Winslow- The Lost Hunters

by David Francis Curran

  'Wow," she said, "We're color coordinated."

  When I looked confused, she touched the lime green shirt I had bought that afternoon and then her own blouse. They were almost identical in color.

  "I thought we were supposed to be," I said with a smile.

  The laugh I got back was beautiful. She'd told me the dance was informal and that she'd be wearing jeans and a blouse. I had bought the shirt and new black jeans that afternoon. The fact that the shirts matched was just a coincidence, but a nice one.

  "Let me introduce you to Jim Bridges," Shawna said. She led me to a tall man with a long face in his mid-thirties who reminded me a bit of actor John Wayne. "Jim," Shawna said, “This is Winslow Doyle who you spoke to on the phone."

  Bridges held out his hand, and his grip was firm. He didn't try to squeeze mine too hard, and I liked that. "Good to put a face to the name," Bridges said. "You are a deputy in the sheriff's department?"

  "Just for now. Mostly I look for lost dogs."

  Bridges nodded as if he understood. It was awkward.

  "Come on, I want to dance," Shawna said and led me away.

  Luckily for me neither Shawna nor I were experienced dancers, so we were able to enjoy just moving around on the dance floor doing whatever felt right.

  Over the course of the evening, she introduced me to a number of people, none of whom I knew or had heard of.

  After dancing for a while, Shawna asked if I'd like to get some air.

  We walked out and crossed the hotel parking lot to the park that bordered the river. Light gleamed in the windows of buildings at the university. The river was a dark ribbon between the snow-covered banks. It gave a low roar that filled the cold night air.

  “You know, when I was in my teens, we got a channel that showed reruns of a show from the sixties called Stoney Burke. Jack Lord starred in it playing a rodeo cowboy. I loved that show because Stoney, no matter what happened to him, would not let go of his dream to be the champion bronco rider. You look a bit like him in that role.”

  “I try to avoid horses whenever possible,” I said.

  “I had a crush on Jack Lord back then,” Shawna said, with a teasing smile.

  "How did you come to work for the FWP?" I asked to change the subject.

  "My father worked for them for 27 years," Shawna said. "I followed in his footsteps so to speak."

  "Is he still a game warden?"

  "No, he died just before I joined up."

  "I'm sorry," I said, embarrassed.

  "I was sorry to hear your wife died. For me, with my Dad, it's been awhile and it doesn't hurt as much now." She shook her head. "Sorry, I didn't want to bring up stuff like that."

  "That's okay."

  I usually hated it when people brought up my Lomahongva. They had good intentions, most of them. But it made me feel like I was begging for sympathy. But with Shawna, it seemed like we were sharing a sense of loss.

  I tried to change the subject again. "Isn't Tim here?" I asked.

  Shawna gave me a wry smile. "He has never been very comfortable at an event like this."

  At the end of the evening, since we had driven separately after all, I walked her to her vehicle. It was an early 2000s Subaru Forester that looked like it had just been washed. Dents on the lower portions of the vehicle indicated to me it had been driven a lot in Montana's wilder areas.

  "I had a really nice time," Shawna said.

  "I did too," I said, and it was the truth.

  Suddenly, she leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. She was almost as tall as me so didn't have to stand on tiptoe to do it. I kissed back with my arms at my side. Shawna's arms came up and went around my neck. I put my arms around her back and pulled her in. The kiss lasted for a beautifully long time, and then she pushed away.

  "Good night," she said. “Call me.”

  All I could do was nod. Still feeling her lips on mine, I watched her drive away.

  A Plan

  October 25: Mid-Afternoon

  Since he had dropped off the supplies and looked at her sleeping on the floor of the mine, ’The Girl’ was the only thing on Billy Wesley’s mind.

  Now, as he pulled into the parking lot of the Hardware Super Center, he was formulating a plan.

  Before he dragged her there, he used the jack from the Chevy truck to prop up the grate. The grate was so heavy, he couldn’t even budge it himself, so he figured he didn't need any kind of a lock. But he had worried that she somehow might be able to get the grate up and escape. Prior to lowering her into the mine, he’d laid her down in the snow and taken her boots and socks off. Her gloves had been on the seat of the truck, and he’d left them there. Without anything to keep her feet or hands warm, she wouldn’t, he thought, try to get away in the cold and snow. He’d taken her wallet to make her harder to identify, but he hadn't looked in it. He didn’t even know her name.

  He'd left the jack, her boots, everything hidden in the rocks near the grate. He’d used the jack again when he brought the sleeping bag and other supplies. But for his ultimate plan to work, he knew he needed something different to open the grate since he was going to be going down into the mine with her.

  In the store, he found what he needed: a 12-volt, portable, battery-operated winch, some sections of steel cable, the hardware needed to connect the cable to the winch, and a heavy-duty marine battery. He also bought an 8' x 10' white poly-tarp.

  His next stop was Walmart. Sooner or later someone was going to find the Chevy, so he’d been listening to the news on the radio in addition to watching it on television. So far the truck and the body had apparently not been found. Still, he kept an eye out for Nate or Bobby. He'd avoided them since they got back and didn't want to speak to them. He knew they should be at work, but you never knew. He found the most important thing on his list first: a box of plastic bags that came with snap ties like the ones that cops used instead of handcuffs when there were more detainees than available cuffs. After that, he quickly gathered up the rest of the things on his list ranging from energy bars to water, checked out, and drove downtown.

  Warren Jenkins dealt drugs. Billy didn’t like the idea of going to him, but “War,” as he was called, was the only drug dealer that Billy knew that had never had anything to do with his brother or Nate Hanassey. For a while, as a teenager, Billy'd been a regular pot customer of War's.

  Driving into downtown Missoula made Billy a little nervous, as there was always the possibility that he could run into Nate who made deliveries to the downtown bars.

  War had a basement apartment in an old two-story building near the tracks, and Billy got there without seeing any sign of Nate’s delivery truck.

  At War's an old concrete stairway led down to a solid steel door. Billy gave the door three hard knocks with his fist and waited, standing in front of the peephole.

  He was thinking of leaving after five minutes. He could not knock again. War didn’t like people knocking on his door over and over. But then the door swung open, and he found himself staring into the muzzle of a Glock .380 auto. Behind the gun, War stood, naked from the waist up and smiling.

  Billy swallowed. “What the hell is with the gun?” he asked, trying to act braver than he felt. “You could see it was me through the peephole.”

  “Just making sure you don’t have a backup of narcs around,” War said. Billy always thought War’s face with his dark hair and hooked nose made him look like an Indian brave--or maybe a skinny Italian gangster. But War’s head had the only skin showing that wasn’t seventy percent ink. The rest of his almost athletic upper body was covered in tattoos of all kinds. They weren’t jailhouse tattoos. War had never spent a day in jail, much less prison. Artists with talent did these. The face of Albert Einstein on War’s left shoulder always caught Billy’s eye.

  War poked his head out the door and glanced around in all directions. Satisfied that there were no narcs lurking, he gestured with the gun for Billy to come in.

  “Haven’t seen your ass in a w
hile, Wesley. What are you looking for?"

  War kept his condo dark with heavy curtains covering the windows. A stick of jasmine incense burned in a stone Buddha.

  “Something to really knock somebody out,” Billy said nervously.

  A wide smile broke across War’s face.

  “Nothing too dangerous. Something mild. To help her sleep.”

  “I heard about your brother taking the rap for that girl.”

  Billy said nothing.

  “You didn’t talk so we're good.” War nodded. “I can fix you up.”

  A little later Billy handed War three twenty dollar bills for three white pills in a small paper bag. Afterwards, he headed home, feeling sick. The purchase brought back memories of the incident with Amy.

  Revelations

  February 15: 2013

  The girl War had been referring to was Amy Wizzick. Billy had been introduced to Amy by War at a rave. A lifeguard at the time, working at the municipal pool for the summer, Billy'd gone to the rave to purchase pot from War. Amy, an attractive, slightly overweight redhead, had been swaying to the music near War as Billy made his purchase and seemed to take an instant liking to Billy and his lifeguard tan. She asked Billy to dance, and just as he started to follow her out onto the dance floor, War pulled Billy back. When Amy was out of earshot, War'd shouted into Billy's ear that he'd just slipped Amy some ‘E’ with a time-release surprise. Patting Billy on the back, War then gave him a gentle push out onto the floor.

  Billy had never had sex with anyone, but he'd heard girls who took ecstasy always wanted to have sex. As Amy began bouncing about the floor, Billy pulled her close and shouted in her ear that he had some very good weed and would she like to go to his place to smoke some. Amy had agreed.

  Billy was living with Bobby at the time in an apartment rented by Bobby. Both their parents had died in a car accident when Billy was fifteen. Bobby, twenty-two at the time, had taken Billy in. Bobby slept in its one bedroom, and Billy slept on a pullout couch in the living room. Billy and Amy had shared a joint in his car on the five-minute ride to Bobby’s apartment. In the apartment, there was a note to Billy on a table by the door saying Bobby was out and didn’t know if he’d be back that night or not.

  Assuming it was Billy’s, Amy pulled Billy into Bobby’s bedroom and began kissing him. To his surprise, she put her tongue in his mouth.

  After a few minutes where Billy’d been exploring her mouth with his tongue, Amy broke off the kiss and pushed his face away.

  Billy looked at her confused.

  “Listen,” Amy said seriously, “I don’t want to fuck. Will you promise you’re not going to try and force me?”

  “Yeah,” Billy said.

  “And I can’t spend the night. My parents will kill me if I’m not in bed in the morning.”

  “Okay, I promise I’ll get you home.”

  “Good,” she said and touched his lips with the forefinger of her right hand.

  “Then, if I let you suck on my nipples, you’ll promise no actual sex?”

  Billy’s eyes went wide. “Yes,” he said, and he meant it. He had kissed a few girls after dates, and he’d necked just a bit with Mary Walsh once but nothing like this. He was actually beginning to like this girl.

  “You promise?” Amy asked. “You won’t try to go farther?”

  “I promise,” Billy had said. “Until we get married, or you say it’s okay.”

  “Married?” she said, somewhat alarmed.

  “I promise,” Billy said, embarrassed. “No actual sex.”

  She’d started undoing the buttons on her blouse, and he’d tried to help. Awkwardly they’d gotten her blouse off, tearing the last button off in the process and then, with her help, he’d managed to unhook her bra, which snapped in front and bared the front of her chest. Billy had no sooner brought his lips to her flesh near her left nipple when Amy seemed to collapse.

  “Hey, hey,” he had said, shaking her. But she didn’t move.

  Billy shook her. He slapped her face lightly. Her chest rose and fell, so she was breathing, but she was not awake.

  He realized, then, that the surprise War said he slipped her was probably some kind of delayed action roofie. Less than an hour had passed since he’d met the girl. Billy was harder than he'd ever been. Amy lay there with her breasts bare before him. She would have jerked him off at least, wouldn’t she?

  He began unbuckling his belt. But before he could pull his pants down, something inside him stopped him. No actual sex he’d promised. He didn’t know if that meant a hand job, but he couldn’t ask her.

  He left Amy in his brother’s bedroom and went out to the couch where he’d relieved himself of his throbbing erection before going to sleep.

  Unfortunately, Bobby came home after all sometime later completely drunk. He'd gone into his bedroom, shut and locked the door as he normally did, stripped, and fell asleep next to Amy on the bed without even realizing she was there.

  When Amy awoke in the morning, sunlight streaming in through the window, she found herself partially undressed with a naked older man lying on top of her left arm in a strange bed. Terrified that trying to move would awaken him, she had taken her cell-phone out of the pocket of the shorts she found she still had on and dialed 911. She had no memory of meeting the man next to her the night before. When asked what her emergency was, she'd simply whispered a desperate, "Help!"

  When the police knocked loudly on Bobby’s apartment door, Amy had screamed and struggled to free her pinned arm in an effort to escape. Bobby woke, and confused by the screaming girl, grabbed her. The police found, when they broke in the front door and then the door to Bobby’s bedroom, a naked man holding a partially-clad, screaming girl.

  The police also found a framed coin collection in the apartment that had been recently taken in a burglary. Bobby told them he’d found it in an alley and had been looking in the paper for a posting by the person who lost it.

  The police at the scene wanted to arrest Billy, too. After finding him naked, hiding in a closet, covered in dried semen, they instantly assumed he'd been part of what they were to call a sex kidnapping.

  The police didn’t have any evidence that linked either Billy or Bobby to the burglary where the coin collection was taken. Amy went to the hospital and was examined for rape, and no evidence was found that she had been sexually assaulted. But Amy was fifteen. Bobby could be charged with statutory rape.

  When they threatened to charge Billy and Bobby with kidnapping, Bobby told the cops that Billy had had nothing to do with the girl in the room. Then Bobby confessed he'd blacked out and did not remember bringing the underage girl there for sex.

  They let Billy go. Later, when Billy pleaded with Bobby to let him tell the police the real story, Bobby refused. They wanted him for the burglary they couldn’t prove. Billy had had nothing to do with that. Pressured, too, by threats to prosecute his brother, Bobby sacrificed himself to keep his baby brother out of prison.

  A Stop At Home

  October 25: 2:16 p.m.

  In the bathroom of his rented trailer, with the kitchen radio tuned in to the news station, Billy looked in the mirror and decided that an initial unshaven appearance fit in best with the story he’d planned to tell ‘the girl.’

  Now a memory returned to him. Before their truck had hit the girl’s, she'd looked right at them. He could remember seeing her eyes and her shock at the realization of what was about to happen. The memory of that scared look on her face touched him. But this feeling of empathy for her was one he could not afford, and he shook it away. He was going to have to choose between her and his brother...unless he could figure something else out.

  As he put his shaving things away, he thought about what else he'd have to do before leaving. He’d already put the pills he’d purchased from War in his shirt pocket. Three plastic garbage bag fasteners he'd removed from the box of garbage bags were in his left front jacket pocket. He'd checked to make sure that the winch worked with the marine bat
tery he bought. To his surprise, the winch had been much quieter than he expected. Now all of that equipment was back in his Ford Explorer.

  He reached into this pocket and took his wallet out. Should he leave it here? No, that wouldn’t work. He'd have to have his wallet when he met the hunter who would supposedly put him in the mine. But he should get rid of the receipts for his recent purchases. He took them out and threw them in the wastebasket. Taking a few pulls on the toilet paper roll, he tore off enough toilet paper to bury the receipts out of sight.

  “Here goes,” he said to himself in the mirror.

  Before going outside, he took two wire hangers from his clothes closet, then rummaged around in his dresser until he found the infrared game locator he'd purchased a year before. He hadn't used it much and didn't even know if they were still legal. The device detected heat and could be used to locate wounded game. He put new batteries in it before putting it and the wire cutting pliers he grabbed from his tool drawer in his right front jacket pocket.

  On the way to his car, he had to wonder if he’d ever see his trailer again.

  Preparations

  October 25: 4:13 p.m.

  Billy Wesley pulled into the dead end near the mine. Before he killed the engine of his Ford Explorer, he glanced at the digital clock on his dashboard. The clock read 4:13 p.m..

  Although he wouldn’t try to go into the mine until early in the morning, he wanted to approach the mine in daylight to get his game hoist set up and ready for his early morning descent. He used the sled to pull the winch, battery, cables, and hardware he'd bought up to the mine. He left the supplies for later.