A Killing Season Read online

  JESSICA SPEART

  A KILLING SEASON

  A RACHEL PORTER MYSTERY

  Contents

  One

  Grrrroowwwl!

  Two

  Jagged mountain peaks ruptured the skyline as we finally emerged…

  Three

  Hal poured four glasses of wine and Sally passed me…

  Four

  Daylight had barely dragged itself through my window when something…

  Five

  I drove past where the university football team, the Montana…

  Six

  The highways and byways in Montana look different at night.

  Seven

  I woke up in a large, sun-filled bedroom that made…

  Eight

  The town of Browning became a distant grim memory as…

  Nine

  Matthew dropped me off at my vehicle, and we agreed…

  Ten

  I pointed the Ford toward Sally’s, letting my mind drift.

  Eleven

  By the time dawn broke, I was already in Running’s…

  Twelve

  The building that housed the Indian Health Services clinic was…

  Thirteen

  I was barely past the outskirts of Browning when my…

  Fourteen

  After that dream, I didn’t wait until sunrise, but drove…

  Fifteen

  The atmosphere in the FBI office in Browning was so…

  Sixteen

  Rrrrring! Rrrrring!

  Seventeen

  “Hey, New Yawk! How’s by you? This is just like…

  Eighteen

  I slowly drove toward Sally’s house, chafing at both Santou’s…

  Nineteen

  A bank of dark, menacing clouds hovered overhead, indicating that…

  Epilogue

  “Here, drink this. It will help stop those nightmares you’ve…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books by Jessica Speart

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  One

  Grrrroowwwl!

  The Ford 4X4 roared in protest as my foot flogged the gas pedal, and its rear end swung side-to-side in a manic Mae West shimmy. It had been raining hard for three days straight, turning Montana’s red clay earth into gumbo mud that clung to my tires in a smothering embrace.

  At times like this I cursed the very existence of HBO, with its taunting reminder of what my life in New York might have been. Damn Sex and the City—all eighteen new episodes—for flaunting chic Manolo Blahnik shoes, Versace dresses, and Fendi baguettes! Okay—so in reality, I had been an out-of-work actress without any money, meeting my friends at a local bar for beers, unable to get into Nobu to sip ever-so-trendy Cosmopolitans. Still, a girl can dream of living the high life and being swept off her feet by her very own Mr. Big, can’t she?

  My vehicle slid along the slippery dirt road as if boasting, I’m not tractionally challenged; I’m independently motivated!

  As the pickup fishtailed, I snapped out of my daydream and concentrated on the hazardous path before me. It was scarred with ancient tire tracks created by a long history of vehicles that had unwillingly performed figure eights. There was little consolation in knowing that previous cars had clawed and fought to stay on the road; it was somewhere along here that Al Carolton had slid off the path and into a ditch, on a day much like this three months ago.

  No one ventured up here without a good reason—a dirt road in the mountains of northern Montana, so ruggedly remote it nearly screamed for people to stay away. Even fewer had the chutzpah to flagrantly trespass through the sovereign nation known as the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

  I eased to a stop when I saw a tree wrapped with yellow crime tape. Rummaging through my pocket, I pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, rechecked the directions, and then wadded it back into a tight, compact ball.

  Pulling up my rain slicker’s hood, I reached for the door handle, then jumped out. My feet were immediately swallowed by a deep puddle of viscous mud.

  The marked tree’s bark was scarred by the angry bite of a steel chain, doubtless where Carolton had attached the winch to extricate his pickup from its muddy trench. Instead, the wheels had continued to spin, rock-and-rolling ever deeper into the muck. As if things weren’t bad enough, the cable then became entangled on its spool. A total “Charlie Forest”—more commonly referred to among locals as a “cluster fuck.”

  What happened next had been gradually pieced together by federal and tribal agents a week later, when the body was found. Their best guess was that Carolton had given up on his pickup and tried to hike out—with disastrous results. The evidence? A backpack lying on the ground—at least, what was left of it. Other clues consisted of a bootlace with traces of dried blood, tatters of fabric that had once been a shirt, a bloodied sock, and small pieces of human flesh. A rifle lay slumbering peacefully nearby.

  A few yards farther on, a series of thrash marks marred the earth. Panic must have held Carolton tight in its grip as he’d fallen, his glasses shattering into a crude kaleidoscope that sadistically refracted the image of his tormentor.

  Frantically scrambling to his feet, Carolton had made a final, frenzied run for his life. Blood splatters recorded his desperate path of flight. He managed to reach his vehicle, where he’d crawled inside and hastily locked the door. What took place next required little interpretation. Copious prints encircled the pickup—but only two rear paws had gripped the dirt.

  Unleashing its fury in a heart-stopping spectacle, the grizzly had risen up on hind legs, and then crashed back down onto the vehicle like a battering ram. The damaged pickup proved no more a challenge than a metal can, as the grizzly peeled off its door in a frenzy.

  Claws as sharp as switchblades then furiously slashed through the seat, turning the vinyl fabric into thin slivers of confetti. The terrified man inside must have made one last effort to escape, but it was too late. The grizzly locked onto Carolton’s ankles and dragged him outside, where the bristling pine trees stood silent witness to the last gruesome moments of horror. Carolton’s wallet had been found under their branches, decorated with an intricate array of bite marks; the punctured credit cards had identified the remains.

  The official report had methodically described a classic carcass scene. A bear had fed on the body—along with coyotes, ravens, and scavenging magpies. Those black-and-white birds had tipped the agents off; they’d bolted from the brush as the men approached, scaring the living daylights out of the search party.

  Little was found of Carolton’s dismembered body. What made it gruesomely eerie was that one leg remained not only untouched, but still fully clothed. A critter had partially buried the limb, probably to savor it later on.

  Hair, saliva, and blood samples had been taken from the scene in hope of catching the perpetrator, but it was as if the bear had vanished off the face of the earth. Most likely, it remained on the loose and was still roaming the area.

  As the rain let up, fog began to roll in, draping itself over the mountains like a shroud. I headed for the spot where Carolton’s body had been found, and squatted down. A veil of apprehension seductively enveloped my limbs like a fine wool shawl, slowly gliding across my arms, chest, and throat. Death was peering over my shoulder, leaning in close, letting me know that he was still around.

  I didn’t need the reminder. My mother had recently died, quite unexpectedly—too abruptly for nagging issues to be resolved, too suddenly to say I was sorry for any unnecessary hurt I’d caused, etching guilt into my psyche, as resilient as a layer of permafrost. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had responded by granting me a one-month leave of a
bsence to mourn, settle bills, and pack up memories. It had proven just enough time for another agent with more clout and seniority to decide he had a hankering for catfish and the blues. He requested to be assigned to my station in Memphis, Tennessee, and the head honchos quickly used it as an excuse to separate me from my former boss, Charlie Hickok. Individually we were each considered a pain-in-the-ass. Together we’d come to be viewed as a mind-boggling, out-of-control, bureaucrat’s nightmare.

  Hickok had been sent packing back to his beloved New Orleans, while I’d found myself shipped off to the cold, windswept plains of Montana just as autumn flirted with the notion of giving in to Jack Frost. Charlie had been unusually thoughtful, and mailed me a parting gift. I’d opened the package expecting to find a box of chocolates, maybe a colorful assortment of Mardi Gras beads, or a cheap bottle of booze. Instead, there’d been a gift certificate for an extra-large can of bear spray.

  “Congratulations on landing your ass in one of Fish and Wildlife’s more remote duty stations, Porter. It just goes to show we must have done our job right. By the way, rumor has it there’s a grizzly bear hiding behind every tree. So keep your eyes open, your mouth shut, and watch out for your rear end!” the attached card had read.

  From what I could tell, he wasn’t far off the mark. My posting was smack in the land of the Unabomber, extreme militia, UFO sightings, bitterly cold winters, mysterious cow mutilations, and bad country roads. Two popular local bumper stickers pretty well summed up the situation. “Montana—It’s Not for Everyone” and “At Least Our Cows Aren’t Mad.”

  On a more positive note, I was once more at a one-person station. Regrettably, the agent I was replacing was none other than Al Carolton—the unfortunate victim who’d been killed and half-eaten by a grizzly.

  I was just beginning to obsess on whether the intact leg had been his right or his left, when the leaves behind me exploded in a frightening swirl of activity. Jumping up, I whirled around and pulled out my gun as graphic postmortem photos of Carolton fast-forwarded in my brain. Even worse, my hands began to tremble and my legs turned jittery as a pair of unseen wings brushed past my face. Their fluttering feathers virtually controlled the pounding of my heart.

  The magpie laughed as it shot past, followed by a much louder sound. Crashing out of the brush was a short, stocky man who looked like a cross between an overweight Bacchus and a pissed-off leprechaun. Around his neck he wore a harness adorned with reindeer bells, which jangled with the urgency of a New York City car alarm. Bushy white eyebrows hung heavy as glacial ridges over his bloodshot eyes, and his beard contained enough twigs to make one believe a bird was using it as a nest.

  “Just how long are you planning to keep us out here, anyway? It’s not as if you’re somehow going to resurrect the poor bastard, you know!”

  Hal Ornish stood with his hands on his hips and scowled at me as if I were an errant student. A professor at the University of Montana in Missoula, Ornish was my latest addition in a growing list of unusual landlords. He’d surprised me last night by insisting on accompanying me on the five-hour trek to the Blackfeet rez. His decision clearly had little to do with his love for the great outdoors; he’d done nothing but fidget and complain during the entire ride.

  “Besides, you should be creating a lot more noise. For chrissakes, sing a Girl Scout song or something, will you? Otherwise how’s some wise-ass bruin gonna know that we’re here?”

  He removed a pint bottle of Wild Turkey from his jacket pocket. I deftly took a step to the right, to get out of the immediate line of fire. Clenched in his other hand was a .44 Magnum, which swayed like a tottering drunk as he struggled to open the whiskey bottle.

  “Will you please give me that damn thing?” I motioned for the gun.

  Ornish relinquished the firearm, preferring to concentrate on slugging down some liquid courage.

  I knew that Ornish was nervous about being out in the wild, with good reason. He’d been attacked by a grizzly nearly fifteen years ago and bore the scars to prove it. A six-inch slash ran from his forehead down his face. A piece of his scalp had also been torn off and now sat in a jar of formaldehyde on his mantel at home, with all the glory normally given an Oscar statuette.

  Hal pulled out a battered wristwatch—though the only way it would ever reveal the time was through divine intervention—and rubbed its damaged face with slow, steady strokes of his thumb. The hypnotic motion appeared to work like a sedative, for he immediately began to calm down. The bear had crushed the crystal with its teeth, halting the clock’s hands at precisely six o’clock. Ornish had carried the watch ever since then as a good luck charm, believing it would magically keep all marauding bears at bay. Still, I wondered what the hell had prompted him to tag along in the first place.

  Hal downed a second shot of Wild Turkey, and I was tempted to join him.

  “Just think of it as an adventure,” I said, as much to calm my own nerves.

  “Right,” Ornish snapped. “What you don’t seem to comprehend is that adventures are what people experience when bad things happen to them.”

  I’d try to keep that in mind.

  Ornish had a doctorate in human sexuality, and his “adventure” had resulted from an unorthodox experiment. Determined to prove that both animals and humans attract mates primarily through scent and sound, Hal had doused himself with elk estrus urine, headed into the woods, and given a lovesick call. But rather than attracting a frisky buck, Ornish proved to be a dinner bell for a hungry bruin. The grizzly grew annoyed when his Happy Meal wasn’t very young and tender, and took its revenge by biting Hal on the arms, legs, and butt, and generally beating the hell out of him. Adding insult to injury, the offending grizzly had never been caught.

  “I’ll bet you a dime to a dollar it was Old Caleb who got that poor sonofabitch Carolton. He probably just wasn’t as mean and tough as I am.” Hal amiably poured a dribble of whisky on the spot where a small cross had been planted. “It’s nice that you decided to pay your respects and all, but I gotta warn you, I’ll be forced to take precautionary measures if we don’t get out of here soon. There’s no way in hell I’m about to let Old Caleb treat me like some walking T-bone again.”

  I doubted there was much chance of that—unless Old Caleb was partial to Wild Turkey these days. In any case, I’d looked around plenty, and there didn’t appear to be any further clues as to why Carolton had been attacked. The only known witnesses to his death were the forest critters—and none of them was talking.

  We returned to the 4X4, climbed inside, and proceeded to slip-slide back down the trail.

  Two

  Jagged mountain peaks ruptured the skyline as we finally emerged from beneath the evergreen canopy and hit level road. By now the sun had bullied its way through the clouds, and its rays danced upon golden aspen trees. Their bright leaves fluttered in the breeze like a swarm of monarch butterflies.

  All this was home to Montana’s largest Native American tribe, the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, which stretches across the eastern edge of Glacier National Park and down along the Rocky Mountain Front. The Blackfeet’s bloody history was that of fierce Great Plains warriors. They remain the most militant tribe in Montana today—a reputation that’s proven handy for keeping unwanted strangers off their land.

  “By the way, we’re going to make a stop when we get to Kiowa Junction,” Hal informed me, checking out his image in the vanity mirror.

  “What for?” I was beginning to feel like a chauffeur assigned to a secret mission.

  “A friend of mine lives there, who I haven’t seen in years.” Hal focused his attention on a twig that remained stubbornly stuck in his beard. “I called and she’s expecting us.”

  “I’m amazed you actually know someone here on the reservation.”

  So this was the reason that Ornish had decided to accompany me. Call me crazy, but I’d felt certain it was something besides my sparkling personality.

  “Why the hell wouldn’t I? After all, I’ve spent m
ost of my entire life in this damn state.” Hal was playing tug of war with his beard, and so far, the twig was the victor. “Fact is, the two of us used to be a pretty hot item way back when.”

  “This is an adult woman that you’re talking about?”

  Hal was just full of surprises. His main source of recreation seemed to be giving private tutorials to pretty young things, closely followed by eating, drinking, and attempting to become a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The news that he’d maintained contact with a woman over thirty was downright heartwarming.

  “Well, it sure as hell ain’t a man I was seeing!” Hal self-consciously pulled on the bill of his ball cap, which handily hid his bear-induced bald spot. Embroidered on the cap’s front was the word COOTS in bold red letters. I was reminded of Henry Fonda in the film On Golden Pond whenever he wore it. I’d gone so far as to do my Katharine Hepburn imitation once, calling him an old coot in place of an “old poop.” Ornish’s response had been swift and irascible.

  “I’m not some addle-brained old fool out looking for loons! The letters stand for Curmudgeons Openly Opposed To Technological Shit,” he’d informed me.

  Okay, that made sense. Not only did Ornish pride himself on being one of the most politically incorrect members on the teaching faculty, but he also reveled in shunning yet another “PC”—the personal computer. Hal refused to use his university computer as anything more than an oversized doorstop.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got a scissors in this suitcase of yours,” Hal groused, rummaging through my handbag.

  “Help yourself,” I dryly retorted, glad I had nothing to hide.

  “For chrissakes, Porter! What do you belong to—a street gang in your spare time?”