LAKE
FRANCIS
The outboard trolling motor hummed
softly as the medium-sized fishing boat made its way across the glasslike
surface of the lake. The deputy kept it in a straight line while two other law
enforcement officers huddled in the rear, watching the screen of a
state-of-the-art electronic scanner as it revealed the secrets that littered
the lake bed. Nothing really harmless, a couple of old tires, what looked like
a couple of glass bottles; nothing that could cause a major environmental
panic. The depth suddenly increased as the driver maneuvered the launch further
away from the shore.
“This is quite the gadget,” Sheriff
Driscoll praised as he continued to scan the screen, “about the most elaborate
fish-finder I ever saw.”
“It’ll damn near count the scales on
the fish itself,” Sheriff Moffit responded with a grin. “It’s small enough to
take in a smaller craft yet it’s dead accurate. I figured we could use it, but
with only one sizable lake and a couple of streams, I sort of doubt if the
county will go for it.”
“Could possibly use something like
this over my way.” Driscoll continued to view the screen. “This is almost as
clear as my wife’s last Ultrasound.”
They were in fifty feet of water by
then and the screen, although considerably darker, still showed the
irregularities of the lake bed. The depth remained at fifty feet then started
to rise then levelled off at forty feet. It first started to appear as a sudden
increase in depth but it soon changed to a rectangular object. They both saw it
together as it came into view.
“What the hell?” Driscoll said. “That
looks like a—car.”
“It’s a car for sure.” Moffit motioned
for the driver to cut the power and allow the craft to stop.
Driscoll looked up from the screen and
gazed back to the shore. They were a good hundred yards out. He glanced that
the boat launching ramp then to the highway beyond that. “Wasn’t the old road
closer?”
Moffit pointed to the shore. “The road
used to form a dogleg around a slough, and the center almost lined up with the
boat ramp. There were a few near misses over the years before they drained the
slough and straightened out the road. It ended up about fifty yards further
over to give more room for trailers and towing vehicles and make it a little
safer. Of course it also lessened the congestion around the Lighthouse tavern.”
He indicated the popular eating and drinking establishment about three hundred
yards further east.
“How long ago was that?”
“Hell, I was a senior in high school;
that would’ve been around 1979.”
“I can remember the old road,”
Driscoll said. “We often took this way down to Teton Pass to ski. We quite
often ran out of beer on the way back and bought more at the Lighthouse.”
“You could’ve gotten into trouble for
that,” Moffit said with a chuckle, “Sheriff could’ve given you a rather large
citation.”
“Where’s the law enforcement when you
need ‘em?”
They both looked at the monitor again.
“Need to get a closer look at that car,” Moffit said.
Driscoll nodded. “I’ve got scuba gear,
but it’s back at my place.”
Moffit indicated the small town a couple
of miles away toward the east. “Two firemen in town, they’re both qualified
divers.” He nodded toward the launch pilot. “Let’s head in; I’ll get a wrecker
coming.”
It was just past noon on that sunny late
spring day. The divers, eager to get the opportunity, wasted no time getting
their gear together and out to the sizeable lake in the western Montana plains.
They were taken out to the site and lowered themselves into the still chilly
water.
“Miss diving?” Moffit said to Driscoll.
Driscoll nodded. “Sometimes. Never
really went crazy for it; it just went with the job. In the CRT, you did
everything; diving was part of it.”
The first diver came to the surface and
slid his mask up. “Sheriff Moffit, there’s two
cars down there!”
“Two cars!” Both sheriffs shouted in
unison.
“Yeah, went down, looks like a long time
between. One’s almost buried in silt and sediment and the one you saw has to
have been there at least thirty years. Looks like the second car, the one you
saw, was going a lot faster; it’s just ahead of the older one.”
“Okay, winch truck’s on its way; I’m
going to need you guys for a while.”
They eventually needed more than a
wrecker; they ended up enlisting the services of a sizeable winch truck, plus a
lot of digging on the part of the diving team. It was well into the afternoon
when the first car broke the surface and was pulled slowly out of its watery
grave, muddy water pouring out from many passages. The crew wasted no time at
all going after the second car. While they were doing that the two sheriffs
began an examination of the first one.
“Looks like a ’49 Chevy Fleetline,”
Driscoll said as he examined the rusted out hulk in front of them.
“I can see the Fleetline part,” Moffit
said as he scanned the long roof as it sloped down from the driver’s area to
the rear bumper, “how can you tell the year?”
“Grill—bottom section has got vertical
bars in it; ’50 model looks very close but the vertical bars are gone.”
“You seem to know your old cars.”
Driscoll shrugged off the compliment.
“For what it’s worth.” He wiped the mud off the front and rear license plates
which were mostly legible then took a picture with his cellphone. He promptly
sent them in to see if there was a chance at the identification of the registered
owner. He then carefully began a systematic examination of the car’s exterior.
The body was cratered with holes that were the result of many years under
water. Surprisingly three of the four tires still held air; the left front one
was shredded. Mark checked the glass of the car, first the doors and the rear
window then the windshield. The windshield itself was spider-webbed with cracks
which could have been caused by years of travelling the local gravelled roads,
or the impact of hitting the lake at speed. He probed at a large spiderweb of
cracks, just ahead of the driver’s side then backed away and took a photo with
his cellphone.
“Bullet hole,” Mark said, “about .30
caliber. I’d guess the shooter was directly in front, or a few degrees off to
the left.”
Moffit came over to look for himself. He
nodded in agreement. “.30 caliber. Going to be a fun game trying to track down
a thirty caliber rifle in this country. Be like finding the proverbial needle
in a haystack.”
The doors gave way easily on the old
Chevy. They all but crumbled when a pry bar was inserted into the latch area.
It was a four-door so access to the interior, though difficult, was a lot
easier than if it were a two door. But the years under water damaged the car far
beyond any possibilities of salvage and it had literally began to collapse as
it was drug across the grassy shore to higher ground where it sat streaming
brownish liquid. The stench of the sodden, decomposing interior was nauseating
so the officials gave it some time to air out before continuing. The inside seemed
to be half-filled with trash, which could eventually be identified as tattered
upholstery, to articles of clothing, to—Mark tried to dismiss the thought—human
remains. One thing that remarkably came out intact was a pair of leather rider’s
chaps, the type worn by rodeo cowboys, in the rear seat. “Rodeo cowboy,”
Driscoll muttered as he noted the initials, ‘D.B.,’ then set them aside and continued
to probe the interior.
With a plastic probe Sheriff Driscoll
began to pull at what appeared to be a pile of trash on the front seat. The
headliner had long since collapsed on the seat, covering everything that was
there. Fortunately it gave way and could be slid to the side. Another pile of
trash slid off to the side revealing a gray colored dome- shaped object.
Driscoll had seen enough of these to know what he was looking at.
“We’ve got a body,” the sheriff said
grimly. He stood up and stepped back. He picked up his cellphone just as it
chirped. He listened to the caller then said: “Call the coroner, contact
Hinkley and have him bring the camera.” Driscoll checked his watch. “You might
as well come down here too; it looks like we’re going to be here for a while.”
Driscoll killed the call then turned toward Moffit. “It’s one of ours,” he
said. The two sheriffs backed away and let the deputies probe the interior. They
spoke in guarded tones as the crowd gathering around to witness the spectacle
was increasing. Moffit had already brought in extra personnel to control the
crowd.
“There’s two more, a deputy said, “one
on the front floor and another in the back seat.”
“My god,” Driscoll murmured , “what the
hell have we gotten ourselves into?”
The second car was emerging from the
lake and they stopped to watch as the salvage crew winched it onto the higher
ground to come to rest about ten yards away from the first.
Although covered in mud and silt there
were still places where they could see some green paint showing through. The
car appeared to be a late sixties GM pony car. Typical style for the era: long
hood, short deck—two large doors. The once shiny chrome emblems near the
leading edge of the front fenders proudly proclaimed Z-28, obviously the model
of the car itself. The glass was mostly intact; that was to say that it was in
place; the windshield was obviously cracked, very similar to the one in the
older car. It was stained completely brown and impossible to see through. The
license plates were mostly intact on this car too but it would take some
careful cleaning to determine where the car had last been registered.
“Car looks vaguely familiar,” Driscoll
observed as he scanned the filthy exterior, “Kid, over Sunburst way, got a ’69 Z-28,
dark green, like this, for a graduation present.”
“Local kid?” Moffit asked.
“His dad was a Customs officer at
Sweetgrass; family moved into Sunburst about the beginning of Junior Year.”
Mark paused. “They had just the boy. I’m trying to think of his name—kind of a
Mennonite sounding name—Jacob Weiss? Anyways, he didn’t like it around here;
preferred San Diego, where they came from; always vowed to move back.
“I didn’t know him very well, you know,
different school. I do have to say that he was considered to be somewhat of a
babe magnet. Tall, athletic, southern Californian—,” Driscoll indicated the
car, “—nice car; girls kind of threw themselves at him. Graduated year after I
did. Disappeared shortly afterwards, while I was Vietnam.”
Driscoll backed away from the car. “If
this is his car, it’s been in the drink for over forty years.” He crouched down
behind the car and snapped a photo of the license plate with his cellphone. The
metal validation tag was still in place but it was obvious that he would need
the lab to positively identify the registration. He called the number in,
hoping that he might at least get started.
Driscoll examined the cracks on the
windshield but was eventually satisfied that the cracks were either typical
wear and tear or getting the odd rock thrown from a passing truck. Like the
first car, three tires were still holding air but the driver’s front was
flattened. Unlike the first car it wasn’t shredded so there was a chance that
this car simply drove off the road. The fine details would be the
responsibility of the lab.
Driscoll
went over to his department-issued Yukon and rummaged around in the toolbox,
quickly returning with a sizeable wrecking bar and a hammer. He was in the
process of prying the door open when he noticed a hole running at an angle just
inside the hinge area. Surely that wasn’t a bullet hole as well? He wasn’t
about to take his chances so he decided to investigate from somewhere else.
No longer a good idea to force the
driver’s door open, at least for the time being, Driscoll wiped the left rear
window down then took a wide strip of masking tape which he placed on the
glass. Taking a ball peen hammer, he drove the ball end of the head into the
center of the window. The shattered glass held mostly intact and he was able to
pull it out toward him. The stench of the decomposing interior, very similar to
the older car, rushed out at him. The sheriff gave himself a moment before
taking out his flashlight and beaming it inside.
He could see the rear seat frame and the
springs, with mere tatters of upholstery still clinging to the heavily corroded
metal. The floor was covered in muck. The front seats seemed a little more
intact. He went around to the passenger’s side of the car. Inserting a pry bar
in next to the latch, he attempted to force the door but it wouldn’t budge. He
went to the trunk and had better success forcing the trunk open.
The trunk revealed little more than a
rusted spare wheel, with the spare still inflated, a rusty jack and tire iron,
and a dozen beer bottles with the rusted caps still on top.
The wrecker driver came over and offered
a more substantial prybar for the passenger’s side door. This gave them better
success. In very little time they had the door open and were able to see what
was inside.
It almost looked like everything was in
one filthy, mud-encrusted piece; the buckets seats and console blended together
with what seemed to be a pile of old clothes. The interior of this car, too, appeared
that the headliner had detached itself from the ceiling and draped itself down
on the seats. Being immersed for all those years blended everything together.
But the investigation had to continue.
Armed with a couple of hastily fashioned wire hooks and plastic sticks,
Driscoll and Moffit carefully probed the pile of rotted headliner and
upholstery and pulled some of it away. It didn’t offer much resistance, and
didn’t offer much more to see. Driscoll went in again. He caught onto something
more solid. Seat frame, he thought and pulled some more. It gave way and a
major wad slid out the opened door.
The two law officers fairly gaped at
what they saw. Sprawled across both seats and the console was the skeletal
remains of a man.
They stood there in shocked silence
while they comprehended what they had just seen. The case had suddenly become
more than just a second car at the bottom of the lake; there were now four
deaths to sort out.
Of
course by the time the local coffee shop opened the following morning, the news
was out. The sheriff didn’t find it at all surprising that the speculative body
count was closer to eight than four. Driscoll tried to keep a lid on that from
the get-go but reporters were on the scene as soon as it was revealed that a
car was found on the lake bed; there were at least three reporters within
earshot when they opened up the old Chevy, and there were a couple more by the
time they had the Camaro drug out. Mark tried to downplay the gossip as he
filled his cup then took a seat at the table.
“So the cars were all shot up?” Leonard
asked from the opposite end.
Driscoll shook his head. “Just the one, there’s
no evidence that it wasn’t there long before the car went into the drink.”
“Know who it is?”
“No. We got three bodies out of the
older car and one from the newer one; we’ve checked the license numbers and
know where they were last registered. Right now we’re trying to identify the
bodies, and, just trying to piece together what happened.” Mark couldn’t really
say anything more. It didn’t really matter anyways. The whole event seemed to
take on a life of its own, and he was glad it went that way.
Driscoll drove out east of town then
headed north toward the Sweetgrass Hills. The old Chevy was registered to a
rancher who had run an operation in the region of Pratt’s Canyon, in the
vicinity of the West Butte. The Musgrove ranch was in that same region. Mark
decided to stop there and have a chat with his good friend, Cole. As he drove
into the yard he wished once again that Cole’s dad was still around. The late
Sheriff Andy Musgrove was a wealth of information, and willing to help in every
way he could. It was Musgrove who had not only recommended that Driscoll become
the new sheriff, but encouraged him as well. But Musgrove had passed on; the
only thing Mark could do when he got bogged down was ask himself how Sheriff
Musgrove would’ve handled it. But Musgrove’s son was the only source now. Cole
had often donned the uniform and assisted his dad in solving numerous cases.
But Cole decided that law enforcement wasn’t for him; better to let someone
more skilled—and dedicated—do that.
Cole Musgrove was outside of the
blacksmith shop, performing an almost lost art with saddle horses: shoeing.
Driscoll watched as Musgrove stood close to the horse’s hind quarters, reached
down, picked up the horse’s hind foot, then, holding it up with one hand, maneuvered
around and placed the foot between his leather-clad legs. He checked the fit of
a new shoe. Satisfied that everything was right with the world, he expertly
nailed it in place. A quick trim with a file and the job was done.
“You know I watched Uncle Frank do that
countless times,” Driscoll said.
“I don’t need to do it as often as I
used to,” Cole said. “We still use horses but the quad is a lot faster.”
“Yeah, but a quad is no match for a
pissed-off bull.”
“Roger that; it takes a real good horse
to handle a mean bull; a quad is no match at all.” Musgrove paused to remove
the heavy leather apron. “What can I help you with, Sheriff?”
“Well, I’m sure you heard about the cars
we found in Francis Lake yesterday; trying to figure out what happened. We got
a good idea of who was driving the older car; at least it was registered to
Charlie Scheels, whom you know has been missing for over fifty years. The other
two, I’m not clear. One of the bodies is a woman.” Mark paused and retrieved
the leather chaps which had dried and responded to a good cleaning. He pointed
to a set of elaborately tooled initials. “You wouldn’t happen to know who “DB
is?”
“Doug Bond,” Musgrove replied without
hesitation. “One of the best bull riders I ever saw. Of course I was pretty
young at the time; I was—hell—six years old when he disappeared. Headed for
Cheyenne—National Finals—got to be 1959. Doug worked for Elroy Haige, out
toward the South Butte.”
“Elroy Haige.” Mark paused for a moment.
“He was on that old Roy Parks spread, part of the George Grainger ranch. Dad
and Frank knew him.”
“That’s him,” Musgrove said. “Course we
all got a pretty good idea who Roy Parks was.”
Driscoll nodded.
“I remember that old Chevy car that
Charlie had,” Cole continued, “kind of a gun-metal silver, it was. I was told
Charlie bought it just before he went to Korea and just kept driving it after
he got back.
“Charlie was a rodeo cowboy too—saddle
bronc. Skirt chaser when he wasn’t riding; a real philanderer. He’d get on the
rodeo circuit and I’m sure he had a girlfriend in every town, and probably at
least three in every city. His wife was a psychotic boot; I don’t know if he
chased around because his wife was psycho or his wife was psycho because he
chased around. Whatever, he chased around.”
“I remember Charlie’s wife,” Driscoll
said. “She used to pour drinks at Dutch’s Bar in Sunburst; she and that huge
lady, uh, Dorothy Popp, only Popp was
short for her real name—.”
“—Popercznick,”
Musgrove added for him. “The story goes that Charlie was seeing a lady in
Choteau,” he continued, “she was married—to a guy with shell-shock, who
wouldn’t hesitate to cause plenty of trouble if anyone crossed him. Of course,
Charlie was married too. From what I heard Dad talk about, Charlie was headed
down to Cheyenne, along with Doug Bond. The night they left, they all
disappeared. Dad was a deputy back then; he investigated but never turned up
anything except that this lady from Choteau disappeared that same night.”
“I’ll have to follow that up,” Driscoll
said. As he stood up to leave, he asked, “Charlie’s wife—?”
“Committed to the loonie bin around ’65.
Died somewhere around ’73 or ’74—cut her wrists. Son—Stan, and his wife,
Wendy—you know Wendy—Peterson—,”
“Oh I know Wendy,” Driscoll said. Kind
of a student body—.”
“Some called her the town pump,”
Musgrove interrupted with a half grin.
“Dated her myself in high school,” Mark
added, “but she dumped me for Darrel Buchanon; flung herself at him for a
while, then dumped him.”
“Well, she sure seemed to have a thing
for Stan,” Cole added. “She married him, threw the night life away and
commenced to raise seven kids; all church goers; all responsible citizens.”
“Guess there’s hope for all of us,”
Driscoll said with a forced grin.
Driscoll left the Musgrove ranch and
drove down the road, deep in thought. The case of the older car had more
questions than answers. For the time being, there was the strong possibility of
two suspects; a jilted husband or a jilted wife. They would need to find a slug
and then see if there was a gun to match.
The Scheels spread was on the Border
Road, a road that ran up to the Sweetgrass Hills themselves. Stan had served in
the Marines, joining up a year after Driscoll, but had gotten out after his
required time was completed. He had married Wendy between his time in basic
training and his deployment. His paternal uncle had run the ranch while he was
away; the original plan was to take it over but when Stan gave intentions of returning,
the uncle readily decided to head for the eastern headquarters and left the
original place to Stan. He and Wendy had built up and improved the ranch and
had done an enviable job of both running a ranch and raising a large family.
Driscoll drove down the tree-lined lane into the yard and parked in front of
the rambling house. He could see a newer three quarter ton truck driving in
from one of the pastures so he stood beside the Yukon and waited.
Stan and his wife were both in the
truck. They might have been a little guarded at first but then, most people are
intimidated when they come home to see a sheriff’s department vehicle in the
yard. Any misgivings were dissolved within a few minutes. There were the usual
pleasantries before the sheriff told them of the real purpose of his visit.
“I think we found your dad’s car,” Driscoll
began, “We drug it out of Francis Lake yesterday. License plate indicates that
it was last registered to your dad back in ’59, the year he disappeared.”
Stan was silent for several seconds
while he comprehended the news. “I heard it on the news, about the cars in the
lake,” he said finally. “You’re sure it was Dad’s car?”
“The license plate indicates it, and
considering your dad had a ’49 Chevy ‘Fastback’ it looks very much like it’s
your dad’s car.”
“What about Dad? I heard on the news
that they found a body.”
“Three bodies,” Driscoll said, “all I
know so far is that there are two men and a woman. Pondera County is following
up from their end because there’s a chance—and that’s only if our suspicions
are true—the woman is from north of Choteau. Since there’s a possibility that
one of the victims is your dad, I’m going to need a swab from you to test for
DNA.”
“What about the other guy?” Wendy asked.
“We’ve got an idea but I can’t say; we’re
checking for dental records, and once we’ve established something more positive
we’ll try to locate his family.”
“Doug Bond?” Stan offered as quickly as
Musgrove had just done.
Driscoll gave a slight nod.
“Doug’s real name is Dallas,” Stan continued.
“I don’t know how he got the Doug moniker.”
Driscoll shrugged. “Probably the same
way I got called Mark.”
Wendy was surprised. “Mark isn’t your
name?”
Driscoll shook his head. “My middle name
was Martin; my grandmother called me Marty, and called me that till the day she
died. My Uncle Cordell, Mom’s brother, got part of his jaw blown away during
the war, and he had a major speech impediment. He could barely manage to call
me Mark. ‘Course he was usually about twenty-three sheets to the wind and had
trouble talking anyways.”
“I’m actually surprised that those cars
weren’t discovered years ago when they all but completely drained the lake”
Wendy said, steering the subject back to its original course. “I can remember
places you could walk across it. It seems that they found a motorcycle, a
computer and a stack of rifles in there, back in the mid- eighties.”
“I think the Pondera county sheriff
still has the rifles,” she added.
“Glacier County,” Driscoll corrected her.
“They traced one to the murder of a Canadian RCMP officer from just north of
the border about twenty years ago.”
“I read about that,” Wendy mentioned.
“Still unsolved,” Driscoll said.
They completed the swab on Stan, and
Sheriff Driscoll sealed the jar. “You say there was two cars?” Stan asked.
Mark nodded. “The other one was eleven
or twelve years later, almost the same place. It’s actually the one we found
first; we were going after it when we discovered the older one, and we had to
get the older one out of the way first.”
“I’ll be damned,” Stan said. He stood up
and left the room for a moment, returning later with an old photo of his dad’s
car with his dad, clan in his army uniform, posing proudly beside it. “That’s
just before he went to Korea.”
“Thanks,” Mark said. “I’ll make a copy
of it and return it to you.”
The work was far from done. Driscoll
arrived back at the office then immediately began to sift through a mountain of
old files.
Reports, missing person reports, no one
even reported them missing until four days after the rodeo was over and they
hadn’t returned home. Possible sightings, then the interviews. The
investigation carried on for the better part of a year then was finally sent to
the place where all unsolved cases went: the vault in the basement.
It was well past dark and Driscoll was
beginning to realize that he had only gotten maybe two hours of sleep in the
past twenty-four hours. He switched off the lights in his office then checked
the phone to ensure that any calls would go to the answering service and
prepared to leave for the day. He was reaching for the door when his cellphone
chirped.
It was Hinkley. “Sheriff, they drug the
bodies out of the cars and they’re on their way to the city morgue. They’ve got
the cars loaded and are ready to take them down to the lab; they just need your
authorization.”
“Just tell them to go ahead. If they
need anything more, tell them to see Moffit.”
“Roger that. Coming home.” Hinkley
sounded tired too. It seemed that Driscoll was always dependent on Hinkley.
They had been best friends since Second Grade in school and shared nearly
everything. When they graduated they both enlisted in the Marines. Both had
spent a lot of years in and out of service to Uncle Sam and had looked forward
to retirement before the sheriff’s position suddenly became available. And that
was supposed to be a temporary job that had gone through no less than two
elections. It seemed that Hinkley was the only member of the staff that stuck
around. Well, Driscoll shouldn’t exclude Larson, who was a rookie when Driscoll
became sheriff.
Tammy was happy to see her husband home.
Being married to someone in law enforcement was a challenge, almost as much of
a challenge as being married to a soldier. And she had been married to both.
There were times when the absences were almost overwhelming but she also knew
that Mark, and people like him wanted to be home with their families instead of
being out in the elements, chasing elusive criminals, settling domestic
disturbances, or sorting out the grisly aftermath of a tragic accident. Mark
had been a marine—a Navy SEAL, although when she met him he was working as a
mechanic. He had later been involved in military investigations and government
probes. But he always knew where home was, and he was always glad to be there.
Sandwiches and coffee on the table, they
sat down and talked about the things that mattered: Roger was busy on the farm,
and he and Uncle Paul were busy spraying crops. The hay crop was almost ready
to cut and branding was coming up. Wesley was coming home from Afghanistan and
had a good chance of not being deployed there again. He was in line for a
promotion and would probably be wearing two silver bars on his uniform next
time. Melissa was going to work in Yellowstone again this summer and she
probably wouldn’t be home until just before classes began in Bozeman. And that
left Jordan, who was a freshman in high school.
Where had the time gone? It seemed like
only a few days ago when Mark was working on his motorcycle outside the shed
over at the old fourplex. The end of a blistering hot day and Tammy asked if he
could help put a waterbed together over at her place. That was over thirty
years ago.
An investigation never sleeps. Driscoll
managed to grab some much needed hours but come Monday morning he was up with
the sun and at the office long before anything else was stirring in the
community. He had an investigation to run and answers were needed. And the
predawn hours were often the times when progress was the best.
Best keep the investigations separate;
there was no need to put them together anyways as it was established that over
ten years had passed between the times that the cars had left the road and
plunged into the lake, taking a combined four lives in the process. Of course
there was the possibility that those weren’t accidents. The sheriff had just
begun to read through the massive pile of files when his cellphone rang its
usual.
Driscoll picked it up and listened to
the caller. He woke up his computer and accessed the message. After seeing the
information that was sent, he killed the call, gathered up a map and left a
message for Hinkley. He locked up the shop and climbed into his Yukon.
The first place he drove was to the
lake. He unrolled the old map then examined the tracks made by the car when it
was pulled from the lake. He then went and placed stakes where the old road
would’ve been. About sixty yards from the boat launching ramp was a berm, tall
enough to stand behind, and yet be reasonably well protected or camouflaged. He
made a sketch on the map then got back into his vehicle. On an impulse, he
quickly emerged again and opened the back to the SUV. He pulled out the metal
detector and went back to the berm.
Probably an hour passed as Driscoll
walked back and forth along the berm slowly playing the detector from side to
side. A beep and the sheriff stopped and probed the ground. The first thing was
a bottle cap. He dug up several bottle caps and a couple of quarters, even what
looked like a fifty cent piece. He paused and gazed at the flags he placed to
mark the approximate location of the original road. He then moved over a couple
of feet and began to retreat toward the lake.
A distinct beep and he probed again. The
earth was mixed with a lot of gravel due to the approach and the boat ramp; it
made digging a bit difficult. Driscoll had the most success with a large
screwdriver. He would dig and turn the dirt over and scan it with the detector.
More bottle caps then something long and narrow. He carefully worked the object
out of the loosened up dirt. A shake and a moderate tap and he slipped the
object into a plastic bag.
In the course of another hour he found
another similar tubular metal object. He carefully photographed where it was
found then staked the area off. After putting the detector away he got back
into his SUV and drove away.
The chores were well underway at the
Scheels ranch. He found two of Stan’s boys busy milling feed. They directed
Driscoll over to the barn where he found Stan and Wendy treating a sick calf.
He said good-morning to them and began to talk to Stan.
“Stan, they’re pretty sure it’s your dad
in that old car; they want to wait for the DNA test to come back before they’re
completely positive, but the dental records match.”
“That’s good news,” Stan said, then he
frowned, “well maybe not good news, but at least we can get some closure.” He
looked at the sheriff. “That isn’t everything is it?”
Driscoll looked grim. “We believe he was
murdered. They found a thirty caliber bullet in the left front tire of the car
and another one lodged in the back of his jaw on the left side. It was powerful
enough to penetrate the windshield and still hit him, travel along his jaw and
embed itself on the jaw hinge. It wouldn’t have killed him immediately but it
would’ve caused him to lose control of the vehicle and drive straight into the
lake.”
Stan nodded then looked away for a
moment.
“I realize that this happened more than fifty
years ago so there’s not a lot to go on. I’ve looked at motive and opportunity;
two people had motive; your mother, and Hunter Walker, the husband of the woman
your dad was seeing. Walker lived in Dupuyer and could have easily snuck away
and waited for his wife and your dad to come around that corner, shoot them and
quickly run home.”
“That’s not what you think happened
though.”
“From what I learned, Hunter and his
wife had been on the skids for some time, and a divorce was on the way. However,
your mom wasn’t that amicable.”
Stan swung around and gazed at Driscoll.
“I agree with you,” he said with a surprising amount of conviction. “Mom was
off-kilter. She spent a lot of time in the psychiatric facility. She was
convinced that Dad was beating her up and was going to kill her. Dad caught her
many times hoarding ammo and playing with his old M-1 Garand. She used to tell
me how easy it would be to knock him off; she even mentioned that if it was planned
and done properly, the evidence could disappear forever.”
“I just dug up a couple of shell cases
behind the berm beside the boat launch. They look like thirty-aught-six to me.
I just dropped them off at the lab.”
“When I was sixteen,” Stan continued, “Mom
came into the middle school, flipped out on the sixth grade teacher and
attacked her, accusing her of sleeping with my Dad, and causing all the trouble
in our family; the teacher would’ve been in middle school herself when Dad
disappeared. Mom was arrested and sent to the ‘bin,’ never to come out again.”
Stan led the sheriff over to the house where he brought out his father’s old
service rifle and gave it to him. “Check this out and see if it’s the one,” he
said. “It will at least give me some closure.”
The summer wore on. The cars in the lake
were down to occasional chats in the coffee shop and business was easing back
to normal. Unfortunately this left Driscoll quite unsettled from time to time. The
bullets they had recovered from Scheel’s body and his car had been run through
ballistics and compared with fresh shots from the M-1 carbine that Stan had
turned over. The results were a ninety percent match. Maybe if the suspects
were still alive a case might have grown out of it but there wasn’t much sense
pursuing it any further; the case of Charlie Scheels, Doug Bond, and Beth
Walker was about to be officially closed. It appeared that the prime suspect
would have been Roberta Scheels; she had the motive and the opportunity, and,
from what those who knew her said, she was lopsided enough to actually carry
something like that out.
But that still left the case of the
Camaro and the demise of Jacob Weiss. Jacob had been positively identified and a
surprising number of people had come forward to offer information about the
night Weiss disappeared. It was right after high school graduation. There had
been a party in the sandstone hoodoos just south and west of Sweetgrass. Jacob
had gotten quite drunk and was being a total jerk, in addition to driving his
car very hard. His girlfriend, a girl from the Choteau area, was there and was
very reluctant to go home with him but Jacob had gotten belligerent, and all but
forced her to ride with him. It was a hot night, and Becky managed to persuade
Jacob to stop at the Circle K back in Choteau to pick up a soda. They had
gotten into a big argument right after that and Becky ran off on foot. She
managed to elude Jacob but still watched him patrol the town for close to an
hour before he lit out like a scared rabbit. Becky Clark, now Becky Prentiss,
was officially the last person to see Weiss alive.
Driscoll had been to the forensic lab in
the city and had gone over the Z-28 with the lab crew and they all agreed that
the hole in the driver’s door could have been caused by a gun shot. The car had
been checked from one end to the other but there was no slug to be found. He
was missing something.
He thought about the driver’s door and
the angled hole in the skin next to the upper hinge. He mentioned it to the
technician who took a probe and followed the path of trajectory, but there was
nothing at the end of it. The skin was removed and the inside cavity was
examined, to no avail.
The inner door panel was mostly plastic.
It wouldn’t offer much resistance to a bullet coming through but it could
possibly cause a deflection and alter its course.
Another week went past and they were
almost ready to put the case of the Camaro and Jacob Weiss into the cold files.
Driscoll was in his office dealing with a truck accident about six miles out of
town. His cellphone chirped its usual tone.
“Driscoll,” was the usual greeting. He
paused while the caller filled him in. He then killed the call and headed out
to his vehicle. “I’m headed for the lab,” he told Larson as the door closed
behind him.
In the lab, Driscoll could see that the
front of the Camaro had been jacked up. Both front wheels had been removed and
one of them was on a work table nearby; the tire had been separated from the
rim. The technician directed Driscoll to the rim itself.
“The bullet went through the tire where
the side wall joins the tread, right here,” he indicated with a plastic straw.
“Now this is freaky. This is a tubeless tire, typical of what cars ran back in
the 70s. But the stem was missing. I pulled the tire off the rim, and of
course, it was half filled with sludge from the lake. But we washed that
through the screen and found the inside part of the rubber stem. The bullet
caught that at the perfect point and not only severed the stem but lodged
itself—crossways—in the inner lip. Whoever shot this should’ve gone out and
bought lottery tickets. We’ve got a slug.”
“What about those cases I gave you?”
“Thirty-Aught-six, but too rough to get
a good match. Fifty percent at best. I’ve sent them to Washington to let the
FBI have a go at them.”
“And the slug?”
“They’re just setting it up now.”
Driscoll followed the technician into
the ballistics lab where the slug was being set up under the microscope. The
technician made a final adjustment then let the sheriff examine it.
“The one on the right is from the jaw of
the driver of the old car; the one on the left is the one that just came from
the valve stem.”
“I’ll be damned!” Driscoll said.
The sheriff didn’t bother to check the
time when he drove into the Scheel’s yard. He knew it must have been after
eleven but not much later because he could see the flash from the television,
indicating that Stan, or Wendy, or both, were watching the nightly news.
Through the curtains, Driscoll noticed two figures stand up as soon as he rang
the doorbell. They both looked quite tired when they opened the door.
“Sheriff,” Wendy said, “come in.”
“You picked one heck of a time for a
visit,” Stan added.
They sat at the kitchen table and Mark
readily accepted a cup of coffee. He gazed at his host and hostess. He never
saw it before but Wendy looked awfully tired. Driscoll told her so.
“We just got some bad news today,
Sheriff,” Wendy said. “Looks like I’m going to be headed for Great Falls
again—St. Jude’s.”
When someone talked about places like St
Jude’s that meant one thing and one thing only: the Big-C. “Sorry to hear that.” Mark was truly sympathetic.
Wendy sighed. “I’m not giving up. They
took a breast from me ten years ago; looks like they’ll be taking the other one
now.”
“We’re praying that it hasn’t gone
malignant,” Stan added.
“I’ve got friends in Conrad,” Mark said,
“she got sick about five years ago; had to lose one. But she’s doing really
good now.”
“Well, I hope she continues to test
negative,” Wendy said. “It’s a terrible disease.”
“I can’t imagine. My mother smoked like
a factory for most of her life; no physical problems whatsoever; got an
infection from a knee replacement, and died from it at eighty-nine. My
stepfather—Mac—developed prostate cancer when he was in his eighties. When they
opened him up, they just closed him up again and gave him three months to live.
He fooled them though; he lasted just over six.”
“So, there’s got to be an official
reason you’re driving all the way up here in the middle of the night,” Scheels
said.
Mark nodded and sipped his coffee. “I
might as well tell you; they found a bullet in the tire of the Camaro; it’s
from the same rifle—.”
Driscoll drove straight home. It was
late and he couldn’t think of anything else he could do at the time. Charlie
Scheels’ rifle that Stan had so willingly turned over for the lab to check out,
had fired the bullet that blew the front tire of the car, no doubt causing the
driver to lose control and crash into the lake where he subsequently drowned.
That made it a case of murder. It could be argued many ways in court but
Driscoll’s hands would be tied. The prime suspect would be anyone who had
access to that rifle. It could’ve been Charlie’s brother, Stan’s Uncle Artie,
but what would the motive be? That left Stan. It happened before he and Wendy
were even dating. The only thing that bothered the sheriff was that the motive
was still weak. But for the time being, Stan was a suspect and could only be
treated as such. Driscoll decided to give it a couple of days so he could check
into it further.
This was one of those times when
Driscoll hated his job.
A new day found Driscoll at his desk at
the office. It was fairly routine, mostly reviewing some notices of wanted
people, who were several states away. Hinkley was running the front desk today,
giving Larson a chance to go out on patrol. He had two rookies out on patrol
too. Five officers to staff a county sheriff’s department that normally ran
eight. But so far there wasn’t a lot of trouble; the worst thing was the state
enforcing a vehicle emission law regarding diesel trucks that the owners had
chipped so high that they poured black smoke out of their tailpipes—they called
it ‘rolling coal.’ First one busted
was the son of the county commissioner. Driscoll wanted a full staff but as
much as that, he just wanted to call it quits and turn the job over to someone
else.
It was back a few years now, when he
allowed himself to get talked into this job. He’d managed to get the staff up
to speed and things went well. Then things went south. Scheffer moved over to
Flathead County to run for sheriff there; Davis went into the border patrol;
Jessop had retired, only to become incapacitated from a stroke less than a year
later.
The door opened and footsteps could be
heard. A typical curt greeting from Hinkely and the visitors headed for
Driscoll’s office. First one through the door was Stan Scheels, who was
followed by Munson Beals, a very sharp attorney, whose services had been
retained by Driscoll, himself, not very long ago.
“So, what’s happening, Mooney?” Driscoll
asked although he was sure what the answer was.
“My client wishes to make a statement,”
the lawyer said.
“What about?” Again Driscoll knew the
answer but there was a protocol.
“I’m the one who shot at Jacob Weiss’
car,” Stan said. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all the night before.
Mark leaned forward. “Are you sure you
want to own up to that?” he asked. “You know that there hasn’t been any charges
drawn up yet.”
“I’ve lived with it since high school.”
Driscoll glanced at Mooney and got the
nod of ascent. “OK,” he said, then raised his voice. “Hey Gator, can you get
these guys set up in the interview room?”
Hinkley promptly gathered up the video
camera and carried it into the special room with the one-way glass and set the
equipment up. Mooney and Scheels followed. Driscoll entered the room and closed
the door. After everyone was seated, Driscoll started the camera, introduced
himself, then getting it on record that this concerned the car with the body of
Jacob Weiss that was found at the bottom of Francis Lake. He then introduced
Stanley Madison Scheels, and got it on record that Stan had come in voluntarily
with his attorney. He then turned the mike around toward Stan so he could begin
his statement.
“It was the week after graduation, a
bunch of us were partying it up at the ‘HooDoos,’ between Sunburst and
Sweetgrass. Jacob Weiss was there with Becky Clark. He was drunk and mean as a
snake; he treated her like crap. Jacob used to date Wendy Peterson, as she was
known back then. Wendy came to the party and told Jacob that she was carrying
his baby. Jacob got violent with her and threw her on the ground—told her to
get an abortion.
“I always liked Wendy and thought Jacob
had gone way too far. We got into a fist fight and then Jacob grabbed Becky and
took off.”
“Did Becky resist?”
“She begged everyone else to give her a
ride. Terry Barnes was there and I thought she was going to get a ride with
him. Next thing any of us knew, Jacob and Becky took off.
“I’d just had my dad’s guns appraised
and they were in the truck. I was drunk and in a blind rage but I didn’t think
about pulling a gun on him; none of us did. I just wanted to have it out, hand
to hand, with Jacob and stomp him into a bloody mess, so I followed him, all
the way to Choteau. They pulled up to the Circle K and then Becky got out and
took off. I watched Jacob drive off, looking for her. I decided to forget about
it all and headed for home; I was leaving for Camp Pendleton in a couple of
days but as I was driving home I got to thinking about Jacob again and decided
that this was going to end; he wasn’t going to do this to another woman again.
So I headed to the lake and parked over by the tavern. It was closed for the
night and everything was dark. I took Dad’s rifle and hid behind the berm.
“I dozed off and almost missed him but I
heard the blast of his open headers. I saw him come around the corner, way too
fast, and I aimed and fired.”
“Where did you hit him?” Driscoll asked
carefully.
“The first shot hit the tire; I don’t
know where the other one went.”
“Just two shots?”
“I think so; I was still really drunk.”
“So what happened after that?” Driscoll
asked reasonably.
“The car went straight off the road,
down the boat launch and into the lake; it went out a couple hundred yards then
went under, pretty fast.
“I just stood there, I don’t remember
how long, then I got into the truck and took the backroads to Cutbank then back
home through Galahad and Devon.”
“What did you do with your dad’s guns?”
“I just took them all and put them away.
Next morning, I cleaned the M-1 then packed my bags and got ready to ship out.”
“Did you intend to kill Weiss?”
“Hell no! I just wanted to scare him.”
The interview ended shortly after that. Stan
Scheels was formally charged with Second Degree Murder and placed under arrest.
He appeared in court the following morning to answer the charges and was
released on bail, pending a hearing and resulting trial. The likelihood of Stan
spending much time behind bars, although up to the judge, was fairly slim. Stan
was a well-respected man in the community; he showed remorse but his record
since had been nothing short of stellar. He had honorably served his country,
then come home to run a successful ranching operation and raise a good family. It
could be reasonably proven that none of the shots fired had hit Weiss.
Witnesses had come forward to corroborate that Weiss was intoxicated and
agitated the night he was last seen. Still, shots had been fired and Weiss had
lost control of his car; Stan could be facing some severe penalties. Hopefully
the judge would show some mercy.
Sheriff Driscoll was putting the last of
the reports into a file when Deputy Larson entered his office. “Cased closed
yet?” she asked.
Driscoll shook his head. “Well, our end
of it is pretty well done; it’s up to Scheels and the judge.”
Larson detected a hesitation in the
sheriff’s tone. “Something tells me you’re not satisfied,” she observed.
“No, I’m not.” Driscoll picked up the type-written
copy of the statement that Stan had given, then he looked at the copy of his
service record. Then he looked at the statement again. Then he re-read the
statements from the former cashier at the Circle K, and Becky Prentiss. He
checked the dates, then he dropped them back on the desk and stood up.
“Dammit!” he shouted as he punched the
wall, leaving a large indentation in the sheet-rock.
“What’s wrong, sheriff?”
Mark donned his official baseball cap and
headed for the door. “The dates don’t match. The party in the hoodoos, was a
day before Weiss was last seen. Scheels boarded the bus for Camp Pendleton the
next morning; he was as good as deployed. Weiss was last seen that night at the Circle K!” He paused for a
moment. “Get your gun, and come with me.”
Dusk was gathering when the sheriff’s
Yukon pulled into the yard of the Scheels ranch. Driscoll stopped the SUV in
front of the gate to the house and got out. Stan was already out the front door
of the house and was halfway across the yard when the sheriff got out.
“What can I do for you now?” Scheels
asked, more than a little irritated. Then he saw the look on Driscoll’s face. Stan
seemed to wilt right there. He shook his head. “No, Sheriff, please don’t—.”
“I have to; I haven’t got a choice; if I
don’t, someone else will.”
“Come on, Mark, one marine to
another—please—Wendy’s got cancer for God’s sake.”
Driscoll stopped abruptly. He gazed at
Stan. He could see that his friend was
desperate. “Yes, I know, and I’m sorry. But Stan, I’ve still got to do
this.”
“No!” Stan’s pleading voice was almost a
wail. “There’s got to be a way around this.”
“It’s Okay!” Wendy’s voice interrupted.
“Stan, I’ve lived with this—we’ve lived with this—for all these years.” She
turned to the sheriff. “I was pregnant; I was carrying Jacob’s baby. He told me
to get lost—have an abortion—then he tossed me aside and started tomcatting
around with that Becky Clark from Choteau. I was so messed up; I just wanted to
make him suffer—feel the pain. I knew where the rifle was, so I drove out to
the ranch, got the rifle and followed Jacob.
“I just waited beside the berm, just
like Stan’s mother told me she did all those years before. I saw that car—I
knew the sound of that motor—it came around the bend and I just lost it; I
emptied the gun! I watched him drive straight into the lake! And I’d do it to
that bastard again—in a heartbeat!”
Larson read Wendy Scheels her rights
then handcuffed her and put her into the caged rear seat of the Yukon. Driscoll
turned to his friend who was completely devastated by this time. He felt sorry
for Stan and wished there was another way but there wasn’t; the law was clear.
Driscoll hated being the one to tear a man’s life—his family’s life—in two. An
act of passion from the distant past, never to happen again but this was still
a nation of laws. Stan went up to the SUV and put his hand on the rear glass.
His wife of over forty years looked out at him. “Be strong,” she said as her
eyes filled with tears. “I love you.”
Sheriff Driscoll felt a strong tug at
his own heartstrings. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like if Tammy was
taken away from him like this. He desperately tried to think of a way to help
them out of this but his hands were tied; he’d just end up in a jam too. He
opened the door and slid in behind the wheel then he turned to Stan.
“Stan,” he said, “Go get Mooney; he’s
the best there is. Then go support Wendy. She needs you now—more than ever…”
Driscoll closed the door and started the engine.
THE END
