Incident at Big Sky

by Johnny France

  Then, too, this guy was obviously of the Vietnam generation who enjoyed taking their aircraft to the limit.

  As they climbed the densely forested shoulder of Lone Mountain, it came to Johnny that he didn’t even know the pilot’s name. At any moment, they might get hit by gunfire from some crazy survivalists hidden below, and he would die beside a nameless young man.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Francos,” the kid grinned, reaching across with his free left hand to shake.

  At least he hadn’t let go of the stick. Even though Johnny wasn’t certain if Francos was the pilot’s first or last name, he decided not to distract him anymore.

  They were on top now, sailing above the unbroken lodgepole forest of the Moonlight Creek drainage. Suddenly blue glacial lakes swept beneath the plexiglas nose. Ahead, a green valley opened, and they could see the dark trench of Gallatin Canyon further east. The lodges and ski lifts of Big Sky shimmered in the midmorning thermal haze.

  Dust trails rose from the gravel road above the cabins of Big Sky Mountain Village. Horse trailers, four-by-fours and patrol cars with their pursuit lights flashing soundlessly in the dust. Another helicopter angled down the sky, approaching the parked vehicles from the northeast.

  In his earphones, Johnny heard Francos calmly advising the other pilot that they would “hold hover on the base leg of the LZ” until he had landed.

  It was their turn. Johnny licked his lips, gazing down at the men on the road who gazed expectantly back at him, as if he had some solution to the tactical problem they all faced. Ever since Vietnam, he thought, we’ve gotten used to authority descending from the sky in helicopters. It used to be the cavalry, sweeping in with a troop of white horses to rescue the wagon train. Now it was cops with headsets and weird-looking rifles.

  Johnny gathered up his gear, unsnapped his belt and dashed low beneath the rotor tips to escape the billowing dust. John Onstad’s pickup and horse trailer stood at the head of a line of patrol cars and pickup trucks, the unofficial command post. The road was wide here, three lanes of packed gravel in the last grassy draw before the thick timber of the national forest. This was a good place for a temporary command post, Johnny saw, room to turn the trailers around without backing up, and plenty of space for the choppers. Also, the spot was a safe distance from any potential snipers in the trees above.

  The choice of location was typical of John Onstad—thorough, logical, by the book. Sheriff Onstad was one of the most professional officers Johnny had ever worked with. Some of Onstad’s men might grumble about his temper, but he’d always been friendly with Johnny.

  Onstad was talking on a hand-held radio as Johnny dumped his gear onto the tailgate of a pickup. Grouped along the road there was a crowd of regular and reserve deputies from both the Madison County and Gallatin departments, some tired-looking cowboys from Lone Mountain Ranch who’d been searching all night, and at least five reporters from the Bozeman papers and TV station. Among the deputies, Johnny recognized Bob Campbell, Dave Dunn, and Bob Pearson from Gallatin County. Robin Shipman and Steve Powell were already on the scene. From the look of their horses, they hadn’t wasted any time getting up here, once they’d gotten word of the shootings.

  “Glad you’re here,” Onstad said, shaking Johnny’s hand. Onstad was a tall brawny guy with linebacker’s shoulders and big strong hands. Everything about him was on a larger scale than other men.

  A reporter’s camera whined and clicked. Johnny nodded, and they turned their backs on the cameras. Onstad braced his arm against the trailer, shielding them from the press.

  “What’s the situation, John,” Johnny asked quietly.

  “Not good,” Onstad said, frowning. “Our witness is still pretty shook up, and he’s not real clear about the location of the crime scene.” He tipped his chin toward Bob Campbell, who stood in the shade talking with a deeply tanned young fellow with sandy hair. The young man’s jeans were torn and muddy, his face scratched. He definitely looked shaken.

  “Name’s Jim Schwalbe,” Onstad continued. “One of the search team from Big Sky. He saw the shootings, at least the fatal shot. He was teamed up with another guy from the Big Sky search party, name of Goldstein, Al Goldstein. That’s our homicide victim. Shot right in the face, according to Schwalbe.”

  “That why he’s so shook up?”

  “You bet, Johnny. Goldstein was a close friend of his. Apparently saw the shot hit him, right in the head. I imagine I’d be, too.”

  Johnny nodded grimly and released a pent-up breath. “What about the girl?”

  Onstad gazed up at the dark trees. “Well, she’s still up there some damn place. We’ve been flying the area in the chopper with Schwalbe, but we can’t locate the crime scene.”

  The reporters were edging closer again, and Onstad gestured impatiently to one of his deputies to keep them back.

  Johnny led him further down the trailer so they could talk undisturbed. “What have we got for a general location?”

  “Kinda vague,” Onstad said, pointing toward Beehive Basin. “Schwalbe says it’s a clearing, sort of like a little park, with thick deadfall timber around it and a stream running right through the middle.” Onstad shook his head slowly. “I don’t know if you copied the radio traffic, but he reports they had the girl chained to a log with her pants down when they shot her.”

  Johnny turned to study Schwalbe. He looked like an honest, straightforward kind of young guy. There was certainly no reason to doubt what he’d seen, as bizarre as it sounded. “Listen, John,” he said, still speaking softly, “I’ve got the roads in and out sealed off on the Madison side. How have—”

  “Roadblocks all around,” Onstad stated, anticipating Johnny’s question. “They won’t drive out of here, that’s for damn sure. You got Jack Creek campground covered, too? They could make their way down there on foot and steal a car. Or take some hostages. Who knows? We’ve got some crazy people on our hands, Johnny.”

  Once more Johnny nodded his grim understanding. “Any idea what we’ve got for hikers up there, people from Big Sky up fishing or camping?” The danger of a hostage situation was always present in a case like this.

  Onstad made a note on his interview pad. “I’ll get someone down to Huntley Lodge to find out. I think we ought to contact Bob Morton from the Forest Service, too. There’s bound to be a lot of people camping up in the Spanish Peaks this time of year.”

  “Well, we’re gonna have to get some reserve deputies on all those trailheads, John, to warn people off.”

  As they worked out the seemingly endless but vital details of the initial security operation, more media cars sped up the dusty road from Big Sky. Now there were three television crews, several still photographers, and four newspaper reporters milling around. One reporter was blocking the road with his station wagon, feeding a breathless live report to his station.

  If those crazies up there have got themselves a transistor radio, Johnny realized, we’re in big trouble.

  Johnny’s interview with Jim Schwalbe was no more successful than Onstad’s. Schwalbe seemed like a nice guy, and it turned out he wasn’t as young as he looked. He’d been living at Big Sky for several years, working his own landscaping business. For most of that time, he’d hiked and fished the high country. But despite Johnny and Onstad’s gentle prompting, he was simply not able to pinpoint the crime scene on the maps they spread before him on the hood of Onstad’s patrol car.

  The crime occurred, Jim repeated, above the Jack Creek logging road in an open, grassy clearing, surrounded by “thick country,” broken timber, and young trees. There was a shallow draw, and a mossy stream-bed with a good flow of water. When he’d last seen the girl, she was wounded, inside a green sleeping bag, chained to a log, under a big spruce tree.

  The older guy had fired the fatal shot, Schwalbe repeated. He was leaning against a tree to steady his hunting rifle, and he shot Al in the face … right in the face. Al was dead, lying on his back in the open, his blue backpack b
eside him. Jim’s red backpack was also in the open, near the stream.

  When Jim Schwalbe spoke about Al Goldstein, Johnny could see in his face that there was no sense pushing him for more. Johnny had seen his share of crime victims, and he recognized the emotional impact that the shooting had had on Jim. When a person had witnessed something as horrible as Jim had, you simply had to give him time.

  But right now, time was getting away from them. That girl could be bleeding to death up there, and nobody knew where.

  Johnny stepped aside from the group of officers around Schwalbe and closed his eyes against the sun-glare. Thick country, a grassy clearing, a mossy stream-bed with running water.… That really should not be too hard to locate from the air, if they kept their wits about them.

  Given the lay of the land, most of the shallow draws above the Ulerys lakes went west, into the Jack Creek drainage. To the east, Beehive Basin was much steeper. As far as Johnny could recall, there were only about two or three streams up there big enough to have ample running water this time of year. And, if they flew the treetops in those two or three draws, they’d be bound to see bright backpacks lying in the open. If the killers hadn’t hidden them, if they hadn’t already finished off the girl and buried her in the deep brush.

  While John Onstad organized his deputies to alert the Big Sky community and the Forest Service, Johnny studied his maps. Schwalbe was positive there had only been two men, and he was certain they wore military fatigues and jungle boots. But something in his description of them struck a nagging, hazy note in Johnny’s memory. Schwalbe had repeatedly used the phrase, “the old man and the boy,” as if there was a full generation between the two. And he’d said they were dirty, that their beards were shaggy, unkempt. That just did not sound like spit-and-polish Nazis playing End of the World games up in the mountains.

  What it did sound a lot like was two kind of crazy hermits whom Dave Wing, the Forest Service law enforcement officer in Ennis, had been telling Johnny about for the past four or five years. But, for the life of him, Johnny couldn’t remember their names, and Dave was off working a forest fire in California; otherwise, Johnny would get on the radio and talk to him right now.

  Johnny folded his maps carefully so that he could use them seated in the open door of the helicopter. He stood alone at the side of the patrol car, his lips pursed in concentration. What the hell were those two guys’ names? Dave had suspected them of burning down the Cowboy Heaven cabin and also of burning the Spanish Creek ranger station. They were a father and his boy … from around here, originally, sort of weird hermits who lived up above Beartrap Canyon, poaching game, maybe even stealing cattle. Dave Wing had never actually caught up with the pair to question them about the arson, but he’d told Johnny enough about them.

  But right now, with the newsmen hovering, and the deputies’ radios squawking, it was hard to think.

  “Sheriff,” the pilot called, “I’m all set.”

  Once the chopper had left the roadside command post, Johnny pulled on his white Teflon bulletproof vest. The TV cameramen had practically climbed into the cockpit with him, and he didn’t want to give them anything more sensational than they already had.

  While Johnny had been conferring with Onstad, Francos had detached the cable sling from the chopper’s belly and taken off the doors. This young guy was good; he’d realized that he would be needed for a low-level recon, and that he couldn’t fly too low dragging a fifty-foot sling cable.

  Now they headed up past Ulerys Lakes, with the second chopper flying in tail formation. Onstad’s deputy, Bob Pearson, flew with the other pilot and Jim Schwalbe. Pearson knew this country pretty well and was experienced in aerial searches. But Johnny wanted someone else to fly with him in the lead chopper, to sit behind him and cover the portside, so that Francos could concentrate on flying. He also wanted to confer with Jay Cosgrove, who’d been on this case since before dark the day before.

  Cosgrove’s patrol vehicle, a dusty white Blazer, stood on the Jack Creek logging road near a wide spot marking a culvert over Moonlight Creek. The slope was steep on either side, and a huge slash pile of beetle-kill timber took up one end of the clearing.

  “I don’t suppose you can set this thing down there, can you?” Johnny asked, pointing to the clearing.

  “Piece of cake,” Francos answered. “What you need?”

  “Another set of eyes.” Johnny pointed again, indicating Jay and Brad Brisban, Onstad’s resident deputy from West Yellowstone. Brad’s huge German shepherd, Bear, was barking savagely at the chopper.

  Francos squinted into the sun. “Do me a favor,” he said casually. “Take the smaller guy. If we have to hover very long with much weight at this altitude, it can screw up my engine.”

  “What happens then?” Johnny already knew.

  “Oh, a stall of some kind. You know, something that’ll mess your day up real bad.”

  “Yes, sir,” Johnny answered. “I know about that.”

  Getting the helicopter into the clearing was not what Johnny would have classified as a piece of cake. With dust, gravel, and bark trash blasting up from the rotorwash, visibility was bad right next to the ground. On Francos’s instructions, Johnny leaned out the open door, shielding his eyes from the flying debris, to judge the tail rotor clearance from the slash pile. When the skids touched down safely, he estimated there was less than a foot between the tail and the jumble of dead timber.

  Brad Brisban became Johnny’s observer because he weighed less than Jay, and because Jay was needed in the Blazer to act as radio relay between the command post and Johnny’s office in Virginia City, thirty miles to the west.

  The two helicopters now crisscrossed the timbered slopes that rose toward Beehive Mountain from the depression of Ulerys Lakes and the clear demarcation line of the logging road.

  Ten minutes, then fifteen. Twenty-five minutes into the search, and no one had seen a “clearing like a little park in a shallow draw.” Johnny hung out of the open door, restrained by the seat belt, his face in the hot wind. As the chopper banked and retraced their earlier route, the heavy stone mountains above them seemed to turn in odd directions. He closed his eyes, instantly aware that he was experiencing a form of disorientation common to aerial searchers. It was for this reason that he had wanted a second observer to relieve the pilot of that responsibility.

  Johnny called Bob Pearson in the other chopper. “You guys see anything?”

  “Negative, Sheriff, not a thing.”

  “Sheriff,” Francos suggested, “maybe we should fly a little lower and sort of troll for groundfire … maybe we can flush ’em out that way.”

  “Troll?”

  “Just an expression we used in ’Nam. It works, you know.”

  “Yeah, well … let’s wait on that. Let me think this out a little more.”

  Schwalbe had reported that Kari Swenson was shot through her chest with a .22 pistol. He thought that the bullet had passed right through her, because he saw blood on her lower back. How long could a person live with a wound like that, up here alone?

  Johnny leaned back inside the cockpit to talk to Francos. “Can you set this thing down someplace up high there?” He pointed toward timberline on Beehive. “I want to get out and crawl up on that open ridge there so I can look down on this whole country.”

  Francos nodded his understanding. “Sure, Sheriff. No problem.”

  Johnny tugged his seat belt snug. At least Francos had not called it a piece of cake.

  From the stony ridge, a thousand feet above Ulerys Lakes, Johnny and Brad had a clear, panoramic view of both Moonlight and Beehive Basins. The second helicopter was working up the logging road, just west of Upper Ulerys Lake. Johnny tried the binoculars, but all he saw was details of treetops. He removed his sunglasses and squinted, but that was no good either. Finally, he let his line of sight just naturally meander up from the lakes as he tried to make the hidden contours of the country reveal themselves.

  “We’ve got two shallow d
raws in there,” he muttered, his words lost in the dying whine of the chopper’s engine. He stepped beside Brisban and pointed down the mountainside. “First one seems too close to the lake for their camp,” Johnny continued, “but the second one there, that’s gotta be it.”

  Johnny raised his radio. “Bob,” he called to Pearson in the other chopper, “I think we’ve got something. From what Schwalbe said about a shallow draw with water above Ulerys Lake, you should pick it up if you get your pilot to fly due north from your present position and scout the bottom of that little drainage there.”

  But when Johnny released the transmit button, he heard the chopped-up squawk of simultaneous transmissions. This frequency was so crowded, what with officers from both departments arriving on the scene, that he couldn’t be sure Pearson had heard him.

  But before he could speak again, the helicopter swung north and Pearson called out in triumph. “There it is,” he shouted. “We’ve got the red pack in the clearing.”

  Johnny and Brad were already scrambling down the rocky ridge to reach their helicopter. “Find someplace to set down, so we can join up,” Johnny called. “We’ll be there right away.”

  They assembled at an outcropping of large orange boulders, a quarter of a mile north of the campsite clearing. Pearson was already there when Johnny and Brad jumped down from the hovering chopper. Less than five minutes later, Murray Duffy ferried John Onstad and his deputy, Bill Pronovost, and two other Gallatin deputies to the rock pile.