Chapter 57
I awoke lying in a bed of clean white sheets. A nurse stood over me checking the line that ran from a bag of fluids into a needle piercing my arm.
“Welcome back,” she said flatly. There was no warmth in her comment. There was instead a hard edge to her voice. I supposed with all the havoc I had created in this town, her use of the word welcome did not carry any heart-felt friendliness. But she carried on with her responsibilities by asking, “How are you feeling?”
I didn’t really care about answering her question. “Where’s Allison?” I asked groggily.
“What?” she asked.
Clearing my throat and raising my voice, I persisted, “Where is Allison Wells?”
Probably accustomed to grumpy patients, she calmly responded, “I’m not permitted to discuss the whereabouts or medical condition of other patients. Privacy laws.” She smiled that patronizing grin that made me want to rip her throat open. But I didn’t need to.
“She’s just down the hall.”
The nurse spun around to see who spoke. It was Jake.
“But they’re gonna take her to a hospital in Butte for more treatment,” he continued.
The nurse huffed and stormed from the room. She glared angrily at Jake as she left.
“Allison is doing fine,” Jake added. “Complete recovery in a few weeks.” He sounded remarkably lucid for a loony vet living in the woods.
His words reassured me, and a wave of relief swept over me. None of it would have been worth the effort if Allison were not safe.
Jake had stayed until his two patients were tended to. Mission accomplished. I wondered if he did the same in Vietnam, treating the wounded and then following up to ensure they were safe. Perhaps so. Now he was turning to leave.
“Jake,” I called to his back as he got to door. “Thanks for everything.” He had played a critical part in Allison’s survival and in mine. I could never repay him.
Turning to face me, he smiled. “Watch your back, man.” Then he was gone.
He would probably return to his life of privacy in the forest, still trying to come home from a war that everyone wanted to forget. His solitude, though, would likely be interrupted a lot in the next few days and weeks as the investigation proceeded. Maybe he would have to move on to escape from his past again.
I felt tightness in the skin on my face and my left arm and shoulder. I ran my right hand over those areas. The tightness was from bandages. The clinic had treated my wounds, leaving me with bandages covering large areas of my body and face. The IV drip continued to feed fluids into my arm. I was beginning to feel like a new man. I was a new man. Regardless of how the nurse in this clinic or anyone else felt about me, I was no longer society’s litter. I was back from the brink of despair. I still had value in this world. I would thrive again.
I had spoken for the dead man on Monarch Trail. I found out why he died. Others had died too. I had to live with the lost lives of Cortina Perez, Joseph Custer, Enid Powell, and the Sheriff. Their faces would haunt my dreams. They were innocent, but got swept into my wake and died for it. Even though I had not killed them myself, they were dead because of me. If I had just let it all go, just walked away on that first day, they probably would still be alive. Yet, I couldn’t do that. Deep down, I was still a cop. I had to uphold my oath to protect and to serve.
Rationalization was one way for me to cope with the deaths. I could try to convince myself it was not my burden to carry forever. Their demise was an unintended consequence of my actions. Besides, if those innocents had not been victims, then might others have died because of the illegal opium operation? Probably. Certainly all the Afghans would have, and many of the users of the drugs being produced in the valley. So my actions saved more lives than were lost. But in the end, I knew deep down I would regret the loss of the innocent victims from Willow Run. It was something I would live with every day and every night.
While I had no direct sources of information on what happened in Willow Run last night and what was happening now in the National Forest, I learned a lot just lying here in bed. No one told me anything. But I could overhear the nurses whispering outside my room and down the hall. In such a tiny clinic, voices traveled throughout the structure. Secrets are hard to keep in the small town of Willow Run.
The Sheriff had died in the street after being shot in the back by Ranger Andrew Pine. He probably died right in front of my eyes. But he had used the last ounce of his life to push his handgun across the roof of his vehicle to Allison and me so we could defend ourselves. I had used that gun to shoot at Ranger Pine. I knew that one of my shots hit him in the chest. Shortly after that, he had died in the alley where he took cover.
Excavation of the graves in Spring Valley had started. The bodies of three people had already been identified as Ranger Pine’s wife Edith, Cortina Perez, and Joseph Custer. An unidentified fourth body had also been recovered. That fourth victim had to be the dead Afghan man I had found on the trail. His body had been taken back into the valley and buried. Whoever was excavating the graves would surely also be digging into all the other burials in the valley, all the Afghans who had worked, been slaughtered, and then unceremoniously dumped into shallow holes in the ground last year.
The deaths of so many residents of Willow Run were probably unimaginable to its remaining citizens. Joseph Custer, Cortina Perez, Andrew Pine, Edith Pine, Sheriff Tyler, Enid Powell, Jeff Wells. Most of them were innocents caught in the crossfire. Two of them, Andrew Pine and Jeff Wells, were locals gone bad, gone very bad. Regardless, all of this would leave a huge hole in the heart of Willow Run. Healing would be slow and painful for this small town.
Then there were the deaths of Matthew Gates and one of his men. I had killed them. It was easily justified. I would lose no sleep over their losses. Yet, while they were not sons of the town of Willow Run, the mere fact of their deaths in the back yard of this small town would add to the wounds and the slow-healing scars that would follow.
I heard more whispered conversation from the nurses. There was chaos in the valley after the fire started. Townspeople poured into the area to fight the fire, just as they had a year ago. At the same time, Gates’ troops were streaming out of the valley in their vehicles. There were collisions of vehicles pouring in opposite directions. But Gates’ men didn’t stop. They just fled as fast as they could.
The firefighters were stunned to find the fenced-in compound in the valley. Most of them were the same ones who fought the fire last year. Seeing how the valley had been transformed from a burned over area into a flourishing drug-growing operation must have been quite a shock.
Some opium was recovered in the valley. Gates’ troops must have taken all the rest of it with them. No safe was found, so it and its content of cash were hauled off, too. While the soldiers disappeared for now, I suspected many of them would be captured in the not too distant future. At least some of them were escaping in military vehicles. Those would be easy to spot on the long open stretches of highways. And even if they did get past the initial roadblocks that were being set up in the area, their names, faces, families, and home addresses were all known. They probably would not be hard to find. So their dreams of life-long riches might end soon enough when they ran out of money or had nowhere left to hide.
When the firefighters entered the valley, the gates to the fenced-in compound were open. They found a throng of dirty, underfed men jabbering in a foreign language. With smoke billowing around them, they watched the fire intently, smiling, dancing, and cheering. They must have felt the worst of their ordeal was over. I owed them a huge debt. They had made my escape from the valley possible. I hoped that their liberation from the soldiers was adequate payment for that debt.
Yet with their liberation from their captors, it seemed that most of them made no move to escape. It made sense. They were lost in a foreign country. They had no transportation.
They did not speak English. They must have stayed to wait for whatever future might follow. My actions saved them from one prison, but they would probably soon be put into custody in another. Their fates would be uncertain for a long time until their names, countries of origin, circumstances of their capture in Afghanistan, and militant status could be sorted out. At least, I hoped, they would be treated better than they were in the valley by Lieutenant Matthew Gates and his troops.
Soon enough, legal entanglements from all this would confront me. I expected at any moment to see a cop or DEA agent walk through the door and read me my Miranda rights. You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will……. But I really didn’t expect an arrest to happen.
There was certainly a long enough list of offenses to choose from. For one, assaulting an officer of the law and eventually killing him. But Jeff was a crooked cop. That charge would be a tough one to make stick. If I hadn’t fought back, I would be dead. So it was self-defense.
Another crime was stealing a police vehicle, the ATV. But that was to escape dying at the hands of the crooked cop and to get a wounded civilian, Allison Wells, to medical assistance. Another tough one to make stick.
A third was burning the valley. That was justified under the circumstances, I thought, as a way to signal for help. It worked. Anyway, how would the DEA have destroyed all the confiscated poppies in the valley? With fire, though certainly in a much more controlled burn. I just saved them the effort, though I was certain the Willow Run residents who were battling the blaze at this very moment would offer a different opinion.
There was probably a long list of other laws I broke. But the police and federal agents were certainly preoccupied, dealing with the fire, Afghan prisoners, opium, and AWOL soldiers running loose. I too could run loose. No one was guarding the door. If I wanted to, I could just get up and walk out. But where would I go? What little I had owned in the world was gone: my car, my computer, my clothes, my phone.
That reminded me to call Ed Garvey. I owed him that call. He might get a reprimand for using department resources for my investigation, but his efforts helped reveal a substantial crime. That had to count for something. Ed had been angry with me the last time we spoke. I couldn’t blame him. He probably felt used and put into a vulnerable position. I had to set things right between us. To me, he was still my partner, regardless of my unemployed status. I hoped he felt that I was still his partner, too.
I had to write my book. I now had a story. It had morphed from a novel to a non-fiction story. The spectacular facts were probably all over the news already. A follow up book with all the details had potential. Who best to write it than the one who discovered the illegal activity and lived through it all? But even if I didn’t write a book, I was certain that my involvement in all this might elevate me to the status of a celebrity, at least for a short time. Perhaps that alone would lift me out of my unemployed situation.
Yet even I didn’t have all the facts about what I had just been through. There were lots of holes in the story, though I was certain they could be filled. I mentally ticked off some of the holes.
What was the point of intersection of the conspirators? Allison said something about her brother and Matthew Gates knowing each other from college. Probably many young men in the whole area went to the same school, the university in Missoula. That’s where Enid went. It was likely that Andrew Pine, Enid’s bounty hunter buddies, and maybe even others who were under Gates’ command all went there. These were all things that would be easy to check.
And Gates had mentioned that some of his comrades, who were too wounded to return to combat, were working in the supply chain in the military. They had been funneling materials to the operation in the valley. Those men were still out there too. But they also would be easy to find just by following the trail of those who had been in Gates’ command in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I wondered what Joseph Custer learned that got him killed so quickly. Joseph certainly must have had connections in the area to gather information, and he knew the history of many of the people here. I suspected he must have found some of the points of intersection, perhaps between Jeff and Matthew Gates. He too might have found the connection to the AWOL soldiers. That’s what led to me being imprisoned in the valley. So that same tripping point might have doomed Joseph Custer.
But none of that really mattered. What did matter to me is that my self-esteem was back. Though at great cost, I had accomplished something. I had value. I was no longer society’s litter. I had hope for a future.
Yet the most important thing to me, above any of the rest of it, was Allison. I decided to leave and find her down the hall. I painfully sat up in bed, pulled the IV line from my left arm, swiveled to my right, and placed my feet on the floor. I wore a hospital gown, which was open in the back, and I could feel a draft along my spine. Not the most fashionable attire, but so be it. I stood and walked unsteadily toward the door, seeing my reflection in a small mirror that hung near the door. The left side of my face was heavily bandaged, with only my undamaged eye showing. I looked like the Phantom of the Opera.
From what Jake said, Allison would recover from her physical wounds. How would she cope with the invisible wounds, such as the loss of her brother? Would she hate me for revealing his guilt, for killing him, and for shattering the quiet life in her beloved Willow Run? Only she could answer that.
The nurses were no longer whispering outside my room. They must have gone to the front of the building. I hobbled down the short hallway toward what appeared to be the only other patient room. I poked my head through the doorway and saw Allison. Her red hair framed a face that appeared to be at peace with the world. Perhaps that meant she had dealt with the demons of the past several days and had come to accept them. At least I hoped that was what it meant.
She glanced my way. She didn’t say anything or reach her hand out to me. But a faint smile appeared on her lips. I took that as an invitation to enter her room. Standing as erect as my wounded body would let me, I slowly entered to start the healing process between us. Was there still a chance we might have a future together?
Only she could answer that. She might not be able to answer today, but in time perhaps she could. In the meantime, I would stay in Montana to learn her answer. Big Sky Country was my new home. I was no longer a drifter. I was here to stay.
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About the author: Don Bissett is originally from New England, growing up in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He attended the University of Connecticut and Michigan State University. During his career in industry, he published extensively in journals and textbooks, nurturing a passion for writing. In addition to writing, his activities include consulting with industry, travel, hiking, and fossil collecting. The author currently resides in Cincinnati.
Titles in the Nathan Hale Parker series:
Death Comes in the Morning, published 2011
Dying at a Premium, will publish in early 2012
Scheduled to Die, will publish in late 2012
Learn more: www.nathanhaleparker.com
Contact the author:
[email protected] Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends