“I know it was Wyatt, Detective. No, we don’t know the vehicle because he’s likely changed three or four times since leaving Atlanta.”
The detective backed off, sensing he’d hit a nerve. He just wanted to get back to the office and his little space heater under the desk.
“Look, I’m just trying to do my job same as you,” Petty said, putting on his best sympathetic look. He softened his voice to appeal to the man’s desire that was written all over his face, the desire to get somewhere warm. “We have reliable intel that Wyatt is the one responsible for kidnapping the president. We believe he’s making his way across the country, cutting through North Dakota and now Montana. Witnesses said they saw him in a diner near Bismarck late last night.”
“Bismarck?”
“That’s right.”
“Why is he going this way? Sounds awfully risky to travel across the country with a former president in tow. Doesn’t really make sense.”
“I agree. It doesn’t. Yet here I am, chasing a ghost.”
The detective eyed him suspiciously, but his stern gaze melted slightly. “What would you like to know, Agent?”
Finally. “How did he kill that guy in the body bag?” Petty jerked his thumb toward the coroner’s vehicle where they were loading the corpse into the back.
The detective flashed a look in that direction and then returned his gaze to Petty. “He didn’t.”
“What do you mean?” The detective’s comment caught Petty off guard.
“I mean, Wyatt, whoever…no one killed that man. He died from natural causes.”
Petty’s eyebrows lowered, his face drawn long with confusion. “Natural causes?”
“Yep.” The detective crossed his arms. “No witnesses saw what happened, but the experts over there say he died from an aneurysm. Must have been out here to meet someone. We found a wad of cash in one of his pockets along with a driver’s license. We ran the ID, but it came back as false. Will take some time to figure out who the JD really is.”
Petty knew what he was talking about. JD was short for John Doe, which meant it could take days to get a positive identification, maybe less in one of the bigger cities, but from his experience, out here it was a crapshoot.
“So, we have a John Doe standing out here in a parking lot, no one around, middle of the night, and he just keels over and dies from a stroke?”
“Aneurism,” Krantz corrected, “and yeah, that seems to be the case.”
“Do you have an explanation as to why he was out here and why there are people in that restaurant over there who claimed Wyatt and his friend left in such a strange manner? Surely, the time those two left the burger place and the time of death are pretty close.”
Detective Krantz nodded in a slow, backcountry manner. “Yep. They are close. No doubt about it, but we don’t have any evidence that there was foul play involved or that your suspect—suspects, whatever—had anything to do with it. As far as we’re concerned, this is just a drug deal that either never happened or went bad.”
“Drug deal?”
“Yep. See this sort of thing all the time, not with a buyer dying of natural causes like this, but sure. Drug deals go down in dark parking lots like this all the time. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s this thing called meth that’s causing quite a crisis in this country. Not to mention the opioid stuff. Odds are, this guy was buying something from someone, and he happened to drop dead.”
Petty listened patiently to the cop’s story, though with every second he wanted to smack the guy in the face and call him a dumb hick.
When Krantz was finished, Petty drew a deep breath. “There are a few problems, of course, with your theory about the drug deal gone bad.”
“Oh, really?” The detective’s eyes widened, eyebrows lifted. There was a hint of irritation in his voice.
“Yeah, nothing major. Except that if this were a drug deal and, say, he was the dealer, you’d have found drugs in his car. Unless, of course, the person he was meeting took them. But don’t you find that odd? I mean, if someone was going to go to the trouble of stealing this dead guy’s drugs, wouldn’t they take his money, too? And then there’s the problem of the money. How much was it?”
“Ten.”
Petty nodded. His eyes were huge orbs as he acted impressed, pouting his lips in the process. “Yeah, ten grand. Sounds like a buyer, not a seller. But if he was the seller, your dogs would have sensed something in his car, right? Did they indicate drugs anywhere in that vehicle?”
“No,” Krantz said sheepishly.
“Right. So, he wasn’t the seller, and if he was the buyer, any respectable drug dealer would have shown up and searched his pockets, taken the money, and disappeared. I know I would if I was a drug dealer with nothing to lose.”
The detective bit his bottom lip against the blatant chastisement.
“So, what we have here is a known fugitive, seen by several witnesses, leaving that restaurant over there”—he pointed once more at the burger joint—“and coming out here to the parking lot where a body was discovered sometime later.”
“It was death from natural causes, Agent Petty. It wasn’t a murder.”
“I guess we’ll have to let the autopsy decide that, won’t we?”
“I suppose so.”
Detective Krantz let out a long sigh. One of the forensics team members walked up and tapped him on the shoulder. It was a young woman, hair pulled back tight and tucked into a hat. She let the detective know they’d be finished in five minutes so the scene could get cleared up and everyone could be on their way.
He thanked her and watched for a moment as she walked away before turning his attention back to Petty.
“Look, leave me your card, and I’ll give you a call if anything turns up. Okay?”
“How soon are you going to conduct the autopsy?”
“We’ll do it right away. There won’t be any red tape with a Doe like this one, so no holdups. Should have something back to you soon.”
“Thank you.”
“I don’t know how that’s going to help you, Agent Petty.” Krantz’s voice rose to make sure Petty heard him clearly. “It’s a dead nobody. No signs of a struggle, no blunt force trauma, no wounds. He just expired.”
Petty nodded. “Just let me know what the autopsy finds.” He held out his business card. Krantz took it with an air of reluctance then stuffed it in his pocket.
“Will do.”
Petty pivoted and walked away, crossing underneath the police line. He headed toward his car, still thinking about the conversation and the circumstances surrounding this bizarre murder.
It was a murder. He knew it. How Wyatt had done it, he wasn’t sure. And then there was the other big question. Why had he done it? This stranger with a fake ID, what did he have to do with kidnapping the president? Was he involved somehow? He had to be, but what was the connection? What was his role in all of this?
Petty knew there had to be a connection. Now he just had to draw the line between the dots.
30
Browning, Montana
Sean’s knuckles were as white as the snowbanks on either side of the interstate. He gripped the steering wheel tight, mirroring the fear gripping his senses. Most of the snow had been cleared off the asphalt, but there were still patches where it had accumulated overnight, spots either salt trucks had missed or where the plows had skimmed over, essentially hardening the snow to packed ice.
Tommy held onto the grip over the passenger-side window with a similar intensity, fully aware that at any second they could hit a patch of black ice and skid off the road. Sean wasn’t going fast, a mere fifty miles per hour, but that felt like light speed in such dangerous driving conditions.
Going slower would have been the safe move, but they were running out of time. The weather was already going to slow things down considerably. They hoped to be at Camp Disappointment before noon, but at this rate it was going to be an hour or two later.
The two frie
nds had risen early that morning, before the sun came up. They’d checked out of their modest hotel on the outskirts of Bozeman and loaded up the SUV.
Despite their fatigue the night before, the altercation with the guy in the parking lot had been harrowing and had served to energize them for another few hours. While Bozeman certainly didn’t present them with the safest place to be, it was better than sticking around in Billings where cops and, most likely, federal agents were now combing the town to find Wyatt. If they had any clue that Tommy was with him, that would only make things worse. It would confirm any suspicions a federal pursuer might have as to whether it was Wyatt or not who was popping up both in the diner and now in a fast food place in Billings.
They found a small hotel on the north side of the city and holed up for the night. The two hadn’t needed anything fancy; just a room with two beds and a shower. That was, essentially, what they got.
The room had been sparse, to put it mildly. While hotels across the country were constantly going through updates and renovations to keep up with the current trends in interior design, this one still looked like something out of a 1960s Elvis Presley movie. By the time the two friends collapsed in their beds, however, they didn’t care what the room looked like as long as the door had locks and the pillows and sheets were clean.
Montana is a vast state. From end to end, corner to corner, it is the fourth largest state in the union and possessed seemingly unlimited acreage for farming, agriculture, and cattle or bison ranching. Dozens of reindeer farms also line the long roads that cut through the state.
Along the way, Sean and Tommy saw elk and deer roaming through some of the ranches as if they owned the land. It was a wild and untamed place for the most part, where nature still made most of the rules. Sean worried how long that would be the case. While the hills, endless forests, and mountains weren’t necessarily to his taste, there was something pristine and spiritual about the highlands, the rolling prairies, and the occasional rock outcropping. He’d seen the big mountains in the western part of the state, though, and always thought it might be a nice place to retire someday, although he wasn’t sure about how he’d cope with the cold winters.
Sean had made the mistake of checking the weather back home in Atlanta before heading out of Bozeman that morning. It was still in the upper sixties down there. He glanced at the temperature on the dashboard and saw it was in the mid-thirties. At least at that temperature the snow shouldn’t stick as well to the pavement, which would make driving a tad easier, though he wasn’t about to take any chances and hammer down on the gas pedal just yet.
The gray sky overhead offered little respite in terms of hoping there would be a break in the weather, a sunny day that would warm both their bodies and their spirits, but they were prepared as well as they could be.
On a normal day in the summer, the drive from Bozeman to Browning would only take around four hours, give or take. As Sean and Tommy pulled into the outer part of the city limits, they both glanced at the clock and saw it had taken closer to six.
The city of Browning, Montana, was small with a centrally located grocery store, a tiny post office, a school, and a sparse collection of homes. In many ways, it looked like the city that time forgot. Sure, there were modern amenities, some of the buildings had been updated to more current designs, but as far as the size was concerned Sean imagined it might have looked this way a hundred years ago.
Off in the distance, the snow-covered peaks of Glacier National Park spiked into the sky and disappeared into the gray haze. Sean had visited there once before and enjoyed the breathtaking vistas and spectacular natural beauty. He’d been keen on taking the Going to the Sun Road on a previous trip through this area, but about three quarters of the way up, he had to turn back. With nothing but a one-foot wall between his vehicle’s tires and thousand-foot drops, he couldn’t take it. He’d white-knuckled it most of the way, his breathing quickening with every harrowing turn. The views, while incredible, were also the stuff of his nightmares, framing both beauty and Sean’s greatest fear in one picturesque setting.
He’d turned back with sweaty palms and a heart rate thumping like a jackrabbit. Adriana had been with him and had offered to drive, though he could tell she was unnerved as well, which had worried him because she never got thrown off by heights.
He vowed that the next time they came back they’d take one of the refurbished shuttles up to the top. Letting someone else drive somehow felt safer, and Sean could always close his eyes if he needed to.
Sean kept driving through Browning, following the directions he’d looked up earlier. They’d traveled through Helena, Great Falls, and now Browning. Another twelve miles wouldn’t kill him—he hoped.
Getting to the other side of the city didn’t take long, and within minutes the two left the little town behind and were once more exposed, out on the open range and surrounded by the snow covered rolling hills.
“Sure isn’t much out here,” Tommy said.
Sean shook his head. “No, there’s not. Lots of places to hide a body, though.”
Tommy let off an uneasy chuckle. “Yeah, I mean…not that we need that.”
Sean said nothing for a bit, too long for Tommy. Sean kept his eyes on the road ahead and then slowly turned his head toward his friend, casting a creepy gaze his way.
Tommy let out a full-blown laugh. “Okay, buddy,” he said amid the laughter.
Sean cracked a smile.
“Seriously, though, wouldn’t want to get caught with our pants down out here. No one would find us.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
They continued driving another fifteen minutes and then came to a spot on the road where it went slightly downhill.
Tommy looked at his map. “Slow down a little. It’s coming up on the right.”
Sean nodded and let off the accelerator. He tapped the brakes gently, still not fully trusting the plowed, salted road beneath them. The tires stayed true on the asphalt, and Sean guided the SUV off and onto the snow-covered gravel road to the right. He stopped for a moment, turned a knob in the center console to put the vehicle in four-wheel drive, and then stepped on the gas again.
The SUV’s wheels all moved in unison, and it lurched forward, kicking up chunks of white snow in its wake.
Sean and Tommy both noted the huge sign that declared the site as the location of Camp Disappointment, where Lewis and Clark stood some two-hundred-plus years before.
The path wound its way down into a gulch, then back up a hill to an overlook where a monument stood at a rock outcropping. Tommy wondered if the SUV would be able to make the climb and whether the two of them should get out and hoof it, but Sean seemed determined to give it a go.
He’d done dumber things with vehicles in the snow before. His parents lived on a small mountain in North Georgia, just a few minutes from the Tennessee border. They’d moved there during Sean’s freshman year in high school, which hadn’t really affected his life much, except when—on the rare occasion—it snowed. The locally fabled “Blizzard of ’93” had stuck Sean and his parents on the mountain for nearly a week. They’d been able to get by since the power was only out for a few hours, but people down in the valley weren’t as fortunate. Some of them didn’t have power for days.
Sean had reached a point of cabin fever where he was over being stuck at home with his parents and, being an immortal high school boy, decided to take his two-door coupe down the hill and see if he could get around on the roads.
The driveway was around a 10 percent gradient.
Fortunately, none of the neighbors had dared to venture out in the snow and the powder was still deep. It allowed him—somehow—to get down to the bottom of the nearly quarter-mile driveway. Getting back up, he discovered, was much trickier.
He made it nearly three-quarters of the way up to the top when his front-wheel drive started slipping. Then the terror set in as the car began sliding backward down the steep driveway.
Sean reacted quickly, d
oing the only thing he could do. If he’d pressed on the brakes, he’d have lost control altogether. If he’d let off the brakes, he’d have picked up speed and either careened off one side and hit a tree, or rolled up the embankment on the left.
He chose the latter, letting off on the brake pedal and quickly guiding the car to the left. The back-left tire rolled up onto the bank, and the vehicle came to a stop without so much as a scratch.
The experience had been harrowing for Sean, and he had never again tried to drive up a steep hill in the snow. This one, however, was different. It wasn’t nearly as dangerous of an angle and he had four-wheel drive, unlike before.
He grinned as he recalled the memory and kept pushing forward.
The wheels churned under the cabin, grinding their way through the deep powder and up the hill toward the lookout. When they reached the top, Sean turned the SUV to the left, pointing the front of it out over the plains. He shifted the transmission to park, turned off the ignition, and pocketed the keys.
“You okay?” he asked, glancing over at Tommy, who was still gripping the handle over the door.
“Yeah. Just…you know, wasn’t sure if that was a good idea or not.”
Sean’s head turned back and forth. “You don’t trust me?”
“I remember the story you told me about your experience driving in the snow.”
Sean laughed. “I was just thinking about that. Come on. We need to move.”
They slammed the doors shut and trudged through the snow. The white powder came up just over their ankles. It was deeper than most snows they got back home but not as bad as it would be later in the winter.
Sean had heard from plenty of locals who told them about how deep the snow could get. One guy in a tiny outpost village called Polebridge said that he had twelve-foot plow drifts on either side of his driveway. Sean was glad that wasn’t the case at the moment, but the dark clouds on the horizon served as a warning that more could be on the way any minute.
The Omega Project Page 24
