by Rick Mofina
Zander entered the task force room where the others were waiting. Mugs of fresh black coffee, thick closed file folders and clear notepads sat before them at a large table. The tension was suffocating. He paced, stopping to stare at the large TV, taking in the soft sounds of the latest on the case from CNN. He tapped the corner of the monitor, then switched it to 00, the special channel Agent Clovis had set up. The screen was still black. He switched the set off as Maleena Crow arrived.
“Have a seat.” Zander’s tone was neutral.
Her chair scraped the floor. No one spoke. A search helicopter flew overhead. No one spoke of the surreal twists of the case. Even having Crow present before they went at Emily was unusual.
The young lawyer reasoned that the FBI was striving to see that every aspect of their investigation, no matter how wrong-headed it was, went by the book and then some.
Emily arrived with Bowman, who helped her to the same position she had taken before.
“Would you like coffee or anything?” Bowman asked.
“Just some water, please.” Emily cleared her throat.
Bowman set a small plastic cup before her. Zander, folded his arms and began.
“Emily Baker, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law….”
She bowed her head and wept softly.
This was not real. What is happening? Is Paige dead? Where is Doug? Oh God.
“You have the right to consult an attorney and have them present with you while you are being questioned. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed to represent you before any questioning. Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?”
Emily nodded slowly. Tears streamed down her face.
“Please answer.”
“Yes, I understand my rights.”
“Knowing your rights, are you willing to answer our questions without an attorney present?”
Emily stared at her cup, blinking through her tears, looking toward the window, the mountains, rubbing her nose and nodding.
“Yes.”
“Emily, no!” Crow was startled. “Emily, no! I advise you--”
Emily was puzzled.
“That’s enough, Ms. Crow, please leave us,” Zander said.
“Who are you?” Emily asked. “Who is she?”
Standing, Crow scowled at Zander, “I am Doug’s lawyer.”
“What!” Emily glared at Bowman. This is a betrayal. “You never…no one told me Doug has a lawyer. Has he been charged?”
“Emily, do you want an attorney present?” Zander thundered.
“No.”
“No?” Crow was incredulous. “Emily I advise you--”
“Get out now, Ms. Crow. You are interfering.”
Emily slammed her palms on the table, her cup jumped without spilling.
“Please. I just want to find Paige. I do not need a lawyer for that. I don’t care what they think or suspect. I do not care.” Eyes wide, she looked into her empty hands. “All I want to know is if I will ever hold my daughter in my arms again. I’ll answer any questions for that. Oh, please, I--” Emily covered her face with her hands. “Why does Doug have a…oh God…let me talk to my husband. Can I please talk to Doug?”
No one answered her.
“Emily, this is a mistake,” Crow called as she was escorted from the room. Zander closed the door behind her.
Bowman passed Emily a tissue.
The only sound to be heard in the room was Emily’s sobbing.
Zander let several long tension-filled moments pass before he asked his first question.
“Emily, it’s been five days since Paige disappeared. The rangers know that region. They have been scouring it relentlessly, even risking injury. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canadian officials are doing the same on the Canadian side of the park. Now, why do you suppose we have not found any trace of Paige or her dog? Why is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Now, why is it we did not find out about your connection to your sister’s death in the same region of the park, twenty-two years ago, and your connection to Isaiah Hood?”
“It was a very painful part of my life. Very painful.”
“So you admit keeping that from us when we asked you to tell us everything about your history, anything that might help us understand what happened to Paige?”
“I did not even tell my husband. It was very painful. Doug will tell you. Has he told you?”
“He has told us things.”
“What things?” Where is he? There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“What is the real reason you came to Montana with your family, Emily?”
“To deal with my sister’s death, the deaths of my parents. My counselor told me if I was here when Isaiah Hood was executed, I could use his ending as a turning point, as a way to put it all behind me.”
“Or try to get away with it again.”
“What?” Emily began weeping. “I cannot understand…why--”
Suddenly, a radio crackled.
“This is Clovis to Zander. Over.”
Zander reached for his radio, quietly acknowledging Clovis’s call from the crevasse.
Clovis then reported: “All set to broadcast here. Over.”
Zander moved closer to Emily.
“You and Doug have been evasive and deceptive from the beginning. But here are the facts.” Zander was leaning on the table, his face inches from Emily. “We found Paige’s T-shirt. Bloodstained.” Zander thumped the table with his forefinger, causing Emily to flinch. “We found Doug’s ax. Bloodstained.” Zander thumped the table again. Emily raised her hands to her ears. “You and Doug tell us either one of you could have been alone with Paige for hours, unseen by anyone. What you’ve done is given each other convenient alibis that are difficult to challenge. Then we find disturbing questions have been raised about your involvement in your sister’s death in the very same area and in the very same fashion as Paige’s case.”
“No.”
“Only a few days before you came here, the San Francisco Police Department was called to your house. A neighbor reported Doug was violent.”
“No, that was a misunderstanding.”
“We also learned that a student at Doug’s school has accused him of a violent outburst, of striking her, in the days before you came here.”
“No. I didn’t know that--”
Striking a student? Doug? No.
“Twenty-four hours before Paige vanishes, your family is witnessed having a heated argument on the trail.”
“That was about me. It had nothing to do with--”
“And we found some blood, tiny drops of blood, and some of Paige’s hair near the mouth of a remote crevasse, just under two miles from your campsite. Soon we’ll put it all together and you can tell us what went wrong and how.”
“Oh God.” Emily began shrieking. “She’s not d-d--”
Zander switched on the room’s large TV, turning to 00, nodding to Bowman, who raised her radio to her mouth. “Go ahead, Clovis.”
A blurring image began swimming on the screen, filled with static.
“Can you hear us, task force? Over.” Clovis’s voice was tinny but clear.
“We hear you fine. Go ahead, Rob. Over.”
“OK, we’ve just set up and we’ll start lowering the camera. It’s going to take time. Over.”
“Can you tell us anything at this point? Over,” Zander said.
“Roger. We dropped a vapor probe. Early indications are there is definitely a body mass down there. Confirmed.”
Zander’s eyes burned into Emily’s.
Her face went white.
SIXTY-TWO
High atop the treacherous fissured cliffside of Sector 23, the ultra-soft hum of a lightweight gas-powered generator traveled throughout the glacial valley and alpine forests.
Members of the FBI’s ERT worked quietly at the mouth of the crevas
se where traces of Paige Baker’s blood and hair had been discovered.
Special Agent Rob Clovis knew it was a critical procedure. The probe would determine the outcome of the investigation. He felt the weight of it on his shoulders. In twenty years of duty, he had been called out to work on some difficult FBI operations, but he had never attempted anything quite like this. He looked at his watch again. It seemed he was looking at it every five minutes well aware Frank Zander and the other investigators were counting on ERT.
No one beyond the people atop the cliff and the task force knew about the probe. The massive search operation for Paige Baker in all other sectors was ongoing and would not be officially terminated until Clovis and the evidence team concluded their work here.
Clovis surveyed the area, again grappling between his professional expectations and private emotions. It was an ideal location to dispose of a body. A small body. The mouth opened wide to swallow it into an eternal abyss. He tried to block out the images of her slipping and scraping down into the darkness. He had two granddaughters about the same age as Paige Baker.
Imagine the condition her corpse will be in. What kind of monster would…
Clovis shifted his thoughts to inventory the equipment, anxious about its reliability. Much of it had been put together urgently for this emergency by the high-tech company in Mountain View. The stuff was not field-tested. There had been no time.
The generator was a new model with a microprocessor that controlled its sine-wave inverter, greatly reducing voltage fluctuations and wave distortion. It had an output of 3,000 watts to power the highly sensitive remote-controlled fiber-optic probe and video transmission system that was linked to a network of satellites. The two thousand feet of flexible hybrid cable was coiled on a spool straddled over the crevasse. Controls for it and the tiny camera at the end of it were linked to a powerful computer and monitors.
Clovis watched as the technician, wearing a headset microphone to narrate, used the keyboard to command the drop rate of the camera, pivot and focus, retrieving images and displaying them on the computer screen and monitors at the work table, which were connected in tandem. At the same time, with a two-to-three second delay factor, the images and his narration were transmitted to the large TV in the task force room at the command center.
“We’re ready,” the technician advised Clovis, who nodded.
This better work, Clovis told himself, hoping he could trust the untried system.
He heard a dog’s yelp. It was Lola, the shepherd who found the site. Her handler, the kid from Colorado, soothed her. He sat off to the side with the rangers, SAR people and paramedics. All were somber.
Clovis knew the work from this point on would be meticulous. The process would be agonizingly slow, moving at a rate of a few inches or feet every few minutes.
The screen showed nothing but sweating black rock as the tiny camera slowly descended.
Clovis and the task force at the command center were riveted to their monitors.
Yes, this was a perfect place to dispose of a body.
Perfect.
SIXTY-THREE
Isaiah Hood stood in his death cell and rubbed his stomach tenderly, taking comfort in feeling the small lump of hardness near his navel.
Soon. Very soon.
“Feeling alright, Isaiah?” his deathwatch guard asked.
Hood nodded, careful to display the precise measure of discomfort on his face.
Biting his lip, studying the closed-circuit TV, the guard was wary. Determined to have no incidents of any sort on his watch, he reviewed his options. He knew Hood’s medical history and risk of seizures. Most officers in the death row housing unit did. He heeded DOC policies and procedures.
“Want the nurse or Medical Services, Isaiah?”
Because the law requires we keep you healthy for your execution.
Hood shook his head.
The keyboard clicked as the guard entered the small development into the death watch activity log. Then his phone rang. “Really?” he said. “Fine, I’ll ask him.” He replaced the handset. “Isaiah, seems your lawyer is live on CNN discussing your case. Would you like to watch it?”
Hood nodded.
Then David Cohen was there before him, telling America about his case.
“…the governor to reconsider his position on the fate of my client, Isaiah Hood, whose execution is set to go ahead at midnight tonight.”
“Why?”
“On what basis, Mr. Cohen?”
“What’s your reason for...”
“You’re referring to her so-called confessional letters?”
“Sir, are you implying that Emily Baker murdered her sister?”
Yes, that’s right, David. Hood smiled to himself.
The cameras captured Emily Baker escorted by the FBI from a helicopter; then they once again showed Hood’s picture, Paige Baker’s picture, the prison, the gurney, and an old photograph of the dead girl from over twenty years ago.
The only girl who ever agreed to be Hood’s friend.
He stared at her eyes, feeling everything around him dissolving into a bright light.
The guard’s jaw dropped.
Isaiah’s eyes rolled back. Just the whites were visible. His arms rose from his sides, extending before him.
Jesus Christ he’s going into one of the friggin’ trances.
“Isaiah!”
He feels her little wrists in his hands. Smell the sweet forest-scented breezes sweeping up to the cliff as she gasps, sobs and pleads for her life. She is so light in his large hands. Her little feet dangle, kick.
It is just a game. One where he can strike fear in the heart of a weaker thing. He has learned that from his father.
The hooks.
Those rounded, steel, hard hooks hammering his forearms, his shoulders, his neck, his head. One day, a direct blow connected like lightning, exploding in his brain. His eyes blinded with a painful white flash.
He ran from the house and spent the next few days alone in the mountains. So painfully alone. All of his life he had no one but the mountains. His head hurt so god-awful bad he thought his skull had split and his life and thoughts were leaking out. He had a hard time concentrating. Forming a thought. The whole time he ached to be with someone. Anyone to play his game.
Just a game.
He’d played it before with the dog, then the rabbit.
But it didn’t feel right.
They did not walk on air.
Then he came upon the butterfly girls with bright eyes.
The big one did not want to play. But the little one did.
She comes to him right away.
Eager.
But the big one pushes him. Snotty. Stuck up.
“We’re not supposed to play with you.”
Like they walk on air. Go to church every Sunday and treat people the way they do. It was their doing. All of them in town.
“We’re not supposed to play with you.”
Well, he was going to play with them. He’d show them.
The little one weighs nothing at all. Surely, she does not walk on air, like the rest of them. That was the game. She plays it well. How she kicks and screams. But the big one tries to stop him. She was trying to ruin it, trying to ruin everything. Like she is now. It was just a game. Just the game of a lonely boy in the mountains.
Now they want his life for it.
They could not have it.
No. He is tired of paying. He had given them twenty-two years. That is enough. Maybe Emily, the big one, should pay something for what she took from him. She knew it was a game, but she never told them that. He knew why she came back.
To watch him die.
Well, that is not going to happen.
It is time for her to learn.
“Isaiah!”
Someone was calling him. Far off and far away.
It was time.
Hood’s heart began throbbing, slamming against his rib cage. His brain began pulsating. Bri
nging this one on could kill him. That was one secret he kept from the doctors. He could bring on his seizures and almost control them depending on the magnitude. They were dangerous to control. This time, he needed to bring on the largest fit he had ever summoned. It was time. It was coming. He felt it rising from within his brain waves, popping like broken malfunctioning electrical circuits. His heart stalling, galloping…
“Isaiah!” the guard yelled.
Hood’s body was quaking and flopping on the floor like a fish jerked from a lake to a dock. His head was banging against his cot, his chair, he was growling and howling, his head twitching spasmodically.
“Open the cell! Open the cell! one of the male nurses shouted. The guard had summoned medical help. Two nurses and two guards arrived, one pushing a defibrillator. They worked on him swiftly. Check vital signs. One nurse opened the medical bag, placing a rubberized tongue guard in Hood’s mouth. “He’s going into cardiac arrest!”
They prepared an injection.
“Call the warden! He better alert the director,” said one of the nurses.
“His heart has stopped! I’m getting nothing!” said the nurse with the stethoscope.
“Get him out of the cell. Set the machine! Pass me the paddles! Clear!”
They worked on Hood on the floor outside his death cell.
After two attempts, Hood’s heart resumed beating. One of the guards quickly cuffed Hoods hands and put restraints on his ankles.
“He’s in bad shape. He’s got to be airlifted to Missoula.”
Everyone stared at each other, then down at Hood.
The guard on the phone passed it to the senior nurse.
“The warden needs to talk to you.”
SIXTY-FOUR
Emily Baker’s world turned black.
Voices. Yes, she heard voices.
The FBI agent was talking to her. The technicians at the mountain on their radios. Everyone distant, distorted, like people talking underwater, drowned out by the beating of her heart ringing in her ears.
