Chapter 11
By the time I hiked back out and drove into town, the time was approaching mid-afternoon. I went straight to the police department and parked next to the Deputy’s vehicle. I hoped the Sheriff was also there since he might be a more receptive audience.
As I entered the building and Deputy Powell saw me, a scowl appeared on his wide face. He asked mockingly, “Find another body today?”
To defuse another confrontation, I simply said, “No,” slowly shaking my head a few beats. “No body today. But I was just curious if you had any luck finding the injured Hispanic man.”
The deputy took a while to consider an answer, but then said, “I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation.”
An ongoing investigation? He told the whole town about it this morning. But I let it pass.
“So, no missing person reports? Any lead on the guy, say by asking the Hispanic maid at the motel? Any injured man showing up at a hospital?” I asked. “I’m just concerned about the guy,” I lied. How could I be concerned about a guy who is already dead?
The Deputy didn’t answer, but rather turned red in the face, trying to contain his building fury. He worked his jaw muscles, his upper and lower teeth grinding against each other.
“Mr. Parker,” he said forcefully. He spoke slowly, enunciating his words precisely. “You are not a cop any more. You aren’t part of this investigation. Let us do our job.”
I considered pressing a little more, but his stern expression told me I had already pressed as far as he would tolerate. So I left saying, “Have a good day, Deputy Powell.”
While I struck out with Enid, I was in luck. I saw the Sheriff across the street just taking a seat on a bench in the shade, talking with someone. As I neared them, the other man got up and abruptly left. I guessed that my reputation preceded me and had spooked the citizens of Willow Run. Seeing me approach, the Sheriff, though, stayed seated.
“Did you have a nice hike this morning?” he asked.
“Yes, thanks. Very peaceful. I took the Dells Trail. I ended up on Monarch Trail again. I didn’t realize they were connected,” I lied.
There was no response from the Sheriff. I half expected him to chastise me for entering a crime scene, but he just sat there fixing an unblinking gaze in my direction.
“My hike was also informative,” I added.
“How so?” he asked with modest interest.
I told him about the boot prints, the pictures of them that I took, and my thoughts about what happened out there.
His face had a pained expression. “Are we going to do this dance again?” he asked. “This was all settled yesterday.”
“Sheriff, I’m just a curious guy. I had to convince myself there was more to this than an injured man getting up and walking away. These new prints just confirm that someone did walk up to the body and carry it away.”
He sighed, resigned to the fact that I was going to continue playing cop. “Mr. Parker. You seem to be running an investigation here. I thought you were a tourist on a hiking vacation. So why don’t you just be a tourist?”
“I’ll try,” I offered. “But I can’t guarantee anything.”
He gazed unblinking at me for a moment before continuing. “And why do you find it necessary to antagonize my Deputy?”
I could sense immediately that he regretted asking. He let out a sigh that was more like a quiet groan. He didn’t want to play the role of mediator in a dispute between Powell and me. But it confirmed what I suspected would happen, that the giant Enid did go whining to the Sheriff about me giving him my schedule for the day. Now I would get some fatherly advice to back off.
He had a pained expression on his face. “Mr. Parker. This is a small town. Maybe in the big city you can be rude because it’s tolerated. But here, everyone knows everybody. We all share a confined space. We have to be more civil to each other.”
“I’ll try to behave,” I offered. But I knew that would be a difficult promise to keep.
The Sheriff sighed as he rose, almost conceding that he knew there would be more conflict yet to come. “Please do that,” he said. Without enthusiasm, he added, “Have a nice evening.”
Sure, I was no longer a cop. But that was no reason for him to ignore facts laid in front of him. If ignorance is bliss, then he must be the happiest man in Willow Run. The situation just meant that I needed to find something even more convincing to sway his opinion. I needed more facts.
I knew where to find more facts. I crossed the street to the public library. It was an old brick building, but seemed to be well maintained. There was a small recess into the front wall of the structure where the entry was located. The two side-by-side front doors in the recess were tall and made of thick wood, with small panes of sturdy glass in the upper half. I grabbed the door handle on the right, and it swung open easily.
The inside of the small facility was brightly lit, with a desk, several rows of shelves holding books and CDs, a display containing DVDs, a wall-mounted rack filled with magazines, a scattering of tables and chairs, and a single computer terminal against the back wall. The word that came to mind was tidy. Everything was neat and orderly. This place was pristine. Spotless windows that let the rays of sunlight shine in unimpeded, no refuse on the floor, everything neatly aligned on the shelves.
Three young girls browsed through the DVDs, and two middle-aged women thumbed magazines. A teen-age boy wearing dark-rimmed glasses was reading a book at a table and occasionally jotting something on a pad of paper. He also wore earpieces connected to an iPod and seemed to be texting on his phone. The ultimate multi-tasker. I also noted two elderly gentlemen sitting near the back prowling through some books on tape. As I bee-lined toward the desk, a slender woman emerged from behind one of the tall stacks of shelves.
“Good afternoon,” she said, smiling widely. “Can I help you find something?”
She was about 5 foot 6, slender with arrow-straight posture, green eyes, red hair, and a splash of tiny freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. She wore blue jeans and a white top, which made her red hair appear like a bright flame. The sight was stunning.
“I don’t recall seeing you here before. Are you visiting our town of Willow Run?”
After a brief pause to compose a response, I finally said, “Yes, just got here a couple of days ago.”
“Mr. Parker I presume?” she offered. The rumor mill in Willow Run was alive and well. She already knew who I was even though we had not met before this moment. So she probably had already heard all about my exploits in the forest.
“You are well informed,” I said, resigned to my fate as the bull’s eye of gossip in this town.
She did not appear affected by my somewhat sullen response. She simply responded, “Small town. News travels fast.” Then after a few beats, she stated, “Allison Wells, at your service.”
I held her gaze for a few moments and then dragged my attention away from her, glancing around the library. “I wanted to browse some local newspapers, if you have any.”
“Sure,” she said passing by and beckoning me to follow. As she passed, the scent of a light fragrance rose from her hair. I didn’t recognize the aroma, but I liked it. I followed. She then pointed toward a low round table in a small alcove near the front of the building. It was surrounded by three stuffed armchairs. “Are you looking for a specific newspaper?”
"I don’t know the names of the local papers, but I’m looking for news stories about this area.”
“Well, on the table are newspapers from this morning.” There were several papers, arranged neatly in a circular fan shape. Either no one else had read those papers today, or Allison Wells had rearranged them after their use. Typically, a read newspaper is a jumbled pile of crinkled, haphazardly folded, and out-of-sequence or missing pages. These looked neatly pressed and might have just been unwrapped from the morning’s mail.
“The pape
r you will probably want to look at first is the Teton County Observer. That’s our local paper. It comes out Monday through Friday. Then there are the daily papers from Great Falls, Butte, and Helena. Those are the bigger cities in the area.”
She then continued, giving me more information than I probably needed. I stared at her flowing red hair, listening intently. “The other papers from Chicago, San Francisco, and Denver and USA Today are not going to help you with local stories. Now if you want older papers, I keep them for two weeks as hard copies on the shelf against the window. Anything older should then be available on-line. If you want to search for those on the computer, I can get you set up over there.” She turned and pointed toward the computer I had seen when entering. At the moment, it was being used.
She turned toward me and laughed at herself, flushing briefly. “Sorry. I got carried away with the tour guide thing. Sorry.”
“No problem. I’m sure I’ll need that information on my future visits here.” And then I added, “Although I may need you to give me a refresher course.” It was my turn to flush for being perhaps a bit obvious about my interest in her. We both laughed lightly.
She finally added, “Glad to help.”
The young girls were at the desk waiting to check out their DVD selections. Allison said, “Duty calls,” and headed that direction. As she passed, that alluring scent from her hair came over me again. Now there was something that solitude did not provide.
Still feeling a bit giddy, I sat at the table. Doing an Internet search seemed like a better place to start. But the computer was in use, and my cheap motel didn’t offer Internet connection. So I would start the old fashioned way, by reading the papers. I picked up the Teton County Observer, and read. It was a small paper, only six pages total, and the sheets of newsprint were smaller than the standard wide-circulation papers. So even reading every word would not take long.
There were a few short international and national stories, likely pulled from the Associated Press wire. The rest was focused on state, county, and local news and events, along with the usual array of advertisements, coupons, and an editorial opinion piece. There were no reports of a body being found. The only articles reporting injured persons dealt with the collision of a car, driven by a first-time teenage driver. He collided with a stop sign. Well, at least he did stop. And there was a report of a local man who broke an arm falling off his roof while repairing the chimney. But there were no reports of a seriously injured or deceased or missing man.
It took considerably longer to read the Great Falls Review, Butte Times, and Helena Herald. These came from larger cities and had much more extensive coverage of topics on the local, regional, national, and international news. I read all the headings for each story. They covered the latest militant attacks in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the battle on Capital Hill over health care options, slashing of budgets, the ground-swell of outrage over the bloated bonuses for the bankers who had played a major part in causing the recession, the continued housing crash, unemployment, and all the other topics that make reading the paper an often gloomy prospect. But I had the same lack of luck on the topic of immediate interest to me.
Perhaps it was just too soon. After all, I found the body only yesterday morning. Maybe by the time he was taken to a hospital or morgue, it was past press time. Finding a dead guy usually was enough to warrant a piece in the newspaper. And if the body was of someone taken for the bounty on his head, it might not appear in the news at all, especially if the Hispanic was wanted far from here. The body would just be turned in for the bounty. End of story. I would have to check the news again tomorrow.
“Mr. Parker?” I started at that question coming from behind me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” Allison said with concern. I hadn’t heard her approach. But then others have told me before that I often became so absorbed in reading that I was oblivious to my surroundings.
“I guess I was deep into it.” I looked around. I was the last patron in the building. “Is it closing time?”
“Yes, in a couple of minutes,” she said. “But go ahead and finish what you’re reading.”
“I didn’t realize it was so late. Anyway, I’m finished with the newspapers.”
Her gaze went to the table, and a dark cloud seemed to cross over her face. I looked down at the papers and realized I had created a tangled mess out of several of them. Yes, I was really finished with them, having mangled her tidy arrangement in the process. I felt a sharp pang of guilt at having so violated the neatness of this space.
“Sorry,” was all I could say. Still seated, I started to reassemble the paper I held.
Her frown softened, and she offered, “Don’t worry about the papers. I’ll straighten them out before I file them.” I could tell that she wasn’t happy with my mess, but was too polite to say so. She was showing mercy to a stranger.
“Sorry,” I offered again weakly.
“It’s OK,” she said with less hurt in her voice. “You’re welcome to come back tomorrow.”
“I’ll do that. Thanks,” I offered. Gently, I put down the section of paper in my hand, and it gradually sagged onto the reminder of the mess I created.
Then I quickly glanced over at the computer monitor and confirmed that it was not in use. “Just give me a minute for a quick search,” I said, rushing past her.
She sighed heavily, but didn’t stop me. I took that as an OK. I sat at the computer and punched in some search terms. Only four hits came back, an astonishingly small number for any search. I glanced through the brief summaries and opened one of them. I looked over at Allison and saw her glaring at me. Turning back to the computer, I pressed print without even reading the article.
At the sound of the printer, Allison went behind the counter and snatched the sheets out of the printer bin. She abruptly dropped them on the counter in front of me. I didn’t know what the per-page cost was for the printed sheets, but slid a dollar across the counter.
“Thanks,” I said. “Sorry for keeping you late.” When she didn’t respond, I added, “Have a good night.” Then I rushed to the exit.
“Good night,” she said tersely.
I looked back through the window of the alcove and saw her take a seat at the table with the newspapers. She was undoing the mess I had left. I felt another twinge of guilt as I turned to leave.