Buried Truth

The clerical person at the Tribal Ranger office was coolly efficient.

“No, Bill Cloudman is not consulting with the Tribal Rangers.”

“Not even in an unofficial capacity?”

“No, ma’am.”

Heather disconnected and pulled up an archived article on her laptop about the Johnny Moon slaying.

Tribal Ranger John Moon was killed yesterday by a bomb reportedly rigged by suspected killer Oscar Birch, who was holed up in a cave just outside Badlands National Park. Upon entering the cave, Moon triggered an explosive attached to a trip wire and was killed instantly. Birch escaped, while Tribal Detective Bill Cloudman, who was also on scene, attempted to resuscitate Moon. Birch was later captured at a roadblock ten miles from the site of the incident and taken into custody.

The article went on with further details and a “no comment” from Bill Cloudman.

Heather sighed. Bill didn’t want to comment on anything as far as she was concerned. Whatever closeness she’d felt between them before her arrest was gone. Choo Choo finished his breakfast while Heather paced the small front room. Though Bill’s strange behavior continued to prey on her mind, she had more practical matters to attend to. Until she retrieved her car from Bill’s place and had it fixed, she was going to have to work from home.

It took only a moment to add a line to the “latest buzz” section of the Desert Blaze website about the vandalism at Bill’s place. Her editor wouldn’t be pleased that there was no accompanying photo, but hopefully it would appease Bill. She added another entry about the upcoming church pancake breakfast and signed off before focusing on the print articles that required her attention.

She needed to write a piece on a minor fossil find by week’s end. She’d put it off for a while because it was on Bill Cloudman’s adopted aunt Jean’s property. Heather had met the amazing woman before things fell apart, and deep down, she felt ashamed at having to face her. There was also the story about the abandoned uranium pit a resident had been complaining about for years. It had the smell of a real story about it. After a phone call to leave a message with the man who’d reported the uranium pit, Heather found her attention wandering again.

“A little fresh air couldn’t hurt.” Pocketing her phone, she grabbed the dog’s leash. “Let’s go for a walk, Choo.” They headed into the glare of morning sunlight. The summer heat still surprised her every day, even though she’d lived in South Dakota for a few years as a little girl. Maybe she’d been too preoccupied then, wondering if her mother, Margot, would embrace the new beginning her father had intended for them. She hadn’t, and Margot’s dissatisfaction with her life and her health had only worsened.

Heather wiped at her face. Not even noon, and the temperatures were scorching. Tattered clouds seemed to press the heat back down at her, taunting her with the promise of a cooling rain. As she passed her mailbox at the end of the drive, she saw a note wedged underneath the red flag.

From the cops? She didn’t think so. Maybe Dr. Egan had changed his mind about the lab article. Snatching it, she read the ink scrawl.

I’ll give you the real story on Bill Cloudman.

Her fingers turned to ice. The real story? She remembered the strange phone call from the day before.

Choo Choo pulled on the leash, so Heather stuffed the letter into her pocket and followed, but her mind was alive with questions. Who had written the message and what was his connection to Bill Cloudman?

It took a few minutes of walking before she worked her way to the other side of the issue. A stranger had been on her property again, someone not willing to sign the note and leave a contact number.

Her instincts prickled like exposed wires. She made up her mind to talk to the police, in spite of her reluctance to show her face at the station again.

She and Choo Choo stuck to the shaded perimeter of the trail that led from her house down toward the canyon where the ruckus had occurred the night before. There was no sign of movement now except for an eagle soaring in lazy circles above her. The rocks sloughed away in rivers of red and gold, dotted with clumps of needlegrass and the flicker of color from some late-blooming monkshood. Choo Choo nosed along as they walked and Heather found herself moving toward the old timber bridge that spanned a low spot in the canyon, connecting her property to Charlie Moon’s.

She stopped to pour some water from a bottle into her cupped palm for the dog, who slurped it up and gave her a lick on the cheek to boot before wagging his tail at a little girl who seemed to appear from nowhere. It took Heather a moment to identify the child as Tina Moon, Johnny Moon’s sister. Her dark hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, several thick strands that had escaped the elastic hanging in her eyes.

“Hiya,” she said. “You used to be Uncle Bill’s girlfriend.” She bent to pat Choo Choo.

Heather felt her cheeks go hot. “Oh, I, um, know Bill, yes. He, er, used to be a friend of mine.”

Tina shoved her hands into the pockets of her jean shorts. “Not anymore?”

Heather found the girl’s dark stare unnerving. “Have you seen your uncle Bill since he got back?”

“Uncle Charlie said Uncle Bill’s not my uncle anymore.” She sighed, fiddling with a compact she pulled from her pocket. Heather hid her smile as the girl looked into the tiny mirror and puckered her lips. Tina put the compact away and eyed Choo Choo. “Your dog is real slow. Not like Tank. Anyway, I gotta go. I’m not supposed to be playing here.”

“Why not?”

“Uncle Charlie said there’s a monster on the loose and he’d be real mad if he knew I was out here instead of inside playing. Bye.” She gave Choo Choo a final pat and trotted off, leaving Heather in a cloud of confusion.

A monster? Maybe it was a story Charlie told to keep Tina from wandering, but the few times Heather had seen Tina in the past, the child was always on her own as she meandered around the property and her guardian had never seemed to mind before.

Then again, things might have changed since Johnny was murdered.

She thought of Bill Cloudman’s strange behavior. He was preoccupied, closemouthed, as if he, too, was on the lookout for a monster.

On her way back over the bridge, she pulled out her satellite phone and accessed the internet, typing “Oscar Birch” in the search window. It took only a moment before her suspicion was confirmed.

In spite of the radiant heat, Heather went cold inside. Tina was right. There was a monster on the loose.

Bill stood in the relative cool of his front porch that afternoon, wiping oil off his hands from fixing Heather’s Jeep. Tank shifted uneasily at his feet, waiting for a ball to be thrown or the jangle of truck keys. He let out a bark, which elicited only a distracted look from his owner, lost in the memory of a long-ago sun-scorched day.

Then, too, he’d had the tight feeling in the pit of his stomach, a prickle of instinct that told him something was going to go wrong. On that afternoon there had been a similar cover of clouds that undulated across the sky. Difference was, he hadn’t been alone then. Johnny Moon was there, chatting away, eager as always for any kind of excitement, reminding Bill in some ways of Bill’s dead sister, Leanne.

“You got to let go sometimes, Sarge,” Johnny would say. “Live a little. Ask that fine reporter out. You know she’s got it bad for you.”

He smiled at the memory. He’d decided to follow his partner’s advice and ask Heather to dinner that same night. Yes, Johnny had been full to the brim with life, even though Bill sensed worry in his young partner in the months before his death. Something was distracting him, but it never for a moment took away his ebullience.

The trip wire did that.

A thin filament of death, set carefully in place by a man as lethal as a rattlesnake with a bite every bit as vicious.

Bill would go to his grave believing Oscar had known they were coming, planned the execution down to the last detail. Only, Oscar hadn’t known Johnny would cross it first.

And neither had Bill.

He sighed, watching a raccoon waddle down the thick bark of a pine tree on his way to forage. Tank jerked alert at the sound and took off running for the critter, which about-faced and climbed back up, hissing and snapping his displeasure at the dog.

Bill’s mind wandered back to Heather and her geriatric pet. The presence of a dog in her life amused him. She acted tough, but he’d seen glimmers of that soft spot in her before. He couldn’t reconcile the two opposites in his mind, so he stopped trying. It was one of the many things he’d probably never understand about her.

A dull ache was settling into his upper arm and he flexed his injured shoulder. Fixing the Jeep, after spending most of the morning cleaning up the broken glass, hadn’t helped the wound. Mopping up the paint had proved mostly futile, but he’d done what he could. The house was still smeared in ugly streaks of red.

He lingered there on the porch a long time, until the sun was high. He allowed himself to remember, for the briefest of moments, how much his sister, Leanne, had loved the sunshine. Years before, he might have summoned up a prayer for those he had lost, Leanne and Johnny. Instead he turned back inside the paint-spattered house to find his gun.

When the Glock was cleaned and oiled, he holstered it to his side, and after he fed Tank, they headed out onto the property. It was a sprawling ten acres of parched flatland, rolling hills and a spring, hidden by a thick cluster of pines. The smell of it soothed him—rusty earth, dry grass and heat. He’d been gone for so long, the ground had lost some of its familiarity. He needed to reacquaint himself, to relearn every dip, every hollow, every possible shaded nook that had grown over in the time he’d been away. His survival might depend on it.

Bill started hiking to the farthest edge of the property where it sloped downward into a dry wash. The boulders piled in crazy formations along the edge formed a labyrinth of rock and hence a myriad of hiding places. As far as he could tell by a careful examination, no one had been prowling there anytime recently. The dry soil was marked only by the curving slices of rattlesnake tracks and the scattered dry bones of a hare that had probably fallen victim to a coyote.

He continued upslope to the pine grove, a welcome cool against the sun that was hammering down mercilessly. Tank took advantage of the shade to stretch out and put his bony head on his paws. Here again, there was no sign that any trespassers had been present. Bill removed a pair of binoculars from his backpack and scanned the area below, his defaced cabin, tucked up against the side of a granite cliff, the flat area surrounding it and the distant cliffs standing like broad-chested sentries against the sky. Nothing out of the ordinary until Tank sat up abruptly, ears swiveling, body rigid.

“What do you hear, Tank?” Bill whispered.

Tank listened for another moment before he took off, bounding down the trail and disappearing into the trees. Bill followed as quickly as he dared, keeping to the shadows as much as possible.

His pulse pounded in his neck. Was it Oscar?

He stopped behind a fallen trunk and watched.

Tank was not visible but he heard a quick bark, just one, and then the property fell into silence again. Bill had seen Tank in attack mode before only a few times, one of which involved a massive, drunk dirt biker who’d caught Bill unawares and knocked him to the ground. The dog had leaped immediately into the fray and caught the biker’s biceps between his jaws, which clamped viselike until Bill scrambled to his feet and called off the animal in stern Lakota, the language in which he’d trained the dog. It had taken all of Bill’s powers of persuasion to convince Tank to let go of the whimpering bad guy.

Unfortunately, Tank’s impulsivity often got the better of his training. Had he gone after an animal? Or encountered a creature with much more deadly potential? Bill took a few deep breaths to relax his muscles before he slid the Glock from its holster and ran to the next tree.

Tank let out a whine. Bill couldn’t see the dog through the thick screen of towering pine. Inching closer, he took each footstep gently, easing his boots into the soft cover of pine needles.

Closer now. There was a small movement ahead. He took a breath and prepared to step around the wide trunk. Forcing himself to keep breathing, he did a slow count to three and charged.

FOUR

Heather screamed as Bill Cloudman suddenly leaped from behind a tree, gun in hand. Tina looked up from her kneeling position scratching Tank’s belly.

“Hiya, Uncle Bill.”

Bill’s face blanched slightly under the dark skin and he immediately pulled the gun behind his back. “Tina. What are you doing here?” He gave Heather an incredulous look. “Did you bring her?”

Heather swallowed hard and tried to find her voice, heart still hammering against her ribs. “No, I didn’t. I was on my way to talk to you and I found her walking a couple miles outside town. It didn’t seem safe to let her walk on the road alone, so I gave her a ride.”

She caught the question on his face. “I rode my dad’s old motorcycle. It’s parked over there in the shade.”

Bill looked from Heather to Tina. He got down on one knee and gently caught her chin on his finger until her gaze met his. “Did your uncle give you permission to come?”

Tina shrugged.

He raised an eyebrow, his face stern. “Tina?”

Tina shook her head. “Uncle Charlie doesn’t want me to talk to you anymore now that Johnny’s dead, but I wanted to come and see you and Tank. I liked it when we played fetch. I thought he could help me hunt for fossils. Look at this one.” She held up a curved bit of white that she fished from her pocket.

Heather saw a stain of emotion wash over Bill’s face before it was hidden behind his stoic mask. “Never mind that now. You should not have left without telling your uncle. He’s probably worried about you. Come back to the house and I’ll call him.”

Tina rose and Tank trotted at her heels as they returned to the cabin. Heather was unsure if she should tag along or not until Bill called over his shoulder, “Thanks for taking care of her.”

Heather took it as an invitation and scurried to catch up with him. “No problem. We need to talk, Bill.”

“No, we don’t.”

She bit back an impatient retort. Their past aside, she needed to confirm her terrible suspicion. “Yes, we do. I know what’s going on.”

He ignored her and quickened his pace. Heather was practically running by the time they reached his cabin. Tina scrambled inside after Tank, and Bill stopped abruptly on the porch. “Appreciate your help. I’ll handle things from here.”

She reached ahead of him and pulled the door closed. He turned on her, the muscles of his jaw twitching. She’d seen that intensity in him before and it made her shiver.

“I’ve got to take care of Tina now,” he said.

“No, you need to talk to me.”

He folded his arms and glowered at her. “We have nothing to discuss.”

She kept her voice low. “I think we do. I remember when you were hunting Oscar Birch after he murdered his wife.”

Bill stared at her, but didn’t answer.

She forced her way through the awkward silence. “Oscar killed Hazel and he was on the run.”

His jaw clenched, but he still did not speak.

“He was still at large when I … left.” She added softly, “And then he killed your partner.”

“Correct. That’s old news.” His eyes wandered over her face. “A lot of things have changed since you went away.”

She swallowed. “You helped capture Oscar’s son, who died on the way to prison.”

That comment elicited a blink from Bill. She pressed on. “I also found out that Oscar Birch recently escaped custody.”

He folded his arms. “You’re good at finding out facts. Must be an occupational hazard.”

“Here’s a fact that wasn’t in the research. Oscar’s the one who messed up your house, isn’t he?”

“Could be.”

She thought suddenly about the note on her mailbox, the strange phone call. A shiver of fear coursed through her body, leaving her cold. “Bill, I need the truth.”

“That’s something, isn’t it?” His eyes blazed. “You didn’t need anything from me a while back. Didn’t even need to return my messages. Now you come here needing the truth.”

She wanted to scream. “I’m not talking about you and me or what happened. I’m talking about right here and right now.” She stepped closer to him, trying to capture his gaze with hers. “Oscar blames you for the death of his son. Has he returned to Rockvale to kill you?”

Bill looked steadily at her this time, eyes black bright and glittering with an intense emotion. “I certainly hope so. Oscar hasn’t learned his lesson.”

Heather’s mouth fell open. “Bill … you’ve got to tell the police. You’ve got to get out of here.”

After a moment he turned abruptly and went into the house. She followed in a daze, watching while he poured two glasses of water and handed one to her. “Cops know. They’re after him. Local guys and the Feds.”

She took the water and gulped some down. “That’s good, then. They’ll catch him, surely.”

Bill drained his glass and set it on the table. “Could be.”

She gaped. “You think they’ll catch him, don’t you?”

He took the glass from her hand. “I think that you and Tina need to stay away from here, from me, until this is all sorted out. I fixed your Jeep. Take Tina home and don’t come back here. I’ll tell Charlie you’re on your way. I’ll bring your motorcycle back soon.”

“Bill …” She put a hand on his arm, but he pulled away. A flash of some emotion rippled across his face. Maybe it was the lingering hurt at the way she’d shut him out after the arrest. Perhaps it was the disappointment of having let his guard down with a woman who turned out to be an alcoholic.

Her eyes wandered over the tile counter, to a red-checkered cookbook, the same one she had jokingly given him before her disgrace.

You need to learn to cook, she’d said with a laugh.

Now that I’ve got someone to cook for besides the dog, maybe I will.

She remembered his laugh, the sparkle in his eyes. The sight of that cookbook brought back all the shameful choices she’d made, the ways she’d tried to hide her addiction from him.

She wanted to tell him about the phone call she’d received. About the note. But she saw the coldness in his eyes and the ferocious desire to avenge his partner’s death. Bill was right. She should stay out of his life.

She would go to the police and let them handle it.

“Tina,” she called to the girl, who was busily twining a thread around Tank’s collar. “Let’s go home. We can ride in my Jeep.”

Tina looked up. “I liked riding the motorcycle.”

“Me, too, but the Jeep will have to do this time. Come on. Uncle Bill wants us to go.”

Heather felt Bill’s eyes on her as she walked Tina outside, but she did not look back.

Once was enough.

Bill called Charlie and explained things.

“I told her she was to stay inside,” Charlie sputtered.

“She’s a kid. She made a mistake.”

Charlie hung up, leaving Bill to hope the little girl wouldn’t be punished too severely. This time he agreed with Charlie. With Oscar on the loose, it was better for everyone to stay away from him, including Tina.

And Heather.

He was surprised that seeing her brought up such a mess of feelings for him. He’d thought after losing Leanne, her and then Johnny, he didn’t have feelings left. He was wrong. His gut was a jumble of anger and longing. He pictured her brown eyes, remembered the feel of her hand on his arm.

Let go of that, Bill. Remember the anger. Feed it. And find Oscar.

He went outside and rolled Heather’s motorcycle into the back of his truck. The sooner he delivered it and severed all connection with her again, the better. His phone rang as he closed the tailgate.

The voice of Tribal Ranger Al Crow was heavy with excitement. “Bill? That you?”

“What’s up, Al?”

“I knew you’d want to be in on it. We got him.”

Bill’s gut tightened. “What?”

“Oscar. Got a tip he was holing up in an old camper by Swallow Cliffs. Moving in on him now. Want in?”

“Oh, yes,” Bill said. “I want in.”

Swallow Cliffs was the local nickname for acres of prairie grassland nestled up to a dry streambed that cut along the bottom of a cliff face. Spring rains would transform the area into a vigorous river, which provided plenty of bugs and fresh water for the hordes of swallows that nested in the cliff walls. Now, as Bill and the three other men watched through binoculars from behind a screen of shrubs, the only movement came from the sudden dive of a bird and the swish of dry grass tickled by the hot wind.

Next to Bill, Al Crow and Captain Richmond peered through binoculars. The camper perched crookedly in the grass was rusty, the windows obscured by blinds. Jim Rudley, the same federal investigator who had assisted in the manhunt for Oscar after Johnny’s death, held a phone to his ear. Crow shifted uneasily. “Could handle it ourselves.”

Richmond grunted. “He’s calling for the bomb squad, just in case this is an ambush.”

Both men shot a look at Bill. He could remember the blast so clearly, the one that had killed Johnny. The flash, the explosion that had made his ears ring. Holding his partner’s hand and begging him not to die. He forced a steady voice. “Who tipped us?”

“Reggie,” Crow said.

Reggie was a mechanic who did any odd job he could find on the Eagle Rock reservation. He’d proven to be a help to the Tribal Rangers on many occasions.

Crow continued. “Said kids were using the trailer for drinking and such a while back, so he keeps a close eye on it. Saw some tracks near the creek, saw a light last night and called it in to us this morning.”

Bill stared at the trailer. It had been there so long, on an abandoned stretch of land, he could no longer remember who had left it there. Nothing moved in the interior. Nothing that he could see, anyway.

Richmond and Crow stood next to him, hands on their guns, tense. He knew they felt the same mixture of anger and excitement that he did. If Oscar was in there, they could put away the guy who killed Johnny. This time for good.

Rudley clicked off his phone and nodded to Bill. “Explosives guys are on their way, but it will be a while.”

Bill looked again at the rusty trailer.

I’m coming for you.

Oscar was a twisted man, incapable of normal emotions, his troubles probably born of the days he lived with his mother and a steady stream of abusive men, according to the sketchy facts collected about his life. As far as Bill knew, Oscar loved only two things—his mother, who had passed away two decades before, and his son, Autie, now dead after trying to escape arrest.

It did not matter that it was not Bill’s finger on the trigger. In Oscar’s mind Bill had murdered his son. This was not about laws or justice. It was revenge, pure and simple, and Bill hungered for it just as much as Oscar.

The feeling shamed him. He knew what Aunt Jean would say.

Leave the judgment to the Lord, Bill.

Well, the Lord had abdicated the day he let Johnny get blown up.

Without a word, Bill drew his weapon and headed for the trailer.

Behind him he heard Crow gasp.

“Cloudman,” Rudley whispered. “Get back here.”

Keeping to the edge of the foliage as best he could, Bill crept on toward the trailer.

Rudley tried to catch him. “Don’t be stupid. You can’t fix what happened by getting yourself killed.”

But Bill had already left the shelter of the branches and begun running toward the trailer, head low and moving as fast as he dared.