Winslow- The Lost Hunters

by David Francis Curran

  “But I have to get it back!” Yash repeated almost in tears.

  When I tried to explain that if Nate and Bobby saw the van and they realized they were being watched, that would ruin any chance of us finding the girl. Yash had just looked at me funny. Then he tried to argue that the bad guys were home for the night, and I had to tell him over and over we had no way to know that. Finally, he tried to assure me that they would be very careful not to be seen.

  I called Goldstone who ordered the young man to wait until the sheriff’s department decided it was safe to go back or face charges for impeding a sheriff’s investigation. (I suspected Goldstone was bluffing, but bluff or not, it worked.) I followed the van back to Missoula and insisted Rylee take a very upset Yash and somewhat upset Ken home, then drive the van to her apartment where she would keep the keys until contacted.

  But sleep evaded me, I kept hearing the young man, Yash, repeat over and over in his Indian accent, “But it is my responsibility to safeguard the Condor.”

  New Snow

  October 26: Afternoon

  Cassie had been listening to the young man breathe for what seemed like hours. His breathing had not changed. It held to a steady in and out rhythm that seemed strong. At least she told herself that.

  She had tried pouring a little water on his face to see if that would wake him, but that only caused him to shake a bit. His eyes never opened.

  She picked up the headlight and headed for the mine entrance. She wanted to be alone and get some fresh air.

  As she came into the chamber beneath the grate, she saw that it had snowed and the light was now dimmer than it had been. To her surprise, she found a new pile of supplies that had been left. She assumed her captor had left it when he dropped off the young man. In addition to the water bottles that she could see were beginning to freeze, there were some grocery bags. She realized she was starving. She moved eagerly toward the bags.

  After she had eaten a few pieces of the jerky that had been left, she focused again on the grate above her. The openings in the grate seemed to glow a gray-blue with the snow completely covering them. Snow had actually pushed through at the edges so that it seemed the grate had grown into the chamber.

  She looked at the grate for a moment then headed back to the chamber. She listened to the young man’s breathing as she passed him. It seemed the same. She went to the packrat’s nest and dug until she found a longer thin stick, then hurried back to the grate.

  She chose a spot in the center of the grate and pushed the stick through the grate. The stick pierced the snow easily. She pulled the stick back out, and snow from the small hole fell down on her. She stuck the stick back in and this time moved the stick as best she could in a circular motion, knocking snow out as she did so. This time when she pulled the stick out there was a small opening. Through the tiny inverted-funnel of the hole she’d made, she could see the sky and falling flakes of snow. She thrust the stick back in and began scraping the sides of that one section of grate. As she worked, section by section, her view of the sky slowly grew.

  An hour later Cassie sat down exhausted. A section of the grate about two feet square, sixteen sections, had been cleared of snow. It was like a small window in an igloo. Her arm was tired. But at least she could see the sky. She left the stick she used propped up against the wall by the entrance.

  As she carried one of the cases of water into the chamber, she was afraid she’d find the young man dead. But she heard his breathing before her headlight found him. He had not moved.

  She put the partly frozen case down and began moving the rest of the supplies in from the entrance.

  Too Many Coincidences

  October 30: Around 4 a.m.

  Nate woke in the driver’s seat. His head hurt. His mouth tasted like shit. It was still dark out, but a vehicle was approaching. He almost dismissed it as a hunter starting off early or trying to get to a stand before first light and was about to close his eyes, when the vehicle, going fast passed. Damn if it didn't look like that same damn van again.

  "What are you doing?" Bobby asked, awakened by the truck starting. "It’s still dark out."

  "Go back to sleep. I'm just curious about something."

  Bobby closed his eyes as Nate began to drive.

  Hours later, the sun just coming up, Nate urged Bobby on. The Native American kid, duct-taped in a kneeling position to a small tree, stared at Bobby defiantly. His hands were duct-taped behind his back, and the duct-tape around his neck barely let him move his head. The young man was helpless. He should have looked scared. But then he hadn't seen what Nate had done to his friend. Bobby's belt buckle was at the guy's eye level. He held Nate's 1911 .45 in his right hand.

  "Come on," Nate said almost cheerfully. "You got to watch me do the other guy. I've been wanting to see somebody do this since I saw that guy in the dueling banjos movie get away without doing it."

  Bobby began undoing his belt.

  "Yeah," Bobby said, "Because the hillbilly trying to do it died."

  Nate made a big show of looking around. "I don't see anyone around with a bow and arrow."

  "What if he bites me?"

  "That's why I gave you the gun," Nate said. He didn't mention that the gun, his, was unloaded. He didn't want Bobby to shoot the guy. He didn't want to have to look for casings and bullets.

  From A Nightmare

  October 30: Before Sunrise

  I dreamt that Lomahongva was sitting on a snow-covered stump among pine trees whose branches hung so heavy in snow they drooped. Tears flowed from her eyes. Her long black hair was covered in white flakes. I ran up to her and took her hands. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Aren’t you cold?” She wore only a white deerskin dress.

  “I am not cold,” she said in that voice I missed so much. “I cry for the young men.”

  “If young men are lost, I will find them,” I said, trying to reassure her. “You know I am good at finding.”

  “No, my wild wind. You cannot find them. They are here in this forest with me where you can find neither them nor me.”

  I woke then to the sound of buzzing that I thought at first was an alarm clock. I had set my alarm for 8:30 a.m. when I was to get in touch with Goldstone to see what the day's plan would be. Now I realized it was my phone. I jumped up from bed and ran to get it, but it stopped ringing just as I picked it up.

  My missed calls had a number showing I did not quite remember seeing before. I pushed the buttons, and the phone rang once before it was picked up.

  “Hello?” a very anxious and familiar voice asked.

  “You called me?”

  “Deputy Doyle, Winslow?”

  “Yes. Rylee?” I asked recognizing the voice and the slight French accent.

  “Yes. This is Rylee,” she said. There was relief in her voice, but she still sounded very anxious.

  “Why did you call?"

  “The van’s gone,” she said. I was about to interrupt when she rushed on, “I jog every morning at 6:30. I found a note on my door this morning, and the van gone. Yash apparently had an extra set of keys for the van. His note said he couldn’t wait, that it was 3 a.m., and he and Ken were going to get the drone and be back at 7:10 to pick me up so I could drive again."

  Goldstone had told them he wouldn't be using them again. They must have thought that if they showed up, he would let them help.

  “It’s twenty to eight, and he’s not here. I have a very bad feeling.”

  “Could he be home sleeping?”

  “I can see his and Ken’s apartment from here. They started rooming together once they started working together. I didn't see the van. So I called. When they didn’t answer, I went and knocked on their door. There was no answer. I pounded on the door for a full minute.”

  “And they left at three in the morning?” I asked, having a very bad feeling myself.

  “That’s what it says.”

  “Thank you, Rylee. If they do show up call me immediately. Otherwise, I'm going to have t
o assume the worst, and so I’ll be looking for them.”

  “Winslow?” Rylee said. Something about her tone made me think this wasn’t going to be good.

  “I have a confession to make.”

  “What? I don’t understand,” I said, having no idea what she’d have to confess.

  “Yesterday, when we went to retrieve the Condor, the first time when the battery ran out. We ran into the red truck. I mean the driver saw us and stopped and asked if we were lost. He didn’t see Yash or Ken, but he saw me, and he saw the van. I should have told you yesterday.”

  “Yes, you should have,” I said sternly, knowing that if I had known that I might have acted differently.

  When I explained what had happened to Goldstone on my way to the coordinates where the drone had gone down, he was understandably upset. When I tried to take the blame, saying I was concerned Yash might try something like this, he stopped me.

  “We can’t babysit every citizen that might do something stupid. I need you at your best, and that means getting a good night's sleep. What's going to hit the fan here is me allowing civilians in on an investigation. If something has happened to those students, I'm the one screwed. Let’s just hope they broke their legs, or something, hiking through the woods in the dark.”

  "Or they just got stuck in this new snow," I said. "That van didn't have super high clearance."

  We were both silent a moment thinking about that when Goldstone spoke again. “Maybe we can get the GPS location of that van itself since we don’t know where they parked. I’ll check and get back to you if I can. Let’s hope you can get a signal there.”

  Even though it was a Monday, there were some tracks in the new snow. The numbers of hunters around always tapered off during the week, but there were plenty of hunters who took the first week or two of hunting season off as their vacation. The thing I worried about was that Ken and Yash had driven in while the new snow was falling. That meant if they went off the beaten track their tracks might now be covered up making finding the van if it went off road while the snow was falling difficult to find.

  The road closest to the location I had for the downed drone didn’t even have a name, it was simply called road 1893. There appeared to be but one set of tire tracks in the new snow before I got there. They were too close together to be the van’s. Either the van had been here and left, or the young men, not knowing the area at all, had not figured out that this was the best way in.

  I had dressed in my hunter’s blaze orange jacket and threw my Ruger No. 1, a one shot rifle chambered for the .300 Weatherby with a Nikon scope, over my shoulder by the strap to look the part of a hunter. I never needed more than one shot when I hunted. If I thought I’d need more than one, I didn’t shoot. A producer once wanted me to be a guide on a hunting show on a cable channel. I refused. I hated the shows where the guide took a rich man out and gave him a shot at an elk or bear and then had to tell the guy to shoot again because he’d missed or just wounded the animal. In my book, if you couldn’t kill game with one shot you should not be hunting.

  Another thing I didn't do that many hunters did all the time was use my rifle’s scope as a telescope. I didn’t point my rifle unless I intended to shoot it. I had a pair of 50x binoculars and used these to scan the area in front of me. All I saw was white snow, dark cylinders of tree trunks and some small trees. To me, the distance from where I was to where the drone had landed wasn’t very far as it was under a mile in. To city people like Yash and Ken, traveling over rough ground, that could be a very long way.

  Since I’m tall and hike quite a bit, three and a half miles per hour is an easy gait for me on level roads in the winter. I can do two-and-a-half miles per hour with snowshoes on fairly level ground. But it took me almost forty-five minutes to reach a spot near where the drone had landed. Climbing gullies and clinging to stumps to keep from stumbling down steep slopes on slick snow made progress slow. Finally, I came to a spot at the top of a ravine where I could glass the area where the drone had landed on the far side. I scanned the area with my binoculars. There was no sign of the drone, but it looked as if the snow had been disturbed in the area.

  When I got to the spot ten minutes later, I could make out the shape of indistinct tracks beneath the new snow. It looked as if two people had found the drone, picked it up, and carried it over the top of the ravine. I began following the tracks.

  At the top of the ridge, the wind had leveled the snow and covered the tracks. But by walking around in a wide semi-circle, I was able to pick up the faint tracks again. The boys had obviously had a hard time getting across the sloppy ground. There were a number of indications where one had fallen and then dragged the other down with him.

  I tracked them for almost a mile and a half, losing their tracks from time to time, but finding them by logic and in one case a big sweep of the area. An hour after finding the spot where the drone landed, I stood at the top of a ridge and looked down on the Condor team’s van. It was parked in a little cul-de-sac hidden from the main road by a turn through some trees.

  Using my binoculars, I glassed the van and the road behind it. There was snow on the van’s roof. Behind the van, snow had filled in its tracks. It would have been very hard to locate if I’d been searching from the main road. But what bothered me was that there was no sign of movement in or about the van. Again I had that sinking feeling as I made my way toward it.

  When I was ten feet away, I called out as loudly as I could, hoping the two had just fallen asleep inside it. “Yash? Ken? You guys in there?”

  A gust of wind blowing particles of new snow was my only reply.

  I went to the driver’s door and knocked hard. The metallic thump was swallowed by the wind and snow. I knocked hard three more times. I hoped I’d see a head peek through the opening behind the seats. But no head appeared. The silence from the van was total. When I had been in the van watching the screen with them, overhead lights had been on. There were no lights on now.

  Had they left? Where would they go?

  I walked to the back of the van. When I looked down at the snow behind the van to check the tracks, my heart sank. In the snow just where the double doors came together, a thick red substance dripped into the snow creating a brownish-crimson stain on the white surface.

  Careful not to step in what I was sure was blood, I tried the handle on the right-hand door. It did not move.

  I went back to the driver’s door. It was also locked. I went to the passenger door and this opened. I stepped up into the van and looked back toward the console.

  Yash Havish’s upper body lay draped over the console. The computer screens that had been on it had been pushed off to the floor. His hands were duct-taped to the far edges of the table. His pants and underwear hung from one shoeless foot on the floor of the van. His legs were splayed wide, held by duct-tape wound around his ankles and the console’s legs. Some blood hung on the inside of his right thigh running from the direction of his anus. The van wall behind the console had been sprayed with blood. I turned away feeling sick. The young man had had his throat cut while he was being raped. There was no sign of Ken in the truck.

  I got out of the van as quickly as I could and sucked in air. I didn’t want to be sick, but I knew sometimes your body decided that for you. Once I felt myself again, I walked toward a copse of trees off to the far side of the cul-de-sac. I found Ken Sweethorse a minute later.

  Most people remember three things from the movie Deliverance, the music, Ned Beatty playing the role of Bobby, being told to squeal like a pig as he was being raped, and Jon Voight as Ed bound to a tree with his belt around his neck and the tree. Whoever had bound Ken to this five-inch thick lodge pole had used duct-tape. His hands were taped behind his back and to the tree. The duct-tape went around the trunk and his neck.

  Half the top of his head had been caved in. Blood ran down the side of his face to his shoulder. There was also blood around his mouth and blood dripping from it. I thought I caught a glimpse of some
thin rubber material in his teeth. I could guess what had happened.

  To Nightmare

  October 30 Late Morning

  I held the crime scene until the forensic team arrived. Tom Bedder arrived shortly after and drove me back to my Jeep. The plan was for each of us to drive around in our separate vehicles hoping to find some sign of the red truck.

  When I got to the entrance to the dead end we’d watched Nate and Bobby drive down the day before, new snow showed no one had driven down the road recently. I drove in anyway because I remembered a hidden turnoff just before the dead end. When I reached the turnoff, it, too, was covered with snow.

  I got out of my Jeep and walked in a ways. The road twisted and turned a bit but then dropped downhill through open ground. At the top of the hill, I could see no one had been that way in some time.

  Later, I called Bedder. He had not had any luck either. I called Sheriff Goldstone.

  After reporting that neither Bedder nor I had seen any sign of the truck, Goldstone said, “Maybe that kid bit one of them bad enough they needed to go to a doctor or hospital.”

  “Can you check that?” I asked.

  “I have been. But, unlike gunshot wounds, bites don’t have to be reported.”

  “What about searching Billy’s trailer? Those two found something in the bathroom wastebasket that gave them an idea where Billy was. It might still be there.”

  Goldstone was silent for a long time. Finally, he said, “We don’t have a warrant. That would be an illegal search.” I understood. On one hand, an innocent girl’s life might still be in danger. On the other two innocent students had been brutally murdered, and anything that might interfere with the conviction of the people involved could not be tolerated. By the way he said it, I took him to mean that searching Billy’s house was something he really wanted to do.