Chapter 13: An Important Visitor

Present Day

Day 2

Everest, Montana

Charles Conway looked around the driveway, his face blank and impassive. His car was the only thing in the driveway other than dozens of shell casings, and several stains that looked suspiciously like dried blood and were covered by flies. To the left was a barn with an open door, and he walked there first. As he got closer, he could see that the red wood was pockmarked with bullet holes, especially around the door, and he looked closer and found a few bullets that looked like NATO 5.56. Then he went to the house and went in through the shot-up front door and walked through the house. Hundreds of rounds had been fired, and a dozen magazines from M-4s littered the floors. The one thing missing was any semblance of blood; it was obvious that the resident wasn’t inside when the assault team breached the house and began their search.

When he walked back outside, his driver signaled to him. Conway looked over to where he was standing and the driver said, “Sir, check out the field.”

Conway looked over to where the driver was pointing and walked in that direction. He got close enough to see that heavy equipment had driven out into the field and dug things up, and then covered the hole again. Conway remembered seeing a backhoe in the barn. He turned back to the car knowing that his assault team was most certainly at the bottom of the hole.

“Where to now, sir?”

“The place on 91, Pins&Needles. It’s probably as deserted as this place, but you never know.”

“Yes, sir.” He opened the back door of the car and let Conway inside; afterwards, he closed the door and climbed behind the wheel of the car. The car wasn’t exactly a limousine, just a large black Lincoln.

Pins&Needles was locked up, with a sign on the door saying, ‘Closed Until Further Notice’. There was a car out back, but it didn’t look like it had been driven lately. Conway was debating breaking in and searching the building but refrained when he heard a car parking out front. He walked back to the front of the building to see a teenage girl unlocking the front door and going inside. He walked to the front door and let himself in.

“Hi! Sorry, but we’re closed,” said the girl, looking over at him.

Conway smiled. “Yes, I saw the sign. I was wondering for how long. I actually came by to see Miss Northcott. Is she here?”

“No, sorry. She’s gone for a while. No idea when she’ll be back. Soon, I hope.” Traci went to the back door and opened it. Several packages were waiting there from a UPS delivery. She brought them inside and then closed the door. When she looked up, she saw Conway standing in the storeroom. “Sorry, but you can’t be in here.”

“I’m sorry.” He moved backwards, to the doorway. “You were saying about Miss Northcott?”

Traci shrugged. “Just that I don’t know where she is. She took off a couple of days ago with her boyfriend, said she wasn’t sure when she would be back, and asked me to take care of things until then.”

Conway smiled. “Her boyfriend? Is that Travis Scott?”

The teen giggled. “Uh, huh! He’s kind of cute. I think they’re getting serious. Maybe they eloped and ran off to Vegas or something.”

He smiled. “Maybe so. Any chance anybody else might know where she is?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. I have to take the mail over to this lawyer in town. Maybe he knows something, but that’s it.”

“Well, if you could let me know his name, maybe I can ask him? Then I can get out of your hair.”

Traci gave Conway the name and address of the lawyer and then saw him out. “I’ll be going over there when I finish up here. I always take the mail over after it arrives.”

“No, that’s all right. I have some other business in town first. Thank you, though.”

“No problem!” She waved as Conway got into the big black car and left. It was the first time she had ever seen a limo other than on television.

Rather than head to the lawyer’s address, Conway had his driver head towards the sheriff’s office. This was more an intelligence mission than anything else. If Travis Scott or Jake Kilbourne or whoever he was walked by on the street, he would happily kill him, but that didn’t seem likely. The girlfriend was not available as a pressure point, either. The lawyer was a possible source of information, but he didn’t want to approach him until after the salesclerk had dropped off the mail from the store; there was a possibility that the lawyer might not cooperate with the investigation and he didn’t need two bodies in this hick town. Two more bodies.

“Stay with the car. I don’t know how long this will take, but if I need you, I’ll have somebody come and get you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Conway went into the sheriff’s department, stopping at the front desk. “My name is Charles Conway. I have an appointment with the Sheriff. Is he available?”

The deputy at the desk nodded and said, “I’ll let him know you’re here.”

“Thank you.” Conway waited while the deputy picked up a phone and dialed an extension. A minute later he was following the deputy down a hallway.

“Sheriff, this is Mister Conway,” said the deputy. He left the visitor in the Sheriff’s office.

“Welcome, Mister Conway,” said the Sheriff, rising from behind his desk. He was a tall man, handsome, with a clean-shaven square jaw, blonde hair, blue eyes, and dimples. It was a face that looked great on a campaign poster. He also had a deeply resonant voice that sounded good on television. Other than that, the general consensus around the county office building and courthouse was that Sheriff Harlan Briscoe was an amiable idiot.

“Pleased to meet you, Sheriff. Charles Conway. And this is?” Conway asked, looking over at the third man in the office.

“This is my Undersheriff, Marty Haskell. Marty handles most of the day-to-day details and I thought he might be useful to hear from.”

Conway turned to him and extended his hand. “Undersheriff.”

Marty reached out and shook his hand. “Mister Conway.”

“Busy morning, Marty?” asked the sheriff.

Marty rolled his eyes. “Some New York nitwit was vacationing in the area and doing some fishing when he and his wife saw an elk taking in the morning sun on the side of the road. So, the idiot decided to take a selfie with the elk, thinking it was Bullwinkle the Moose.”

“Let me guess, Bullwinkle took exception to this?”

“Pretty much. From what the wife was saying at the hospital, the elk waited until her husband got too close before giving him a royal stomping. She flagged me down and I called it in, and then followed the ambulance to the hospital.”

Conway smiled at this. “You get this a lot?”

“Every year or two somebody does something stupid. Two years ago, some tourists saw some elk down on the Fourteenth Tee at the golf course at dawn and decided to take pictures after putting their four-year-old up on the back of a bull elk,” answered Sheriff Briscoe.