“Now, Tim, you see the younger man in the truck get out and approach Shawna. He has obviously been drinking. You hear him say to Shawna, ‘So, hottie, you want to check me out?’ What do you do?"
“I like Shawna, and guys like that upset her,” Tim said. “I say, ‘Sorry, guy, but it’s my turn. State law. No out of order checking in allowed. So what do you got?'”
Dr. Walters asked about the license plate. Tim only remembered one number; a seven.
Tim's description of the young man was very similar to that of Shawna's. He did mention that the guy had a very prominent Adam's apple and a small scar behind his left ear. But, otherwise, it was as if the two were describing an actor on the same television show they had watched.
“Okay,” Dr. Walters said. “Now let's move on to the others in the vehicle. They have a deer?”
“Yes, a four-point. One of the other men tagged it, the big guy.”
“Whom do you speak to next?”
I thought of a question, wrote it down quickly, raised my hand, and passed Dr. Walters the note.
Tim was already answering her last question.
“The big guy is walking up to me after I asked the younger man where he’d been hunting," Tim said. "The big guy says, ‘We’ve all been hunting the same area.’ So I quickly fill that information in. And I say let’s check your deer. And we walked together to the back of the truck.”
Dr. Walters now read my note, nodded to me, and looked back at Tim.
“Where was Shawna at this time?”
“I look over at her as I'm checking the four-point they’d brought in. She's looking at an elk in the back of the truck that came in after this one. I look at her from time to time, but she never looks in our direction.”
“Is there anything wrong with the deer you are examining? Or the tag?”
“No. I take a tooth, and everything looks okay.”
“Have you ever seen this hunter before?” Dr. Walters asked.
Bobbins paused as if remembering. “I don’t think…” The man seemed to freeze in place. His entire body went rigid. For what seemed like a full minute, it did not look like he was breathing. Then, suddenly, he shook his head and putting his forearms on the table for balance, leaned forward onto them. He looked at each of us around him like he didn’t know where he was. I didn't think he was still hypnotized. He confirmed this a moment later.
“Did it work?” Bobbins asked. “Did you get what you need?”
“No,” the Sheriff said.
Bobbins looked at him and then at Dr. Walters.
“Look at me,” Dr. Walters said. “Look into my eyes.”
Bobbins did so.
“What do you remember?”
“Looking at your iPad.”
“Should we try again?” Goldstone asked.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Dr. Walters said. She turned back to Tim and looked at him sympathetically. “We were doing well, and you confirmed Shawna’s description of the younger man, but for some reason, you snapped out of the trance before you could describe the man who'd tagged the deer. Do you remember any of what you said while in the trance?”
“No,” Tim said, shaking his head.
Dr. Walters leaned back and thought for a moment. Then she looked at the Sheriff. “I don’t think trying again would be good for Tim here. For some reason, he jumped out of the session, and I don’t want to be responsible for what might happen if we try again. There could be consequences.”
“Tim,” Goldstone asked. “Do you think you could describe the guy without hypnosis?”
Tim shook his head. “He’s just a blur.”
Checking the Entryway
October 24: 9:13 a.m.
When Cassie woke cocooned in the sleeping bag, she looked at her watch without taking her head out of the bag and noted the time, then turned on the headlight she had taken into the sleeping bag with her. She had six more AA batteries. At least her head did not hurt as much. She needed to know how long the headlight would work on a new set of batteries. She had no idea if her captor would bring her more batteries and supplies, or if he or she would ever come back. The thought sent a shiver through her.
She was about to stick her head out of the sleeping bag and get up, when she saw something green against the red lining of the bag. Reaching down, she grabbed the green cloth and pulled it free from the folds of the sleeping bag.
To her joy, she had in her hands two long green woolen gloves. She examined them quickly, realizing that someone must have left the gloves in the bag and the Needly Thrift people had never checked the bag well enough to find them.
She put the right on first and then when she took up the other she saw this was also a right-hand glove. It didn't matter. They were soft wool. She turned it inside out and put it on her left hand. Now she had gloves.
But as she walked to the packrat nest for more fuel for her fire, a new idea came to her. The cold from the floor instantly made her feet ache. She'd been putting up with this, but now she stripped the gloves from her hands and, while sitting on her sleeping bag, slipped one glove on each foot. She stood. It wasn't perfect, but her new 'socks' worked.
Wearing the headlight, she headed toward the T, did her toilet, and then went to the grate. Sunlight streamed through the grate. She flicked the headlight off for the moment and looked down at her watch. She added the time she had just used the headlight to the previous time she had noted in her head.
Although she had looked at the grate before, somewhat well, she decided she should now examine it carefully. She went around from corner to corner and pushed on the rusted metal where she could. But she could not budge it. Had the person who came in the night before last come in this way? He must have!
The sun coming through the grate was warm, and the light was heartening. She checked her watch, turned the headlight back on, and went back to the chamber. There she built a fire adding enough sticks to keep it going for a little while. Taking the half-empty bottle of water, she had opened the night before and one of the bags of jerky, she went back to the grate doorway. There she turned off the headlight and noted the time. She found a spot off to the side of the entry that had not gotten wet with snow and sat down. At least here she had lots of light.
Opening the bag of jerky, she found a big piece and took a bite. Her senses seemed to churn at the taste of food. She hadn’t realized just how hungry she was.
After eating three big pieces of jerky, her hunger abated. She thought for a moment about what she should do and then began to take everything out of her pockets. She needed an inventory of what she had.
From her jacket pockets, she pulled her multi-tool, the fire starter, and a bag of chocolate her mother had snuck in as a treat for her to find. The thought brought tears to her eyes. Where was her Dad? Something had to have happened to him. He would not have let anyone carry her away or bring her here. She had no idea how much time had gone by. Her mother must know by now she was missing. Were they looking for her?
The only other thing she found in her jacket was a Mylar heat shield--a large piece of thin reflective material designed to be used in emergencies to hold heat in or to use as a shelter in the snow. She had forgotten about it, but it would be good to drape it over herself as she sat by her small fire to reflect heat back in.
Ruminating
October 26: 1:53 p.m.
I left the sheriff’s office in the early afternoon after Tim Bobbins had dejectedly gone back to work. Dr. Walters had tried to reassure him that snapping out of hypnosis was not all that uncommon. But he left a very unhappy man. He gave me a long, lingering look before he left that left me puzzled.
Goldstone, the other deputies, and I talked briefly about the possibilities. Goldstone suspected that the girl, since she could not have been in the Ford at the game check station, had been dropped off somewhere, either in the mountains or along Highway 200. Goldstone thought along Highway 200 was more likely and decided that is where the focus would now
be.
While we had been working with Bobbins, Tom Bedder, the closest thing the department had to an Internet guru, had begun a facial recognition search for the young man, starting with the state’s criminal database. That search went fairly quickly and came up empty. Bedder then entered the subject's image into two larger search engines. One was for a facial search on Facebook. The other was for the National Criminal Data Base. Both would take time, and there was no point in waiting around.
I got back to my cabin long before dark. The dogs jumped up and down by the Jeep’s door, whining because they missed me. They both disappeared into the cabin via the dog door as I took off the padlock. I opened the door expecting it to have cooled down inside and that I'd have to start a fire. To my surprise, there was a fire bathing the room, via the glass door of the stove, with warm orange light.
That Adahy had started a fire was made clear by a drawing on the kitchen table. The only two people the dogs would have let in beside me were Adahy and his mother. Adahy had no trouble entering and exiting through the dog door. The boy had drawn himself, Blu, and me. He and I stood outside the cabin door. Blu was just coming out of the big dog door that I’d put in when Lomahongva and I had had her wolfhound that she'd raised from a pup. The thought of that dog depressed me.
At the bottom of the drawing, Adahy had written: 'How many Blu kittens does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer on the other side.'
I turned the paper over. On the back, it said: 'An infinite number of Blu kittens could not screw in a light bulb. But it is certain that long before infinity is reached, the bulb will be broken.'
I shook my head. Adahy was a very strange nine-year-old boy.
To the side of the front door, I kept a large steel ring. It was about thirty inches in diameter and had legs which held it upright. When filled with firewood, it held enough for a winter’s night. It was half full when I left. In addition to making the fire, the boy had filled the wood ring for me, probably bringing a piece or two at a time from the woodshed and sticking them in through the dog door. I shook my head. It was clear the boy loved me and looked up to me. He worked hard at trying to please me. His father, Yona's husband, Bobby Redwolf, had died in an oilrig accident when the boy was one. I cared about the boy enough to try and hide the fact that every once in a while just being around him brought back memories of my Lo that I did not want to deal with.
Before going to bed, I checked my email for messages. There was one. They had not yet found a match to the one face we had. But the sheriff had decided to release to the press the details of finding Greg Carew’s body and had requested that anyone having any information about Greg or having seen his vehicle, please contact the sheriff’s department.
The sheriff had opted to not put the picture of the young man of interest on the news. He did not want to give the man the information that we were, in fact, looking for him.
Morning Ritual
October 27: 7:30 a.m.
I awoke from a dream in which I thought Lomahongva would be upset with me. In the dream, Shawna Edwards had smiled at me, and I realized I found Shawna attractive. Though there wasn't much to the dream, I found it disturbing.
I hadn't been on a date in what seemed a lifetime. I'd been a widower for six years and had thought more recently about dating, but I'd never gotten around to it. And I didn't think a woman as pretty as Shawna would be interested in me.
I tried to put the dream and Shawna out of my mind and get along with my morning ritual.
My mornings had started out pretty much the same on most days. I was used to just waking up at daylight. But now, with Blu, I had a morning wakeup call where the kitten would walk on my head and face, purring as he did so. If I wasn’t already awake, this usually did the job. I'd pet him a bit which increased the volume of his purring, and then Irene would begin jumping up on the right side of the queen-sized bed Lomahongva and I had shared, while Mariah whined on the other. Today, Blu woke me from the dream.
I took the dogs for a half-mile walk every morning. But first, if it had snowed during the night, something I can tell with a glance at the kitchen skylight, I would go out and clear the snow off the solar panels. Near the southern corner of the cabin stands a large tailings pile that rises to the level of the lower part of the cabin’s roof. This pile has a climbable slope, which allows me to walk across a 2 x 10 plank stretching from the top of the tailings pile to the roof to reach the panels. This morning I could tell there was just a dusting of snow on the skylight. Leaving Blu inside, I went outside with the dogs following me and grabbed a broom. Although the dogs were free to go out the dog door and roam at will, they preferred going on walks with me. Luckily, Blu had yet to figure out the dog door. The dogs stayed close to home during hunting season, as they did not like the sound of gunshots.
This morning they ran around the cabin while I swept the snow off the solar panels.
I enjoy our morning walks. It's a good way to wake up and think about what I need to do during the day. The walks also made the dogs more obedient. Dogs are pack animals, and, by leading the walk each morning, I established myself as the Alpha. We always went the same way. We’d set a well-worn path through the forest along an old logging trail to a spot where a big old tree stood. I called it the grandfather tree. Before Blu, I had another tuxedo cat named Wiley. He would sometimes follow us and then, suddenly, run ahead. On these occasions, we'd find him sitting by the grandfather tree when the dogs and I arrived.
Each day when we returned from our walk, I would give the dogs treats and begin my daily yoga exercises while I cooked breakfast on the wood stove.
Today, after breakfast, I hesitated about what to do next. I was reluctant to check the Internet. I doubted they'd found anything, and that would be upsetting.
And my dream nagged me. Lomahongva kept saying, "You don't want to think of me."
But she had not meant thinking of her in general. Rather, she was referring to thinking about when I was notified that she had died. They were not pleasant memories. So, since I seemed to be able to speak to her in this dream, I said yes, I don't want to remember those things. But she said, "You are not thinking with me." Which was something she said somewhat often when we argued.
The last thing she said before Blu woke me was, "You did not know it would be a bad memory when you opened the door before they told you of the bear."
I went online and checked for messages. There were none in my box. No progress had been made with locating the young man in the drawing.
I tried to think about what I could do next.
On The News
October 26: Noon
Nate Hanassey sat on a corner stool in the Oshkosh Bar & Grill and sliced open the sirloin steak that Bull Ryan, the bartender, had set before him. The place was well vented and smelled only faintly of beer. The scent of the steak filled Nate's nostrils. There were mushrooms to the side but no greens. Nate didn't like greens. He smiled seeing that it was pink inside and that its juices flowed freely. He smiled at Bull, a tall, stick-thin man with a mop of dirty light brown hair, and Bull nodded back. The Oshkosh was one of Nate's regular delivery stops on his beer route. He and Bull had an arrangement. The brewery's beer was very popular in Missoula. So every so often Nate slipped Bull an extra case in exchange for a steak. Nate made up the case by shorting one of his company's other customers where Nate was blackmailing the closet-homosexual who did the inventories. Nate wasn't too worried about having this catch up to him. Bull would never rat him out, and Nate didn't plan on keeping the delivery job forever.
Almost directly above and in front of Nate hung a wide-screen television set up to be visible to all the patrons at the bar. The news had just started, and, though Nate paid little attention to the news in general and never even looked at a newspaper, the young blonde woman on the screen with a model's body caught Nate's attention when she said, "And in breaking news, the body of a hunter, recently reported missing, has been found. According to the sheriff's department
, the hunter, Greg Carew, 38, died under suspicious circumstances. More after the break."
Nate somehow knew that this was going to be about the truck he and his friends had dumped. As he waited for the commercial to end, a very uneasy feeling made him lose his appetite.
The reporter lady had said 'hunter.' She had not said 'hunters.' There was always the possibility that this had nothing to do with the truck they had hit and caused to run off the road. But Nate didn’t believe that was the case.
The reporter came back on, and a moment later a shot of the truck they had run off the road appeared on the screen. A line of text beneath it read: 'Sheriff's Department Photo.'
"The body of Greg Carew, a hunter, missing with his daughter, Cassie, was found by the Garnet County Sheriff's Department yesterday. Carew's body was found in his truck in Lower Murkey Gulch in the Garnet Range. His fifteen-year-old-daughter, Cassie, also reported missing at the same time, has not been found. The sheriff's department is treating this as a suspicious death, and possible kidnapping. Anyone with any information about this is asked to contact the sheriff's department."
"Something wrong with it?" Bull Ryan asked as he came down the counter and saw that Nate had stopped eating.
Nate looked at him, confused for a moment, and then realized Bull was talking about the steak.
"No, it's great. But can you wrap it up for me? I gotta go."
"Sure, no problem."
"And can I use the phone in the office?"
Bull gave him a puzzled look.
"Local call. You know the boss don't let us take our cells with us on deliveries ever since that one guy hit that family while texting."
"Be my guest," Bull said.
Nate walked back into the office. Luckily there was a phone book by the desk phone. He almost tore the pages looking for the number. He always called Bobby's cell from his cell, speed dial 3. He had never called Bobby at work and did not know the number. When he found it, his hands shook as he dialed on the old-fashioned rotary phone.
Winslow- The Lost Hunters Page 9
