrick’s estimate. More than enough to motivate the mobsters to hire George to lead their desperate attempt to get it and to try to silence the witnesses. Far more than Patrick would have ever believed could be generated from illegal activities on the reservation. Goes to show what I know.

  Elvin had implicated Eddie in multiple crimes, like their money laundering agreement for the mob on the reservation. But instead of running the cash through legitimate enterprises, the two had expanded their illegal activities, milking wealthy clients they booked out of Jackson for high stakes poker games, poaching, drugs, and prostitution. Elvin was naming names, too. He pointed authorities to a secret ledger of clients to back up his claims. Indictments were being issued up and down the coast of California, as well as in Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Montana, and at home in Wyoming.

  He also pointed the finger at Eddie for several murders, including Jimmy Beartusk, who’d ratted Eddie and Elvin out to the feds under threat of prosecution for a burglary he’d committed years before. Based on his information, the feds had set up roadblocks along the north, south, and east borders of the reservation, hoping to intercept the money and not knowing that Beartusk had broken down and admitted everything to his partners. Eddie and Elvin had hired a reservation pilot to transport the first load out of Dubois to the northwest, in order to avoid the dragnet the feds had set up. Beartusk met his end on takeoff. After the murder, the pilot had backed out and not been seen since. An investigation into his disappearance was pending, based on Elvin’s claim that Eddie had killed him and hidden the body in a remote part of the reservation.

  Cardinale had hired Bruce for the second load, and the rest was history that Patrick was all too painfully and personally familiar with.

  Max’s cheeks colored. “Also, I was hoping that Ms. Sand would allow me to take her to lunch.”

  Patricia looked as startled as if Max had just told her she’d won the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. “Why would I want to go to lunch with you?”

  Patrick covered a smile with his fist.

  Max laughed, an embarrassed sound. He looked at Patrick. “She doesn’t pull any punches, does she?”

  “Never,” Patrick said, his voice dry.

  Max straightened his shoulders. Patrick had never known him to be a man who faltered under pressure. “I didn’t make a good first impression, but I promise, I’ll try really hard to change it, if I could have the pleasure of your company.”

  Now it was Patricia’s turn to blush. “I leave tomorrow.”

  “It’s just lunch.”

  “Oh.”

  “But if it goes well, there’s alw
ays dinner.”

  “Oooooh.”

  “Yes?”

  She bit her lip, and the seconds ticked by. Then she nodded.

  Max smiled. “Is it too soon to steal you away now?”

  Patricia turned to Susanne and mouthed oh my gosh behind Max’s back.

  Susanne said, “Go on. We’ll see you later.”

  “If you’re sure,” Patricia said.

  “Go,” Patrick and Susanne said at the same time.

  The county attorney and his sister walked away together, and Patrick laughed. “Well, what do you know?”

  “I know lunch sounds good,” Susanne said. “I’m hungry, too.”

  Ronnie Harcourt was suddenly in their midst, little Will cradled against her shoulder. “Not to eavesdrop, but let Jeff and me take you to The Busy Bee. As a thank you for getting Will back for us.”

  Susanne put her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, Ronnie, I’m the one who lost him.”

  “Nonsense. He’d be in Canada now if it wasn’t for you. I hear rumors that my boss is going to try to deputize you.”

  Perish the thought! Patrick said, “How about we meet you there in a few minutes?”

  “Perfect. Jeff is out in the hall holding court with well-wishers. I’ll let him know you said yes. We’ll get a table.” She sashayed away, cooing in Will’s ear and smiling as people congratulated her. The adoption wouldn’t be final for some time yet, but there was nothing standing in its way now.

  Patrick couldn’t be happier for the Harcourts, or for Will. Barb Lamkin versus Ronnie and Jeff Harcourt? The boy might never understand how lucky he was, but Patrick did.

  “I don’t want to go to lunch.” Perry’s tone and expression were flat.

  Patrick hoped his son’s recovery would be sooner rather than later. He knew Perry would never forget his friend or what had happened—Trish wouldn’t either—but he was a strong kid, and he was loved. Patrick had seen that combination work miracles before in the wake of tragedy.