The Best American Mystery Stories 2018

by Louise Penny

  The temperature dropped like a stone that night, and the following afternoon was windy and cold and overcast. The orange, yellow, and red leaves of the trees outside the small country church seemed to be struggling to stay on the branches, and many of them failed. Parker arrived just before three o’clock. This time Bennett was early; Parker found him standing at the head of the center aisle. They shook hands and settled again into the same seats they’d taken earlier.

  “Let’s hear it,” Bennett said.

  Twenty minutes later the story had been told. Parker left nothing out. Using many of Tommy Truitt’s own words, he told Bennett about the intrusion, the spoken threat to the two boys, Dixon’s challenge to Jesse Ford’s order, the locking of the boys in the pantry, the shotgun blast through the wall, the shootout in the back yard, the departure of the third attacker.

  “I believe every word he said,” Parker concluded. “That’s the way it happened.”

  For a long time Bennett sat there in silence, fingering the buttons of his overcoat. At last he said, “It makes sense. I couldn’t see Sam Ewing as a back-shooter. But I had to know.” He stood up. “You’ve done good work, Mr. Parker. I’ll be sending full payment to your office tomorrow morning.” He turned and moved away toward the front of the church.

  “Give my best wishes to Mrs. Dixon,” Parker said.

  Bennett stopped in his tracks. For several seconds he stood motionless, then turned again and locked eyes with Parker. Parker hadn’t moved. He was still sitting there, on the platform beside the pulpit.

  Very slowly Bennett walked back to the first pew. It was so quiet in the church Parker could hear the wood creak as Bennett sagged into the seat. His face was blank.

  “Are you even married?” Parker asked him. “Or was that a lie too?”

  “I’m married. But my wife wasn’t a Ford. And she has no nephews.” Bennett paused for a beat, then said, “How did you know?”

  “That you were the third man?” Parker sighed. “I’m not sure. Maybe it takes somebody with a guilty conscience to recognize it in someone else. Besides, you were so certain that Andrew had a playmate who would’ve been there at the time. Why were you so sure? And something else that bothered me from the start was that you felt you couldn’t pursue this on your own. I finally realized that if you had, if you’d discovered the identity of Andrew’s friend and approached him yourself to ask him questions—”

  “He might’ve recognized me. From that day.”

  “Right,” Parker said. “And I assumed you had a reason why you’d rather not call attention to your past.”

  “My reason is I’m an elected official now. A mayor. Back East a ways.”

  “I know. And I know where. My brother checked, and contacted me this morning.”

  Bennett stayed quiet a minute, gazing out the window.

  “You think anyone’ll find out?” he asked.

  “About your former life? That you rode with Jesse Ford? No. Even if they do, so what? You’re a changed man.”

  “What about Tommy Truitt?”

  “The two of you live far apart. I doubt you’ll ever meet.”

  Bennett rubbed his face wearily. “Maybe we should.” He looked Parker in the eye and said, “I went there that day to help murder an innocent man. What I did got two people killed.”

  “What you did saved three people too.”

  Bennett gave that some thought, and nodded. This time both of them stood. “Thank you, Mr. Parker.”

  “What should I call you?”

  “My name’s Morris Dixon.”

  They shook hands. “Have a safe journey home, Mr. Mayor.”

  “You too.”

  Parker watched through the window as Dixon rode away, then he pulled up the collar of his coat and stomped outside to his own horse. He had already swung into the saddle when he saw a grizzled old man in a fur hat and a bearskin trudging up the road toward him. Parker loped over to the man and reined in.

  The old-timer looked up and patted the shotgun he held in the crook of his arm. “Good day for squirrel huntin’,” he said.

  Parker burrowed deeper into his coat. “If you say so.”

  The old man chuckled, then frowned. He leaned forward and squinted. Parker knew what was coming.

  “I know you from someplace,” the hunter said. “Ain’t you Charlie Parker?”

  Parker raised his head a moment, gazed up at the trees and the falling leaves and then at the woods and the straight, flat road that led to his wife and his brother and the rest of his life. He thought about past deeds and past decisions, and about Cole Bennett, also known as Morris Dixon. Then he looked back down at the old-timer.

  “I used to be,” Parker said.

  David Edgerley Gates

  Cabin Fever

  from Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

  Hector’s truck broke down on a fire road in the Gallatin, on the west side of Custer National Forest. He was just south of the Needles, and GPS put him close to the Yellowstone, so he wasn’t lost, but it was probably a good fifteen miles to the nearest campground, and he’d have to hike it, shank’s mare. From up on the hogback where the truck had died, he could see out across the Absarokas, a couple of thousand feet higher in elevation. Down by Granite Peak, some thirty miles to the southeast, there was a late-afternoon storm system building, thunderheads, the flicker of lightning, a curtain of rain. It looked to be coming on fast, but with luck he could still beat the weather.

  It was one of Katie’s days at the Limestone clinic. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays she was up in Billings. Local patients came to the clinic the other three days, and there was always a backlog. Katie took everybody who showed up, of course, which meant she didn’t get off work before seven or eight most nights, but the practice of medicine was what she’d signed on for.

  A charge nurse came back to the examination room.

  “Dr. Faraday? There’s somebody out front asking for Deputy Moody.”

  Hector had been Katie’s boyfriend for the past year and a half. They hadn’t moved in together yet, but that was probably the next step. A big step for Hector, who took things slow, she knew. Katie wasn’t going to press it. She went out to the reception desk.

  Frank Child, the new FBI guy assigned over at Crow Agency. He’d taken over from Andy Lame Deer, who was retired now, living down in Wind River.

  They shook hands.

  “Hector’s over in the Gallatin,” she told him. “Ranch hands at the Two Forks called in suspected rustling activity.”

  The ranchers ran cattle on federal land, under permit. The cows ranged fairly wide, and sometimes you lost track.

  “Well, we’ve got a thing,” Frank Child said.

  Katie knew what cops meant by a “thing.” It didn’t usually pre­sage good news.

  “Prisoner transport was in an accident on the interstate, about halfway between Billings and Bozeman,” he said. “Clipped by a semi. Went over the shoulder and rolled, cracked open like an egg. Econoline van.”

  “Anybody hurt?” she asked.

  “Driver and the guard were wearing seat belts. Prisoners in the back got bounced around pretty good, but no broken bones.”

  She waited for the other shoe to drop.

  “Two of the cons escaped. Both lifers. Violent felons, stone bad. One of them went down on aggravated assault, armed robbery, three strikes, the other guy’s doing thirty to life for multiple homicide, domestic, killed his wife and both kids.”

  “You haven’t been able to raise Hector on his cell?”

  “He might not have a decent signal up in the Gallatin.”

  “Other agencies involved?”

  “Full-court press,” Child told her. “State police, tribal cops, Billings and Bozeman PD, county sheriff’s departments in Stillwater and Sweet Grass. FBI is flying in Special Weapons and Tactical from Denver. Forest Service has been alerted. And we’ve asked for a National Guard unit to be deployed. There’s an awful lot of rough ground out there to cover. We’r
e going to need all the manpower we can get.”

  “What haven’t you told me?” she asked him.

  “They hijacked an SUV, family of four on a road trip. We found the vehicle abandoned at a highway rest stop east of Livingston. Four bodies in the camper shell, all of them shot in the head with the victim’s own gun. These guys are armed and dangerous, and they’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “Why would they leave the highway?”

  “Roadblocks, cops everywhere. Rules of engagement are shoot to kill, although you didn’t hear that from me.”

  “Any idea which way they went?”

  Child nodded. “They’re not city boys. They can survive in the wild. They’re in the backcountry.”

  “Where?”

  “Last report, on their way south, into the Absarokas.”

  Which was probably where Hector was headed next.

  He’d thought about staying with the truck but decided he was better off hoofing it out of there. The truck was exposed on the ridgeline, which meant you could see it from the air if anybody flew over, the park service, a private plane, but Hector didn’t figure that was likely to happen in the next twenty-four hours, or even in the next week. And out in the open, the truck was a magnet in an electrical storm, no protection. His dad always claimed you were safe in a car because the rubber tires would ground a lightning strike. Hector knew that for an old wives’ tale.

  On the horizon the dark, boiling clouds were making up thicker, and already closer than Granite Peak, traveling at some fifteen miles an hour, north-northwest. He had a tarp and a waterproof poncho, but in less than two hours, if he didn’t find shelter, he was going to get pretty damn wet. He had the other basic gear, canteen, compass, a folded USCGS map for this quadrant, laminated in plastic. And he knew the country, he’d been up here before, but he was experienced enough to know that anybody could get disoriented, even in daylight. He had his cell phone too, but out here cell reception was spotty at best.

  He was surprised the dashboard GPS had read out accurately, if in fact it had. He’d gotten some beef jerky and a couple of energy bars out of the glove box. He was carrying the .40 Smith on his belt holster and the Ruger carbine off the rifle rack, the .44 mag, a brush gun. He felt about as prepared as he could be, given the circumstances. It wasn’t the zombie apocalypse, it was just a little heavy weather. Hector thought about Katie, back in Limestone. You’re twice lucky, he told himself.

  The forest service maintained a summer campground over by Tumble Mountain, fourteen, fifteen miles as the crow flies, but the way he remembered, there was a one-time dude ranch on the Boulder, abandoned and fallen into disrepair but only half the distance. He shot an azimuth with the compass, oriented himself on the map, and figured his heading at seventy-four degrees.

  Four-thirty in the afternoon, three hours of hard climbing.

  The manhunt had spread across three counties and there was a statewide APB, but they were beginning to tighten it up as possible sightings came in, although nothing positive as yet.

  The state police had set up their command post at a forest ranger station in Pine Creek, as close as they could get by road to the western edge of the Beartooth. The search had narrowed to an area bounded north to south by the highway and the Wyoming state line, west to east from Pine Creek to the Stillwater. At a rough guess, some thirteen hundred square miles. They had two choppers in the air and a spotter plane, but there was weather moving in, a storm front from the south, and a big one that would ground the aircraft.

  Frank Child was at the command post. He was in contact with the SWAT team. They were still an hour out from Bozeman, which was the nearest airstrip with runways long enough to accommodate the C-130. By the time they were on the ground and the unit fully deployed to Pine Creek, it would be after dark.

  “Anything?” he asked the watch commander.

  “One of the helicopters called in an abandoned vehicle on the Gallatin Trace,” the state cop told him. “Went in to take a closer look. Light bar on the roof, Stillwater County Sheriff’s Department markings. No sign of the driver, though.”

  Hector Moody. “If he left his truck, which direction would he travel?” Child asked.

  “Six of one. He probably lost radio contact, and his cell wouldn’t work out there. He could backtrack, go out the way he came in, but it’s twenty miles to the nearest pay phone.”

  “What if he decided to go east instead?”

  “Into the Absaroka watershed? Probably the better choice.” The cop looked at the map. “Seasonal campsites scattered around inside a fifteen-mile radius, some old cabins, line shacks or Civilian Conservation Corps, if they haven’t caved in by now. Up here on the Boulder there used to be a place called Beaver Lodge. Guest ranch, for dudes from back East.”

  Child knew himself for a dude from back East, and he didn’t have the skills Hector had. “How bad’s the weather?”

  “Bad. He wouldn’t want to get caught in the open.”

  Neither would their two fugitives, Child thought. “We have any chance of getting in there?” he asked.

  “With the storm? We’re going to have to suspend operations until daylight. Another hour, our visibility’s down to zero.”

  “Not very promising.”

  “How soon do your people get here?”

  “Too late to do Hector any good tonight,” Child said.

  “Well,” the state cop said, smiling, “he’s part Indian, he knows the terrain, and he doesn’t expect anybody to come looking for him. He can take care of himself.”

  “He doesn’t know about those cons in the woods.”

  “No way to get him word, either.”

  The storm broke overhead. It was a little past seven o’clock that night. The sun didn’t set until after eight, but the sky was already black, the thunderclouds a heavy mass, lit from beneath by the occasional crack of lightning. Wind thrashed the trees, and then the rain came, in a sudden burst, like bullets.

  Hector was on the final leg, moving downslope toward the confluence of the Boulder and Beaver Creek, where the old dude ranch was. The thick conifers gave him some cover from the force of the downpour, but water was already trickling downhill, and the pine needles slithered underfoot.

  About a hundred yards out the trees thinned, and beyond that was space once cleared for pasture, now overgrown with weeds and wildflowers. The fences and corrals had collapsed, but through the sheets of rain Hector could see that a couple of the ranch buildings themselves were still standing.

  As soon as he left the trees and started into the open, he was immediately soaked all the way through. Fighting a path across the pasture, his feet getting caught in the tall, tangled grass, his wet boots felt as heavy as sandbags, and even under the poncho his uniform was wicking water like a downspout. His skin felt raw, and he shivered with chill. The rainfall was so heavy he had trouble getting his bearings, but he managed at last to flounder up onto the porch of what had once been the bunkhouse. The roof was leaking, and Hector crowded up against the cabin wall, breathing hard. The windows were dirty and broken, but there was a glimmer of light from inside. Hector thought his eyes were playing tricks on him or the flashes of lightning had burned his retinas. He tugged the door latch open and stepped into the cabin.

  There was a fire in the fireplace and somebody standing in front of it, rubbing his hands.

  “Evening,” the guy said, grinning at him. “You look like a drowned rat. Come over here and warm up.”

  Hector shook some of the water off his poncho and shucked it off. He took a step forward, into the firelight, and the guy who’d been in back of the door put the barrel of a gun against the base of his skull, just behind his right ear. “We shoot him now, Roy?” the guy with the gun asked.

  Wet as it was, lightning strikes sparked a wildfire at the south end of the Beartooth, just above Yellowstone Park. It started small at first, right around midnight, but in the course of the early hours, before daylight, it grew to some thirty-five square miles.
Winds out of the south were pushing it north, into the Absarokas. The problem was that nobody knew it was there until four o’clock the next morning, because there were no spotter planes aloft, and the watchers manning the fire towers didn’t see anything until the storm blew over. But once the weather cleared and they had visibility, horizon to horizon, you could see the flames reflected against the night sky, and it meant all hands on deck.

  The first firefighters to respond were the Bighorn Initial Attack crew, from the Crow reservation, since they were that close. They came through Limestone at 6 a.m. It was the nearest point of access. Katie already had her medical unit assembled, ready to go in with them. She wasn’t about to take no for an answer. The crew chief, Joey Raven, knew they’d need her help. He also knew she was dating Hector Moody. He didn’t turn her down.

  “How bad?” she asked him.

  “If it crowns, we’re in deep shit, Doc,” he said.

  There were brush fires that burned through the slash and undergrowth, close to the ground, and then there were so-called crown fires, where it lit up the tops of the trees. Crown fires could move fast enough to outrun an animal, or a man.

  “We’re as ready as we’re going to be, Joe,” she told him.

  He nodded. “Mount up,” he said.

  They’d taken his weapons and gear.

  “You have a radio?” the guy named Roy asked.

  “Two-way, back in the truck,” Hector said.

  “Which is where?”

  “Maybe eight miles west of here, on the Gallatin Trace. No good to me, no good to you. Dead metal.”

  “And your cell phone doesn’t work worth squat.”

  “Part of the problem that brought me here,” Hector said.

  “Which makes you part of my problem,” Roy said.

  “Aw, for Pete’s sake,” the other guy said. “Who needs this joker? He’s bait for the law. Kill him and leave him.”

  “You never know, Little Eddie. Cop might come in handy, we have to work our way out of a tight spot.”