Nighthawk

by Alan Monroe

  Davis leaned over and kissed his wife on the lips.

  “I love you Misty, be careful.”

  “I love you too - call if you’ll be more than a few hours.”

  Davis got out and placed the oilskin cowboy hat on his head; he waved to his wife as she pulled away.

  “Now where is Roundtree,” he said out loud to himself as he zipped up a heavier jacket over the sports coat and tie.

  Davis spotted Tom photographing the accident scene and making notes on a legal pad. The dark skin pointed to the young man’s deep Native American roots in the community, and the sly smile that often crossed his face hid a serious dedication to duty. His father sat on the local tribal council as a direct descendent of Chief Joseph while Tom and his older brother earned their own status as a police officer and wilderness guide.

  As the closest thing to a SWAT officer in the department, Tom trained his team in a set of tactical and emergency response drills on a weekly basis. Davis utilized the special operations team on most planned drug related arrests and the rare occasions his officers needed to confront a heavily armed suspect. Fortunately, in Okanogan County, most of their work consisted of assisting the county search and rescue squad during the peak tourist seasons.

  Roundtree smiled when he saw that the approaching sheriff. “Sorry I interrupted Sunday Lunch.”

  “We just left the restaurant. But you did catch me before I had a chance to get out of the suit and tie. Besides, I know you did it on purpose.”

  “I didn’t know they made suits that big?”

  “Big?” Davis looked up and down his own body. “There are two sheriff’s department employees who are bigger than me.”

  “Jerry’s fat; you and Hugh are muscle. Slow but muscle.”

  “I guess there’s a compliment in there somewhere.”

  “With a friend like me, who needs enemies?”

  “Between you and Hugh I don’t need enemies.”

  The two men laughed as they walked toward the accident when a large black Dodge Ram pickup truck roared past. The tires on the right side of the truck hit a large hole filled with melted and snow and slush sending wave of ice cold white onto Davis and Tom.

  Tom frowned. “I have a good mind to run that guy down and write him a big fat ticket. He did that on purpose.”

  Davis sighed while he brushed the slush from his cloths. “I would be in favor of that if we didn’t have so much work to do here. You know who that was don’t you?”

  Tom stared at Davis for several seconds. ”No. Do you?”

  Davis’ mouth curled into a crooked smile, and Tom immediately rolled his eyes away from the sheriff. “Tom that was your buddy Bruce. I’d recognize that truck anywhere especially the way the driver side rides close to the ground when he’s in it.”

  Tom ground his teeth. “All the more reason to run him down now.”

  “Bruce is a jerk times ten, four hundred plus pounds of pure trash. We can either waste our time on him or we can try and find out why a nice, normal, productive citizen is on her way to the hospital.”

  The Sheriff looked at the skid marks in snow and the car wrapped around the base of a telephone pole, and asked what happened.

  “Her car tracks are still fresh in the snow, so we’ve actually got a pretty good idea where things went wrong. Looks like she was doing just fine until she was headed downhill and all of a sudden the care swerves to the right for no apparent reason. She over-corrected and went off the left side of the road and hit the telephone pole snapping it in half. She left in an ambulance about 10 minutes ago.”

  “Yea, I saw it headed to the hospital on my way here.” Davis pointed at the broken telephone poll. “Must have been quite an impact to snap that pole in half. Any idea what caused her to swerve so drastically?”

  “No idea, my guess is an animal ran out in front of her car.”

  “I don’t see any tracks. If it was an animal, she must have wiped out the tracks in the snow when she overcorrected. Did you see any tracks on either side of the road?”

  “No, too rocky.”

  “Will the girl be o.k.?”

  “They aren’t sure. Jared was running the ambulance.”

  Davis smiled. “Mr. Extreme Sports himself.”

  “Yep. He was afraid she was going to slip into a coma.”

  The two men continued to discuss the accident while they completed their report. Roundtree filled out the actual report while the sheriff helped him take measurements and photographs. The tow truck finally finished hooking up the damaged car at just about the time the Sheriff and Roundtree were filling out the final lines of their report. Once the tow truck pulled away, Davis and Roundtree headed for the police cruiser.

  The two men rode silently through now heavy snowfall for almost ten minutes before Davis finally spoke.

  “Looking forward to your vacation?”

  “I feel terrible about leaving you so short handed.”

  Davis shook his head. “Stop feeling guilty and enjoy your vacation.”

  “But you’ll be down to 10 officers in a five thousand square mile county.”

  “That forest fire has every county running shorthanded. We’ll be all right without one less. June or July would be tough, but we’ll make it through May. Quit second guessing yourself; you’ve been planning this for over a year.”

  “I appreciate your understanding.”

  The sheriff nodded a “you’re welcome,” and the two men rode in silence again.

  After a few moments, the sheriff’s mouth creased into a crooked smile, “I mean…It’s up to you if you want to spend your entire three weeks of vacation hunting Bigfoot.”

  Tom hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand, “You just had to say something, didn’t you?”

  Davis laughed. “Tom, I tried to keep my mouth shut, but I just couldn’t do it.”

  “It’s not a Bigfoot hunt. It’s a legitimate scientific expedition.”

  “Are you looking for Bigfoot?”

  “We will look for signs of Sasquatch, yes.”

  “It’s hard to imagine anything with its statue outside of Stuckey’s as legitimate.”

  Tom rolled his eyes. “The expedition is being led by two professors from the University of Washington. Does that make it legitimate?”

  “I don’t trust anybody who teaches at a school that cut me from the football team.”

  “I guess that’s what happens when you spend your high school career getting crushed by Hugh Walker every time you tried to block him.”

  “You’re really getting upset about this aren’t you?”

  Tom did not respond.

  “Ok, Tom; I can be serious about this. You’re going to look for Sasquatch. People have been doing that for a hundred years, and no one has found any good evidence. And by evidence I mean a dead or living Sasquatch. What is your group going to do that is so different than what everyone else has done?”

  “Do you actually want to know, or are you going use this as more ammunition against me?”

  The sheriff held up both hands in peaceful manner. “I truly want to know.”

  Roundtree looked at his friend warily. “To start off, we’re going way off he beaten path. I mean seven days of straight hiking. The goal is to get to a section of old growth forest that’s been sealed off for fifty years. This particular patch of old growth covers at least one hundred square miles on Little Chopaka Mountain. They stopped logging around that area 50 years ago. The only humans through there in the past fifty years were building a fire-break 6 miles south of our old growth search area. Nobody has ever looked for Sasquatch there before at least not in any organized capacity. But it’s the perfect location. Isolated, plenty of food, no people. After the second day of hiking we won’t even build a fire. The idea is to blend with the environment.”

  “What’s your starting point?”

  “Nighthawk.”

  Davis rolled his eyes. “Of all the places! I haven’t been there since we were trackin
g the guy who kidnapped the Chase girl. You couldn’t have picked a more deserted area in the state; can’t be more than five or six people in that ghost town or within a hundred miles for that matter.”

  “That makes it even better.”

  “Do you have a satellite phone?”

  “The professor will have one. They’ll be checking in with the university daily.”

  Davis thought for a moment. “I’d like you to take a sat-phone from the station. Check in with whoever is at the desk each day. Give them your GPS coordinates.”

  “Why? Are you scared Bigfoot is going to get me?”

  “No. But every resource in this county and state is tied up with that wildfire, and you’re going to be in an inaccessible area that is seven days’ walk from the most deserted town in the state. If somebody gets hurt, I want to know right where to look. And I don’t want to have to contact a university to find out where you are.”

  “I’ll take the phone…..And I’ll check in every day.”

  Roundtree pulled the car into the driveway of the sheriff’s two-story log home. Davis started to get out, but he stopped and turned to Roundtree. “I mean what I’m about to say. I am not picking at you, this time. You’re the best cop I’ve got. But you only have one reputation. If people find out that you’re looking for Bigfoot, some of them will think you’re nuts. I know you, and I know that’s not the case. Don’t let this become an obsession.”

  “Thanks for your concern.”

  “No problem. Good luck.”

  With that, the sheriff got out and walked through the deepening snow to his house.

  Sunday May 5, 1:15 P.M.

  The big, black truck thundered down the highway paying no head to the deepening coat of snow on the road; the rumbling of its big diesel engine announced its presence to half the county. The steering wheel rubbed against the driver’s belly enough to fade the material it touched. The seatbelt failed to reach around his girth, but his ample posterior kept him wedged tightly between the armrest and the door. He laughed as he looked in the rearview mirror at the wet law enforcement officers.

  “Bruce, that has got to be one of the stupidest things I have ever seen you do,” said his disgusted and now angry passenger. “And that’s saying something.”

  “You just jealous,” the driver said.

  The passenger threw both hands in the air and looked at Bruce. “Jealous of what?”

  The driver picked up his beer from the cup holder and took a big drink. “Jealous you didn’t think of it first or get to do it yourself.”

  The driver laughed so much at his own joke that beer began to run out of his big nose. He took his sleeve and wiped the beer off of his bristly fat face as he continued to laugh, and he took another big drink of the beer before placing the can back in the cup holder that extended from the dashboard.

  The passenger rolled his eyes. “Do you know what could have happened to us if they pulled us over Bruce? You would get busted for drinking and driving. You would be locked up in jail and everything we’ve got going would be shot.”

  Bruce was angry as well by now. “Well they deserved it. That sheriff tased me one time.”

  “Not again with that story.”

  “Well he did. Snuck up on me like the coward he is.” Spit shot outward from Bruce’s mouth and struck the windshield as he spoke.

  “I guess he should have let you choke the life out of that runt, Roundtree.”

  Bruce pounded the steering wheel with his fist. “He could have fought me fair.”

  “He could have caved in the back of your big stupid head with the butt of that big pistol he carries. I don’t care what they did to you. What we got going on is more important.”

  “Well they aint chasin us.”

  “We’re just lucky that they aren’t coming after us,” the passenger yelled.

  “WELL THEY AINT!”

  “I know they’re not.”

  “Just so you knows their not.”

  Bruce turned off the main highway onto a dirt road without even touching the brakes or releasing the accelerator. The two men road in silence for the next several moments allowing their simmering anger to calm as a cloud of dirty snow flew into the air behind the big truck.

  The passenger finally spoke. “Have you got the back packs ready Bruce?”

  The fat man nodded is ugly head. “They came in the mail a couple of days ago.”

  “Are they strong enough to get the job done?”

  “They’re made out of the same material as bullet proof vests, pure Kevlar. Each pack can hold at least two hundred pounds of dead weight.”

  “Well that certainly ought to get the job done, Bruce. It is kind of overkill though.”

  Bruce snarled like a dog. “Well, then you should have ordered the backpacks. Quit gripen at me. You are worse than old Feyhee; she griped at me every day when I was little just cause I was poking her pigs with a stick.”

  The passenger shook his head. “You still messing with that old woman?”

  “Every chance I get. I can’t stand her. Did you get the satellite phones?”

  “Yea,” the passenger said with a smug look on his face. “I’ve had them for over a week now. I don’t wait till the last moment to get my stuff done.”

  “There you go nagging me like some old woman again.”

  “You’re the one that keeps complaining”

  “Maybe I ought to do this by myself. I’m the one that found the map and diary anyway.”

  The passenger looked at Bruce. “We need each other to get this done. I’ll be with the expedition. You can’t find them without me? We both need them as pack mules.”

  “Just don’t forget that you need me to get those packs into the forest, and you need my truck to get the stuff out of the woods.”

  “I know all that Bruce. You don’t forget that this is our big score. This isn’t some rinky dink meth lab we’re getting paid to put together. This will set us up for life.”

  “I know what it is,” snapped Bruce.

  “You have that four wheeler ready to head up the mountain in one week. I’ll call you a couple of times from the forest to make sure everything’s going o.k.”

  “Everything will be fine down here.”

  “Just stay away from those dog fights and the meth labs; even you can stay away from that junk for one week if it means being set up for life. And leave those stupid dogs at your house. Don’t bring them with you.”

  “Whatever,” said Bruce as he took his last drink of beer before throwing the empty can out the truck’s window.

  “We give them one night in the old growth and one day to search for their stupid Bigfoot. Then we take over.”

  Bruce smiled. “And once we’re down the mountain we let them do a little digging.”

  “Yea,” said the passenger. “Then we kill’em.”

  Sunday May 5, 5:00 P.M.

  Davis walked up the snow covered sidewalk and stomped his feet on the twelve foot deep porch surrounding the cabin. He and his wife spent a year designing the log dream home. The cabin had a room for every member of their family, including their daughter who would be born in less than four months. Rocking chairs and benches along with a swing suspended from the roof covered the porch; Davis and his wife often sat on the porch together watching the sun set over the towering Cascade Mountain range.

  He shivered when he opened the door and stepped into the spacious living room; his wife lay on the couch sleeping with a book open on her lap. Davis tiptoed through the living room onto the kitchen’s tile floor. The sound of plastic cars bumping into each other from the bonus room on the far end of the house brought a smile to his face, but he cringed when he heard the inevitable crash of some unknown object falling down.

  Davis opened the pantry and retrieved a bag of corn chips; and after filing a large plastic cup with diet cola, he sat down at the kitchen table to stare out at the falling snow through the big bay window. The forest surrounded the house on three sides acro
ss the wide yard separating them from their closest neighbor almost a mile away. In fact, the forest connected to the vast wilderness covering the majority of the state. Ten inches of snow covered grass, and the view out of the large bay window could have been in the middle of a dark, isolated forest instead of a twenty minute drive from the county seat.

  He turned and picked up and iPad from the nearby desk in the kitchen immediately opening up the map application. The screen immediately shifted to his current location, and a small blue dot popped up on top of his house. He slid the screen north following Loomis-Orville Road all the way to the Simikameen River until he reached the tiny ghost town. Log Camp Road started as a divided highway leading through the center of Nighthawk later branching into a series of dirt roads leading to abandoned logging camps east of town. The clear image even showed Jedadiah Curtis’ truck and horse trailer parked in the road’s large median. Davis closed the iPad and pushed it across the table returning his gaze to the window.

  Davis sat in the police cruiser’s passenger seat looking at a map while Tom Roundtree fought to keep the wheels from crashing into the innumerable pot holes in the poorly maintained roads around Nighthawk. The siren screamed into the air in a vain attempt to be heard over the approaching thunder. Jed Curtis sat in the back seat trying not to bounce all over the car while he laced up his boots.

  Jed rubbed the grey hair on top of his head. “Tell me what we’re doing one more time.”

  Davis turned around and faced Jed. “You know Dale Chase right?”

  “Never met him, but I know who he is. He runs the biggest ski lodge in the county.”

  “His daughter’s been kidnapped.”

  “That’s terrible,” Curtis responded.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Roundtree commented.

  Davis continued. “The suspect is a known pedophile. He’s been in and out of prison for the past ten years.”

  “Should be in prison now,” Tom said.

  “Hugh Walker spotted Mr. Chase’s stolen Tahoe with the suspect and the girl inside. He pursued them near Nighthawk.”