HIDING PLACE by Meghan Holloway

by Meghan Holloway

  He turned back to me, and when he met my gaze, he was shaking his head. He knew what the packed bags meant.

  “This is not your fault,” I told him quietly. “But the man you met yesterday at the ranch…” He did not need to hear my fears. He had already been having trouble sleeping the last few months, and a number of nights he crawled into my bed still trembling from a nightmare. I would not add to that. “It would be best for us if we left.”

  He shook his head harder and thrust a folded piece of paper toward me. I accepted it. Sam knew how to read and write, but he rarely communicated even in written form.

  I unfolded the piece of paper, and my throat tightened. He had no particular artistic talent, but there was no mistaking the culmination of the details on page. He had drawn the inn, complete with the swing on the front porch, the woods on either side, and the river flowing around the oxbow. In big block letters across the top of the page was the word HOME.

  He stabbed his finger to the paper, pointing at the word. He jabbed his finger at it again and again, until he tore a hole in the paper. I caught his hand in mine and stilled the frantic movement.

  Motherhood was so fucking hard. Despite my best efforts, I could never shield him entirely from hurt or fear. I weighed my decisions and balanced the odds and thought carefully of the repercussions, but I still questioned whether my choices were the right ones.

  I stared into Sam’s wide, damp gaze. My decision to run, based solely on fear, was the rational choice. I had long ago learned to trust my gut, and my gut said our interaction with Senator Larson would lead Sam’s father straight to our doorstep. If we were here when he arrived, he would kill me. He might not kill Sam, but he would destroy him. Every choice I made over the last five years was to ensure Sam’s safety, to make certain he never again knew a life of fear. He had known too much of it already.

  He had also known heartache and loss and loneliness. If I could do one thing that made him happy, that earned me a genuine smile, that drew us closer to the moment when he would finally break his silence, I would do it. I would walk through fire for this wounded child who stood before me. And at the moment, what he wanted most was to stay in the place he loved and knew as home.

  Staring into those eyes that had seen too much at such a tender age, I decided I would give him that for as long as I could. I would likely regret it. But in this moment, that did not matter.

  “Let me make you some breakfast,” I said, “and then I’ll take you to school.”

  He studied my face for a long moment, and then the tension slowly leaked out of him and he leaned forward to press his forehead into the center of my chest. His thin arms came around my waist.

  I might regret my decision later, but right now, I hugged him back even as I started planning.

  seven

  HECTOR

  All of the files on the flash drive were encrypted save one. I double-clicked on the file and a document with a single line of text on it opened onscreen.

  Hector, if something happens to me, use this. You know the password. -Win

  The words struck me like a blow, and I leaned back in my chair in an attempt to absorb it. I stared at the letters until they morphed into an indistinct blur. If something happens to me. The file dates were listed as September 7, 2003. A little over a month before she and our daughter disappeared in October that year.

  I cast my mind back, trying to recall any hint of unease Winona might have given in those months before she went missing. But fifteen years was a long time, and now it was hard for me to even remember the sound of her voice. I kept a photo of my girls on the table beside my bed, the same picture that was used for the missing persons banners that went up on billboards across the state. I traced the lines of their faces every day to keep them firmly etched in my mind.

  I remembered the dimple in Winona’s left cheek, the swing of her hips as she walked, the stretch of her body as she sat on the edge of the bed every night and brushed her hair to gleaming. I remembered my daughter’s fondness for huckleberries, how she loved to sit on her grandfather’s knee as he played the banjo, how her shadow made her laugh and laugh.

  I stared at my name typed by my wife’s hands. I could remember all of that. I could remember my coldness toward them and the twin deflated expressions on their faces before I turned away. But I could not remember the sound of their voices, the lilt of Emma’s squeals and giggles, the cadence of Winona’s singing and laughter.

  Hector. I read my name over and over, wishing I could remember what it sounded like on my wife’s lips. She had loved me, far more than I deserved, and there had always been a softness in her voice when she said my name.

  A noise in the hall startled me. I had come into the police department well before my shift started. Frank looked up at me as I stood and moved to close the door, but he did not move from the dog bed in the corner. I locked the door and returned to my desk.

  My throat was tight as I clicked on the other files. She was right, I did know the password, though it took me three attempts to input it before I realized she set it for Emma with a lowercase e and included her birthdate.

  I braced myself before accessing the first file. If something happens to me. I was at a loss. Had I missed something going on in her life? Had she attempted to tell me something, and I ignored her? Had I overlooked a threat? Had I forgotten something in my fixation on Jeff Roosevelt?

  The file I opened did not enlighten me. I donned my reading glasses and leaned closer to the screen. The two files were spreadsheets. The first contained a list of what appeared to be surnames in one column, date ranges in the next, and a string of numbers in the third column. Over three hundred fifty names were on the list, and the dates were for roughly week-long periods. The list was ordered by date. The first entry was for a week in April 1998, the last was for a week in September 2003. I glanced back at the file date and realized the file had been uploaded to the flash drive three days after the final date in the spreadsheet.

  The second spreadsheet was similar to the first, with one column a list of dates. Each listed a single date, not a range of dates like the first spreadsheet. The other column simply contained a letter. I skimmed over the file. The letters were either W, G, E, C, or WV. There was no set pattern to the letters that I could see, although there was only one E and WV in the list. There were several Cs, but most of the entries bore either a W or a G.

  I brought up the first spreadsheet and resized both until I could look at them side by side on the screen. The same number of entries had been made in both spreadsheets, and the dates listed in the second sheet always fell within a date range listed on the first.

  I clicked on the first spreadsheet again and resized it to full screen to study the third column. They were latitude and longitude coordinates, I realized, and as I studied the list, I saw the same six coordinates were repeated.

  I pulled up a web browser and plugged in one of the coordinates into the search bar. A map popped up, and I clicked on it. I moved the cursor to zoom out from the pinpoint on the map. I stared at the brown and green screen and then plugged in another set of coordinates. I repeated the search for all six sets.

  I rubbed my jaw and leaned back in my chair. Each set of coordinates landed right long the delineation of the national park in the upper northwest corner of Yellowstone that abutted Shooting Star Mountain, Sheep Mountain, Big Horn Peak, and Crown Butte. The lines of the park were not neatly drawn. There were no fences marking the edges of Yellowstone territory. These were the wild borderlands.

  I studied the spreadsheets again, trying to make sense of the letters and names. I toggled back to text document. Hector, if something happens to me, use this.

  “What the hell are you trying to tell me, Winona?” I whispered.

  I followed the worn dirt track that branched off of the Old Yellowstone Trail. The road had no name. It undulated through the swells and hollows of the wild borderlands of Yellowstone. I drove slowly. E
d Decker, the local mechanic, tow truck driver, and Winona’s father, had been out here a number of times to haul out the city slickers who had blown a tire driving too quickly on the rough, rocky terrain.

  Hoppe Creek and Deaf Jim Creek were flowing high with snowmelt over the dirt track. At the final branch in the trail, I turned left and followed the road to its dead end. The road was little more than an indention in the dirt, and in a meadow, the track disappeared completely.

  I parked and glanced at Frank where he sat in the passenger’s seat. A personal matter had come up was my excuse to the sergeant when I left work early for the day. “You coming or staying?”

  He tilted his head and yawned before hopping into the driver’s seat and leaping to the ground. He waited patiently as I tied a bell to the loop on his collar. The more noise we made, the less likely we were to surprise a bear. When I finished, Frank stretched and roamed a circle around the meadow, investigating.

  I pulled the handheld GPS unit from my pocket and plugged in the easternmost coordinates on Winona’s list. The pin on the map dropped roughly two miles to the southwest, near Mulherin Creek.

  I shouldered my pack and grabbed my rifle from the hooks in the back window. The brass frame of the Henry Lever Action .45-70 had a rich patina from years of use, and I preferred the octagon barrel over the round. I removed the tubular magazine, ensured the chamber was empty, and closed the lever. I thumbed the hammer down and dropped four rounds into the magazine before I inserted the tube and cycled the action to chamber a round. I pocketed eight more rounds of ammo.

  The Henry was a classic rifle. The .45-70 kicked like a son of a bitch and packed a mother of a one-shot drop on most game. I had never had the opportunity to test it, and hoped I never would, but I thought it would at least slow a grizzly’s charge.

  I carried it over my shoulder and whistled for Frank as I set off into the woods. Winter still clung to the land in the depths of the forest. The snow was hard and icy in the shadow of the trees. Frank raced back and forth ahead of me, startling a snowshoe hare from beneath a lodgepole pine. When it darted away and Frank started to give chase, I called him back to me.

  “Stay close,” I told him.

  Spring was the season of birth, but in this wilderness stretch of the country, death often followed close on the heels of new life. It was brutal and gritty, nature at its most grim and bloody. The bear woke up hungry and cantankerous. Spindly-legged newborn calves, be it moose, elk, or bison, made for the easiest meals for newly awakened grizzlies and for winter-starved wolf packs.

  I kept my eyes peeled as we hiked. The terrain was rugged. The mountains were craggy and steep, the footing precarious and uneven. We hiked due west around the northern edge of a spiny ridge and then followed the curve of a valley south. The quiet was absolute. There was no sound of civilization here, merely a vast quiet broken only by the wind and the occasional cry or cackle of a bird.

  Some men found peace in the stillness and silence. I had found it soothing once. But now I could not venture into the wilderness without searching for the gleam of sunlight on the bleached-white surface of bone. I could not help but ponder if this valley had once echoed with screams. I could not cease wondering if some shallow grave in this godforsaken country held the remnants of my girls. I could not find peace any longer when ghosts dogged my steps. I could not see the landscape’s beauty without also seeing its danger and the ease with which a paradise could turn to a hell.

  The wilderness was no longer a place of respite for me. Instead, tension coursed through me, and I scanned every shadow for a threat. I brought the rifle for any human we might encounter as much as I did for the bear.

  We were alone, though. Any animals in the vicinity stayed hidden, and I saw no signs of human presence. Frank stayed close at my side, the bell tied to his collar chiming with every step. When we reached the end of the valley, we ventured west again, and within half a mile, we reached the coordinates listed on Winona’s spreadsheet.

  I expected to find something. The remnants of a ghost town, a mine shaft, anything that might give a hint as to why this location was significant to Winona. I found nothing as I searched the area. I looped back, glancing at the handheld GPS tracker until I stood in the exact place she listed.

  I turned in a slow circle, studying my surroundings. The lodgepole pine were dense. The green of spring beginning to take over the bleakness of winter. The forest floor was thick with underbrush, with saplings and with aged, fallen pines weathered and bleached like old bones. The wind still held the bite of winter even as it was rich with the fragrance of spring, but the sun was bright overhead, the swath of blue sky uninterrupted.

  The bell on Frank’s collar jingled. When I caught sight of the poodle backtracking between the same cluster of trees with his nose alternately on the ground and in the air, I saw it.

  The camera trap was secured low on a tree, the camouflage case almost blending in with the bark. I stood staring at it for a long moment. If it were still recording, Frank and I were certain to be caught on film. I turned my gaze away but kept the camera in the corner of my eye as I moved out of the lens’s field of vision. I circled to it, careful to stay clear of the viewfinder, and knelt beside it.

  The Park Service often tracked wildlife with camera traps such as these, but we were not quite on park land and there were no emblems for the National Park Service on the camera case. A small padlock secured the case.

  I rubbed my jaw and glanced at the GPS handheld tracker. The next coordinate on the list was a little over two miles to the northwest in the foothills of Shooting Star Mountain. The following coordinate was another two miles to the northwest in the foothills of Sheep Mountain. Both locations were within the park boundaries.

  “Frank, let’s go,” I called, and headed out.

  Our trek was uphill, the way steep. The poodle was in better shape than I was, but when I stopped for water, Frank drank thirstily from the bowl I poured for him. We crossed the Sportsman Lake Trail, a hiking trail that stretched from Mammoth Hot Springs sixteen miles across the Gallatin Range. From a glance at the map, I knew we were right along the Gallatin Bear Management Area.

  My senses were on high alert. From May through November, travel in this section of the park was allowed only on designated trails, and visitors were encouraged to travel in groups of no less than four individuals. This was grizzly country.

  I spotted the humped back across a meadow in the treeline about a hundred yards away the same time Frank did. A growl rumbled in his throat.

  “Heel,” I said, and he reluctantly fell into step close at my side as I slowly moved along the trail.

  The rifle was a welcome weight on my shoulder as I kept an eye on the grizzly in the distance. His head lifted as soon as we were upwind of him, and I turned around, walking several slow, careful steps backward to watch the big bastard. He did not lumber any closer, though, so we continued.

  We followed the Sportsman Lake Trail between ridges and then branched off into the deeper backcountry. We reached the second location within an hour, and this time, I knew what I was looking for. The camera trap was mounted low on the trunk of a lodgepole pine. Like the other, it was unmarked, and the case was padlocked.

  With the park restricting access in this area because of the concentration of bear, it would not be unheard of for biologists to set up camera traps to monitor the wildlife in the area. But I could not think of any reason for Winona to have kept track of the camera traps used by the national park in this area. She loved the park, and she was passionate about conservation. As far as I knew, though, her involvement never amounted to more than being a regular visitor, hiking in the summer, cross country skiing and snowmobiling in the winter.

  I hiked on with Frank at my side, venturing farther west and north. We met up with the trail again and followed it for some distance before leaving the trail to cut through dense forest. I carried my rifle in both hands and cast a watchful gaze around us, but
I did not spot another grizzly between the second camera trap and the third.

  The third was the same as the others. This time, I slammed the butt of my gun against the edge of the lock and broke it off. With the lock busted, it was merely a matter of popping the two latches on the side and opening the case. I felt along the base of the camera system within and found the slim edge of the memory card. It was a spring-load system, and when I pushed against the card, it ejected. I slipped it free and tucked it into my pocket.

  The pungent, musky odor reached me as I straightened and thumbed down the hammer on the Henry, tucking the brass plated butt into my shoulder. I turned in a slow circle. I could smell the bear but could not spot it. That made me more uneasy than if the beast were standing five feet from me.

  Frank could smell the bear as well, for his lips drew back in a soundless snarl.

  “At my side,” I reminded him, speaking loudly. I moved cautiously, scanning the area constantly. Frank stayed close at my knee. “A long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile.” Frank glanced at me askance, but I sang at the top of my lungs as we retraced our steps.

  Soon, it was only the fresh scent of snow melt and new growth I was inhaling. I could no longer smell the musky odor and Frank relaxed at my side. I kept up the concert, though, and kept my rifle at the ready. I could not sing my way out of a wet paper bag, and hoped my tunelessness frightened the bears as much as my volume did.

  When I finished all of the stanzas of Don McLean’s American Pie, I sang the ABB classic Ramblin’ Man, which led to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Simple Man. My voice had grown hoarse, and I was halfway through the Eagle’s Hotel California when we made it to my truck. I relaxed only when we were both locked in the cab.