by John R. Kess
Nick liked the fact that this man had also figured it out. “You wouldn’t be investigating this if someone didn’t think the circumstances are a little strange. I want to know what happened to my sister. I want to know what you know.”
“First, you have to tell me something.”
“What?”
“Why did you argue with your sister the night before she was killed?”
Nick opened his mouth to speak but instead took a deep breath. The memory of the argument was fresh in his mind. It took a moment for him to decide where to start. “Being a brother to someone whose popularity reaches almost everyone, from little old ladies to young kids, is extremely difficult. It changes your life. I’m asked about my sister on a daily basis and, I don’t know what it is, my pride maybe, but I don’t like to talk about her. She’s been so successful and I … I’ve let myself blame Elly for just about everything bad that has happened in my life. What I said to her that night had been brewing in my head for over a year. I lashed out at her for stupid, selfish reasons. I regret every word of what I said to her.” Nick frowned at Beckholm. “Wait, are you here because you think—”
“The reason I’m here,” Beckholm said, “is to learn about your sister and everyone close to her.”
“You think this might be murder?”
“We aren’t ruling out any possibilities.”
“And you suspect me? You think I killed my sister?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But, you’re here.”
“Look at it from my point of view,” Beckholm said. “Until we started talking, all I knew was that you had a loud argument with your sister the night before she died and you stand to inherit a lot of money. Really, when you think about it, the two events contradict each other.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“If someone like you were to sabotage the plane in a way to make it look like an accident, why would you have a heated argument in a public setting with your sister, knowing she’d be dead the next day? Why would you draw that much attention to yourself?”
Nick nodded. “I want you to know, whatever existed between me and my sister, there’s no way I’d ever even think about doing something like that. I don’t want to inherit any money.” Nick paused as he stared at Beckholm. “What else do you know?”
“We believe the plane stopped to refuel. We’ve got people trying to track down where the plane landed. We are also searching for evidence that may help us understand if the plane was sabotaged.”
“What’s your next step?”
“I’ve got a couple more people to interview, and then heading to LA to continue my investigation.” Beckholm pulled a business card out of his pocket and slid it across the table. “Contact me if you can think of anything else I should know.”
Nick watched the agent leave, grabbed the card, and then quietly left the dealership.
* * *
“How much food do we have left?” Elly asked as she leaned against a tall maple tree.
She and Jay had just finished the last of the canned meat and granola bars he’d packed.
“A half bag of trail mix, some dried cranberries, and some cheesy sesame sticks. We’ll have to make it last,” he replied to her grimace. “We’re making better time, so if we keep going, we should be able to make the highway soon.”
They both looked up through the trees at the gray sky as raindrops began falling on the canopy of leaves. It sounded like popcorn popping in the distance.
“Great.” Elly held her hands up to feel the rain.
Jay pulled a large black garbage bag from his backpack. He held it by the closed end and used his knife to cut a hole in the center and two more on the sides. Jay pulled the center hole over Elly’s head. Her arms popped out the sides. The bag hung down to her knees.
Elly twirled, making the bag look as big as possible. “How do I look?”
“Very sexy.” Jay smiled.
“I’ve always liked wearing gloss black.”
“You can keep it and wear it in your next music video.”
They walked quietly for another hour as the gray sky slowly alternated between steady rain and heavy mist.
The pine trees were now outnumbered by maples and elms. Tall grasses, up to Jay’s waist, filled all other spaces.
Jay finished marking their latest location on his handheld GPS unit, and they topped a small hill that opened up to a valley filled with tall grass surrounded by ash and aspen trees. Jay caught movement off in the distance to his right. He pulled Elly to the ground in one quick motion.
Jay held his finger over her mouth, making sure Elly stayed quiet. In the cover of the grass, he took off his backpack and removed his binoculars.
“Stay down and don’t move,” Jay whispered to Elly.
He crawled back to the top of the hill and used his rifle barrel to push the grass out of his line of sight. It took several seconds, but Jay saw something brown in the distance disappear behind trees. Another shape soon appeared where the first had been, and also quickly vanished.
The two figures disappeared and reappeared as they moved through the trees. Jay followed their movement. One of the figures lifted its head, and he saw the antlers of an elk.
Jay knew he should be relieved, but something wasn’t right. On the other side of the valley was a massive flat-topped rock, a group of dead pine trees next to it. He set the binoculars aside as the horrifying realization hit him. He’d stood on that rock and looked out over this valley before. This was the southern portion of the property Jay and Ben’s families co-owned. It was just as the police officer described. This was the place Ben had died. This was the valley Jay saw in his nightmares.
The lump that formed in Jay’s throat made it hard to breathe. The rain and wind faded. Everything rushed back as if he were living his nightmare. The sound of a gunshot was clear as he heard his friend cry out in pain.
The two elk wove their way in and out of the trees as they ran away. Jay put his head down in the grass and covered it with his hands. Ben had been so mad when Jay told him he was joining the Marines. It was the last time he’d see Ben alive. Jay had never stopped asking himself the question, What if he had stayed?
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m so sorry,” Jay repeated again and again.
Elly’s hand touched his leg, and he jumped, ripping his leg away.
Elly recoiled, “What’s going on?”
“We need to go.” Jay scrambled to his feet. “We can’t go through here.” He picked up the binoculars and backpack and started heading to the west. “Come on!”
Elly stood and saw the empty valley, then ran to catch up with him.
* * *
“They’re all dead,” Belgrade said.
“All four of them?” the voice on the other end of the phone asked calmly.
“Yes, I saw the bodies with my own eyes.” The men had radioed their location to Belgrade when they’d stopped to set up camp.
“How? How did they die?”
“One was stabbed, one looks like he had his neck broken, and the other two were shot.”
Belgrade waited for a response.
“Where is the girl?” the voice asked.
“I know where they were,” Belgrade said, “and I know where they are headed. There’s a highway north of their location.”
“Who the hell is killing my men?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m very disappointed. The fact that you killed the girl’s bodyguard, yet you let her get away boggles my mind.” The voice grew louder. “Do you know how long it will take us to cash in if the girl’s death looks at all suspicious? We’ll be screwed because the money will be frozen while they investigate. It might take two years for her parents to inherit anything. We can’t ransom her if they don’t have the money! Find the girl!”
* * *
The rain poured even harder as Elly hurried to keep up with Jay, who was hiking twice as fast as normal. Her confusion was
compounded by the fact that if they were in any kind of danger, Jay wasn’t letting on.
“Jay!” Elly said over the rain pounding the tree leaves all around them. She tried again, and when he didn’t respond, she ran in front of him. “Jay!”
He stopped but wouldn’t look at her.
“What happened back there?”
“Nothing.” Jay moved around her.
“That wasn’t nothing!” Elly shouted. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
“We need to keep going.” Jay continued to walk.
“I’m not moving until you tell me what’s going on. What did you see back there?” Elly knew things were bad. If the kidnappers found them now, she wasn’t sure what would happen. She needed Jay to be here, his old self, and this situation to be resolved immediately. She shouted at his back, “What are you sorry about?”
Jay stopped.
“You told me you’d been back from Afghanistan a couple days.” Elly walked toward him. “Your sister doesn’t know you’re home, does she?”
Jay stood still for a moment, then carefully pushed the hood off his head and ran his free hand through his hair. He turned to look at her. Elly couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen someone so sad.
Jay shook his head. “No, she doesn’t know.”
“Why didn’t you go see her?”
“I needed time to be alone before I see my family. I couldn’t face them until I came here first.”
“What did you see back there?”
“I saw what I see in my nightmares. I saw the place where my best friend died.” Jay slowly sat down in the grass, dropped the rifle, and put his head in his hands.
“Tell me what happened,” Elly said softly as she joined him in the grass.
Jay took his time before beginning. “He hired himself out as a guide and took a hunting party out here. Our families co-own the property. The party came across an elk and everyone opened fire as it ran across in front of them. One of the bullets hit a tree and ricocheted. It hit my friend in the stomach. He died several hours later in the emergency room.”
“I’m so sorry, Jay.”
“I came out here because my nightmares won’t stop. I wanted to come out here to find this place. I wanted to find some way to tell him I’m sorry. He wanted me to be a guide with him. I chose to join the Marines instead. I left him behind. If I’d stayed here, he’d still be alive.”
Elly placed her hands on his shoulders. “Jay, look at me.” She waited for him to respond. Rain dripped heavily from his hair into his eyes. “You think you could have stopped your friend from dying? Is that what you really think?”
“I did the one thing the Marines told me never to do. I left a man behind. That’s what I did. He’s dead because I wasn’t there.”
“He’s dead because accidents happen. You can’t control that. If you’d been there, you’d have had no more control over what happened to him than what happened to your parents. You had no control over what happened at the airport to Kevin. You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. You didn’t kill your friend. Do you understand that?” Elly wrapped her arms around him. “You didn’t kill him.”
Chapter 14
Sheriff Bernard Neuhaus stood on the shore of the small lake staring at the two water-rescue boats. His face had been locked in a scowl ever since he’d left the station. He was relieved at first, when he heard there were no bodies found at the scene, but the news of multiple bullet holes in the engine compartment made him wonder what the hell was going on in his county.
Neuhaus had been in office for only a year, but he was well known as being good at the job. The local newspaper kept busy reporting on all the meth-lab raids the sheriff and his people led.
The divers knew from the condition of the floatplane that it had not been under water very long. Grey and his partner spent thirty minutes making multiple trips to attach balloons to the fuselage of the floatplane and run hoses to the air tanks on the two boats. They opened the valves and air filled the balloons, lifting the plane off the bottom.
Within minutes Neuhaus watched the left wing break the surface. The boats pulled the plane to shore, where an ATV dragged it out. Water drained from both pontoons through what were obviously bullet holes.
“I’m no genius,” Neuhaus said, “but it don’t take one to figure out somebody wanted this plane to disappear.”
A sheriff’s deputy took pictures of the badly burned plane.
“But why?” the sheriff said to himself.
The deputy counted seven bullet holes in the engine compartment and three entrance and three exit holes in each pontoon.
“Look at this,” the sheriff’s deputy said, “the entry hole is on top of the pontoon and the exit hole is down here.” He pointed at the bottom of the pontoon next to the integrated wheels.
“The shooter was standing on the pontoon when he took the shot,” Sheriff Neuhaus said. “All right, I want the perimeter of this lake searched. Nobody touches anything on the plane.” He called the dispatcher.
“This is Sheriff Neuhaus. Patch me through to the Missoula FBI.”
* * *
Agent West held the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he scribbled a series of numbers and letters in his notebook. The man on the other line was with the Missoula FBI. West had put out a notice for any aviation-related events to be reported to him immediately.
West hung up and in five long strides was standing at the shared desks of Agents Jessica Walstein and Gary Schwartz.
“These are the call letters from a floatplane. I need you to find out everything about it: owner, home airport, past flight plans, and anyone who’s ever flown it.”
“Got it,” Walstein said.
West turned to Schwartz. “How are we doing on tracking the fuel for the Wittenbel turboprop?”
“Of the eighty-one planes in the area fueled with over one hundred gallons on Sunday between the hours of seven AM and noon, I’ve got seventy-five confirmed planes reaching their destinations. The remaining six took off and landed at the same airport. For the last hour, I’ve been working on other means of fuel delivery, but they could have used a tanker and filled the plane with fuel purchased three months ago.”
“I know. Keep searching.”
* * *
The gray sky told Jay the steady rain was not going to end. They could walk for a few more hours before it would be too dark, but one look at Elly and he changed his mind. Water dripped from her sleeves and she was shivering. Her shoes and the bottoms of her pant legs were soaked. Jay could see his own breath and knew it would only get colder.
Jay caught Elly squeezing her stomach with both of her arms. She’d refused to eat anything when they’d stopped.
“Are you all right?” Jay asked.
“I’ll be okay.”
Jay wondered if she was getting sick. She’d complained of stomach pains, and her nose was running. It could have been a cold, or maybe she was going through Vicodin withdrawal. He still hadn’t seen Elly take any pills since she shoved him. Either way, it complicated their effort to get out of the woods.
“Oh, no,” Elly said quietly.
“What is it?”
Elly put her hand on her stomach and turned away from Jay.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Jay got his answer when Elly leaned against a tree and vomited. She coughed and spit before wiping her mouth with her sleeve.
“Oh, that’s gross,” Elly said.
Jay offered her some water, which she gladly accepted.
“We’re stopping to set up camp,” Jay said.
“How close are we?” Elly asked.
“Not close enough. I can’t chance either of us getting hypothermia. We’d never make the road if that happened.”
“This s-s-s-sucks,” Elly said.
Elly helped Jay set up the tent. Once it was up, Jay put his backpack and shotgun inside and unrolled his sleeping bag. He pulled a wrinkled gray T-shirt and a pair of gym shorts out of his bag
and laid them on the sleeping bag.
“Come here,” he said. “Put your arms up.” Jay pulled the garbage bag over her head. “Take everything off that’s wet. I’ve left some clothes for you to change into. I’m going to take a look around. I’ll be back in five minutes. The code word is still Joanna.”
Jay walked in the direction they’d been heading for about a minute. He turned to walk in a large circle around the tent, keeping the clump of trees that towered over the tent in sight at all times.
He completed his circle and returned to the tent.
“Joanna. Are you decent?”
“Yeah, come in.”
As he unzipped the door, Jay could hear Elly’s rapid breaths. He took off his rain gear and went inside to find Elly curled up and shivering, with the sleeping bag cinched so tight only her face was showing.
Her teeth chattered as she spoke. “I can’t … I can’t get warm.”
Throughout his time in the Marines, Jay had passed several winter survival training courses. He quickly changed clothes and then unzipped the sleeping bag and climbed in facing Elly. He zipped it closed, and their bodies pressed together and their legs intertwined. Elly folded her arms between her chest and his as Jay wrapped his arms around her.
Jay was shocked by how cold she was. Her hair was wet, and he felt the warmth being sucked out of him, but he was glad it was going to her.
He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what would happen once he got Elly out. He thought of the invitation to her cabin and the kiss they had shared. Then he thought about how she walked away, leaving him wondering if it was rejection or if there was another reason. He forced himself to forget it so he could focus on getting both of them to safety.
The only thing Jay knew for sure was there was a media nightmare waiting for them when they left the forest. He could protect Elly in the woods of Montana, but back in front of the media, he knew he couldn’t. There would, of course, be questions about the men he’d just killed. He wondered if he’d be able to stay in the Marine Corps and out of prison. He knew it would come down to the authorities believing it was self-defense. He pushed the thought of being dishonorably discharged from the Marine Corps out of his mind.
