The Killdeer Connection

by Tom Swyers

  David debated whether to answer. Julius Moore had told Jim Fletcher the day before that the Department of Justice planned to drop all charges against David. David had personally called Moore to thank him. He said he’d return the man’s lug wrench when he saw him next. Moore had laughed in response. It was the first time David had seen that side of him.

  As the Indigo Valley police chief, Pete was pleased that he could follow the FBI’s lead on any of the state charges. A few hours later, he had called David to apologize for everything.

  Soon David would be free, and that’s all he wanted to think about. But a phone call from North Dakota revived memories that he wanted to erase. He had hoped to put his North Dakota experience behind him. But deep down inside, he knew he had to come to terms with his past before he could move forward.

  On the fourth ring, he took a deep breath and forced himself to answer.

  “Hello,” David said, hunching over the phone.

  “Hi, David. It’s Russell Red Bear.”

  David uttered a sigh of relief and let his shoulders drop. His memory of the doctor from Killdeer was one of the few good ones he had of North Dakota.

  “Hey, Russell. It’s good to hear from you.” David’s mind raced as he tried to sort out the reason for the call. After the South Heart train explosion and fire, Red Bear had said he’d wanted to talk to him. He had said he had something on his mind, but it wasn’t the time or the place to talk because he’d had an emergency at the time. David remembered Red Bear taking his business card before rushing off.

  “How are things going?” Red Bear asked. “Are you okay? I’ve seen you in the news quite a bit.”

  “Yeah, I’ve had my fifteen minutes of fame.”

  “They used to say you were a terrorist. Now they say you’re a hero of sorts.”

  David chuckled. “Yeah, who knows what they’ll say about me tomorrow? How is everything going with you?”

  “Good. We’re just beginning to battle some proposed oil pipelines. But I’m happy to report there haven’t been any train explosions since you left North Dakota.”

  David smiled. “That’s good news for sure.”

  “You know it. Say, I bet you’re wondering why I’m calling on Christmas Eve.”

  “I’m hoping it’s to wish me happy holidays.”

  “Ha! Well, that’s a given. But there’s something that’s been weighing on my mind the past few weeks. I need to share it with you. I guess I have to get this off my chest before the holidays start. It’s information that Harold shared with me in confidence. But I figure his wife, Sunya, is dead, and so is Harold. They had no family, so I don’t see the harm in letting you know. The way I figure it, there’s nobody left to sue me for telling you. And as the executor of Harold’s estate, there’s something you should probably know. You see, Harold had an out-of-wedlock child before he married Sunya. He told me about it one day when he came in for an office visit.”

  David’s jaw almost dropped to the floor. Moore had said that Harold Salar had lived volumes and David, at most, had spent a chapter with him, indicating there was plenty David hadn’t known about the man. “Really? A girl or a boy?”

  “I don’t know. He just mentioned it in passing. I guess he had a relationship with a woman during his early teaching days at Columbia, before he married Sunya. They couldn’t have children, you know.”

  “I didn’t know that. Do you know anything more about this child?”

  “Only that they decided to put the baby up for adoption, and it ended up with some couple from Brooklyn.”

  “Did Sunya know about the child?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  David thanked Red Bear for the information. They talked for a few minutes more about their families and the holidays. Then David said goodbye and was left alone with his thoughts about Harold, the child, and the inheritance.

  For a long while afterward, David sat and stared out the kitchen window into the backyard. He watched a deer forage in the snow for apples underneath the McIntosh tree behind his house. Jumbled emotions lay buried under a layer of guilt and excuses that defied his efforts to sort them neatly into a conclusion.

  The existence of the adopted child didn’t figure into the settlement of Harold’s estate. An adopted child has no right of inheritance against his or her birth parent. Besides, there wasn’t much of an estate to inherit at this point—unless the heir wanted a couple of trash bags of stuff from Harold’s apartment. Legally, he could forget the mystery offspring, but he couldn’t help but wonder about this person and the other secrets in Harold’s life. Harold’s letter to Jim Fletcher kept running through his head: There’s a lot you don’t know about me. And that’s for your own good. It’s in everyone’s best interests not to know too much.

  David had learned the hard way to heed Harold’s warning. Pursuing the mystery of Harold’s parents in Killdeer, North Dakota, hadn’t turned out so well. His discovery of information about the secret Killdeer Society had put him in jail and almost cost him his life. He’d had to chase those secrets because Harold had said to always follow the killdeer. But this adopted child had nothing to do with killdeer.

  When he heard Annie come down the stairs, he decided to forget this secret in Harold’s life.

  “Good morning, David,” Annie said, rubbing her eyes as she walked into the kitchen. She was dressed in red-flannel pajamas, and her hair was a testament to the term bedhead.

  “Good morning, princess,” he said, hugging her. Over the past several days, David had told her everything about what happened over the past few months. Annie had taken it well—better than David had expected. It helped that his ordeal appeared to be coming to an end. It also helped that his experience reinforced her decision to not look for work in the oil industry that had laid her off. She was happy teaching at the school. She thought she was able to make a difference.

  “Why did you get up so early?” Annie asked before kissing him lightly on the lips. “You really need to get your sleep.”

  David smiled. “Sleep is for the dead, and I feel very much alive this morning.”

  “Good, then, maybe you feel alive enough to go through the mail,” she said, pointing to a pile on the kitchen table. “There’s something in there about the Killdeer Society.”

  David picked up the mail and shuffled through the envelopes. Annie had opened one with a bank statement in it for the Killdeer Society. David had finally figured out how to contact the group and was now overseeing its operations. Each female killdeer represented ten loaded tank cars, and each female chick represented a single loaded car. So a 116-car train meant eleven females and six female chicks. Unloaded tank cars returning to the oil fields were counted the same way, except the male killdeer represented them. The members wanted to continue providing oil-tanker car counts, despite the risks. They were passionate environmentalists and seemed to need the money.

  Deeper in the pile, David spotted a large envelope from Castlerock Life Insurance. He set it to one side. He knew it was a claim form he’d requested a few days ago. When the criminal charges against him were finally dropped, he’d planned to go ahead and make claim on the $1-million policy. He wanted to use the money to pay Jim Fletcher for his time in defending him. He also wanted to use it to help front the costs of Ben’s lawsuit against Helmsley. But most of all, he wanted to use the money to allow Annie some time to pick out a new job, one that she wanted. The teacher Annie was subbing for would be returning from maternity leave eventually, and then Annie would be out of work.

  “If you are going over to Harold’s apartment today, I can come along and help,” Annie said, pouring herself a glass of orange juice. The kids were out of school for Christmas break, and she was on vacation until the New Year.

  “It’s not a place I’d like to go on Christmas Eve,” David responded. “I think I need to clean up around here this morning.”

  David’s daily visits to Harold’s hoard had changed his outlook. Piles or clusters of things aroun
d his own house never used to bother him. But now they seemed like weeds choking his living space and, by extension, choking him. He was afraid that too much stuff was a sign of hoarding, and the last thing he wanted to do was to become like Harold. When he saw gatherings of stuff, he’d attack them in a cleaning frenzy and say out loud, “When in doubt, donate it or throw it out.” He wanted his house to be as barren and beautiful as the North Dakota plains.

  “Are you almost done over there at the apartment?” Annie asked, sitting down at the table.

  “I’m making progress. I’m only waist-high in things now.”

  In cleaning Harold’s apartment since Kincaid’s deposition, David had confirmed his suspicions that there wasn’t much to Harold’s estate. The life-insurance policy wasn’t a part of it. There were a few small bank accounts and the apartment’s contents, plus his old car. Harold hadn’t done David any favors by leaving him his estate. It was like Harold had given him the leftovers from a garage sale. Selling the meager assets and disposing of the rest was more trouble than it was worth.

  Harold’s tax returns indicated he had lived off his pension from Columbia University and any consulting fees he’d managed to secure. They also showed that King Crude had a trading account where he traded oil. The statements tracked his profits flowing into a money-market account. He wrote checks to charity from the account balance, mostly to environmental nonprofits like the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Nature Conservancy.

  But the trading account was mostly empty now. David had discovered it only after the Kincaid deposition. When he died, Harold had a trade on, which was a bet against the price of oil. King Crude had turned out to be right again when it came to the price of oil, but by the time David had discovered the account, the trade had gone against Harold. David was forced to close out the position at a slight loss.

  David’s eyebrows rose when he heard footsteps on the second floor and then on the staircase. He looked at Annie, who shrugged before trying to comb her hair with her fingers. A few seconds later, Christy stumbled into the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” Annie said.

  “Morning,” Christy replied.

  “You’re up early,” David said.

  Christy pushed back his hair and gazed at his father. “You’re one to talk, Dad,” he said before opening the cabinet to grab a box of cereal.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it,” David said. “I just thought that since you were on vacation from school, you’d sleep in more.”

  “Look at it this way, Dad. Ever since you got out of jail, you haven’t slept in, either.”

  “Okay, well, I’m excited to be out of jail and back with you guys again.”

  “That’s exactly how I feel,” Christy said, sitting down with a bowl. “I’m out of jail, too, and I can’t sleep.”

  “How’s that?” David asked.

  “Up until last week, I was the son of a jailbird. Kids avoided me. Teachers, too.”

  David felt awful. He had no idea how bad things had been at school. He had been too fixated on his own problems to think about Christy’s situation. He hadn’t dared talk to him about being careful on the ambulance since he had been taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation. He didn’t think he could stand on a soapbox and lecture his son after being arrested and going to jail. Maybe after some time had passed since the charges had been dropped, but not now.

  “I’m sorry, Christy.”

  “It’s okay. After working on the ambulance, I see things differently. Things that go on in high school don’t matter as much.”

  David could sense that Christy had grown up since the explosion and his dad’s imprisonment. The small-town bubble of Indigo Valley had burst. Christy was now aware there was a world out there that went beyond high school. David thought he was ready for it.

  Christy picked up the sports section from the newspaper on the table.

  “I’ll take the sales circulars,” Annie said to him. Christy passed them over, and the two of them began to read.

  David just sat there and drank his juice and finished his banana. He glanced at them both every so often and took comfort in their presence. He’d been doing that a lot since he’d returned home. Christy and Annie had stopped asking him why he stared at them so much since he got out of jail. They understood now. Nothing else needed to be said. They were a family once again. David had gotten his Christmas wish.

  THIRTY-NINE

  David had called Ben and scheduled to meet with him at his apartment in Albany on Christmas Eve afternoon. He’d said he had an early Christmas present for him and wanted to deliver it in person.

  Not much had changed on Park Avenue since David last visited Ben Prior two months ago. The stained couch still hung out on the curb, but it had been reupholstered with two inches of powdery snow. Ben’s old doorbell no longer hung from a pair of wires. A shiny, brass pineapple doorbell with a lit button had replaced it. A real Christmas wreath with a red-velvet bow hung from the front door.

  When Ben opened the door, he was dressed in a button-down, red-flannel shirt. The long sleeves that covered his black neoprene gloves were buttoned at the cuff. He wore a pair of navy-blue Dickies work pants. His hair was neatly combed, and his face was cleanly shaven. Ben was smiling, something David hadn’t seen since before the accident.

  “Come in, David,” he said. “Merry Christmas to you.”

  “Thanks, Ben,” David said, patting him on the shoulder. “A Merry Christmas to you, too.”

  “Please sit down and stay a bit,” Ben said. “Can I get you something to drink? A cup of eggnog, or something else?”

  “No, thanks,” David said, sitting on the couch in the living room. “I can’t stay long.”

  Ben sat down on the other end of the couch, his elbows resting on his knees, his fingers forced apart by the stiffness of the gloves.

  David looked around the apartment. “Where’s Mark?”

  “He walked down to the convenience store to pick up some things for breakfast tomorrow. He should be back in a few minutes.”

  David nodded, pleased that Mark was not around. He didn’t want the young man to hear what he was about to say. Ben could tell him later, if he wanted.

  “Well,” David said, “I told you over the phone I had an early Christmas present for you.”

  “You didn’t have to do that, David.”

  “Yeah, I did. Let me explain. You’ll understand in a second.”

  “Okay. If you say so.”

  “I got a call yesterday from Amber Remington, the attorney from Baxter and Chadwick, the lawyers who represent Helmsley Oil.”

  When they’d talked, Amber had told David that she could see the handwriting on the wall at the firm. There was no future for a strong-willed woman partner there. Even if they’d made her a partner offer, now she knew she didn’t want it. But she hadn’t tipped her hand. She planned to play the game and take their paychecks while she throttled back her hours and looked for a new job.

  “Anyway,” David continued, “she made a new settlement offer of one million dollars. That’s my present to you this morning. You don’t have to give me an answer today. I just wanted to let you know that there is the promise of a better life out there for you and Mark. If you recall, her offer a few months ago was fifty thousand dollars.”

  Ben didn’t say anything. He just stared at the Christmas tree by the living-room window. It was a real white pine, and its light, sweet scent permeated the room. The branches with clusters of five long needles were covered with tinsel, white lights, and homemade colored ornaments. David spotted three crocheted, framed ornaments that held small pictures of Ben’s dead parents and of his dead wife. There was a manger scene at the base of the tree on a red-velvet skirt.

  Ben trembled. David could see the corner of one eye begin to well up. “That is good news, David. Thank you. Do you think we should take it?”

  David thought for a second. “I think we can do better. I think after Kincaid’s
arrest, they’re willing to deal now, and this is their opening offer. But we just have to remember that while we have Harold’s report on Bakken crude, we don’t have an expert to go along with it. We’ll find one to back up Harold’s expert opinion if we go to trial. It won’t be easy, because all the best ones are in the back pocket of the oil companies. We need to remember that whomever we find will never be as good as Harold.”

  Ben rubbed his eyes with the palms of his gloves. “Harold,” he muttered. “It always comes back to Harold.”

  David couldn’t argue with him on that point. Harold had run his entire life for the past few months. They say that dead men tell no tales, but in David’s head, Harold had proven to be a dead man who wouldn’t shut up.

  “David, we are protected by the lawyer-client privilege, right?”

  “Yeah, sure. Why do you ask?”

  Ben let out a huge sigh. “I need to talk to you about something that happened before Harold was killed.”

  “Okay, I’m all ears.”

  “When I was very young, my parents told me that I was their child. They said if anyone else ever claimed to be one of my parents, not to believe it because they weren’t telling the truth. Throughout the years, they kept telling me the same thing over and over again. I got sick of hearing it. I finally asked them, ‘Why do you keep telling me this? Nobody has ever said they were my parents except for you two.’ After that, they stopped saying it. I had almost forgotten about it until a man rang my doorbell one day. He was a stranger, and he said he needed to talk with me. I went outside to talk with him while Mark watched TV in the bedroom. He told me that there was a man claiming to be my father, and he just wanted to let me know about it—”

  “Did you recognize the man who came to your door?” David interrupted.

  “No, I didn’t at first. But then I saw his face in the newspaper. It was the man they arrested for the train bombings the other week—the terrorist.”