Blood Ties Read online

  Blood Ties

  Sigmund Brouwer

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 1996 by Sigmund Brouwer. All rights reserved

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  Prologue

  Kalispell, Montana--June, 1996

  As Kelsie McNeill reached across to the glove box of her BMW, she had no reason to expect anything inside but registration papers and the sunglasses she needed for a relaxing ride home in the bright afternoon sun.

  It had been a difficult day. As she was the first McNeill in McNeill, McNeill & Madigan, she’d spent nine, solitary, intense hours preparing a complicated class-action lawsuit.

  When she had arrived just after seven that morning, her car had been in the shade of a tree. Now, afternoon heat had baked the black car, giving it a thin blanket of shimmering air.

  As she stretched across to the glove box, she smiled at a realization. When was the last time she’d actually driven her car with the convertible top down? Was life so serious she couldn’t try to lose herself in the sensation of wind and sun on her face? The impulse to rebel against her rigid self-discipline in such a minor way was so strong that she abruptly pulled her hand back from the glove box and unbuckled her seat belt.

  She stepped out of the car again and scanned all directions for the towering thunderclouds that often rose during hot summer afternoons. She saw none. Twenty miles away, the mountains that walled the eastern side of the Flathead Valley were clear lines of granite against blue Montana skies.

  Definitely a convertible day, she decided, worth the effort of unfolding the top, worth the effort of folding it back into place fifteen miles ahead when the asphalt ended and the gravel began for the last five miles of her drive up to the ranch.

  Once she had securely fastened the convertible top back, she took off her suit jacket before getting inside again. She threw it onto the passenger seat beside her shoulder bag, amused at her rebellious satisfaction in not folding the jacket neatly.

  Behind the steering wheel, Kelsie took off her high-heeled shoes, which she tossed onto the floor of the backseat. She unclipped the wide barrette holding her hair back and shook her hair free. She then gripped the steering wheel with both hands to stiff-arm herself against the seat back. Eyes closed, she straightened her legs and flexed her thighs and calves, tensing hard until the muscles burned. Then she relaxed the muscles.

  Kelsie was wearing a sleeveless blouse – Saks Fifth silk, ivory colored, which matched her silk pants and the cream-colored leather shoes now on the floor behind her. The sun felt good on her shoulders and the bare skin of her upper arms. She allowed herself the luxury of an entire half minute of rest, concentrating on the warmth of sun against skin. She exhaled, wishing she could rid her mind of the lawsuit details as easily as she released the breath from her lungs.

  Finally ready to drive, she opened her eyes and again reached across to pop open the glove box, thinking of sunglasses.

  Movement caught her eye, but it was too late. She could not react. She could not even scream. She was frozen, conscious of every minute detail, as if a spotlight were slowly moving across a darkened stage.

  From inside the glove box, the triangular head of a snake arched forward in time-freeze frames, its eyes a brief black glitter, its body colored in the dust-green-and-brown diamonds of a rattlesnake. The snake’s head slammed into the flesh of her forearm. The force of its strike hammered her arm against her side.

  Unbelievably, she felt no immediate knife thrust of poisoned hollow fangs. Still, the rattlesnake clung to the flesh of her right forearm. The bulk of its body fell flat across the center armrest.

  Kelsie half twisted, her instinct for survival surfacing. With her left hand, she grabbed the snake behind the head. It flailed and coiled, sending its spasms of rage up through her arm. Three, maybe four feet long, it was heavier than she thought. It took all her strength to squeeze the contracting muscles of the snake’s body.

  The snake’s power shook her from side to side. Its rattles slammed against the dash. For a sickening moment, she was eye to eye with the snake. Then, finally, it opened its mouth wide, showing the gray pinkness of its palate and throat.

  Quickly she lifted the snake above her head. She tossed it up and backward over her shoulders. Seconds later, it slapped the asphalt with a light thud, twisted, and streaked for the grass of the far side of the parking lot.

  Kelsie gasped for breath. Her heart was racing, and she was shaking, but still she began to list her priorities: medical attention first; call Clay on the cellular phone as she drove to the hospital and tell him to start dinner without her; leave a voicemail message for Lawson asking him to cancel the next day’s appointments; and book a room at the hotel so that Clay wouldn’t know what had happened.

  How long, she wondered, before the swelling went down and she could return home? That was, if she lived.

  She looked down at the spot on her arm where she had been bitten. Incredibly, she saw no blood and no puncture wounds. The skin was red and pinched with slight ridges as if a toothless baby had bitten her. But there were no puncture wounds.

  She flexed her fingers. The muscles of her forearm quivered, and she began to feel an ache, as if she had been hit by a hammer. Long sleeves, she decided. Heat wave or not, she’d have to wear long-sleeved blouses to hide the bruising from Clay. He had already asked too many questions.

  There was more to explore. She dreaded what else she might find in the glove box. But it had to be done. She leaned over to look inside. Her fears were confirmed when she saw a solitary eagle feather. Beneath it was a folded piece of paper. Before she opened it, she knew she would recognize the handwriting.

  Darling, please show how truly you love me. Delay my request no longer. It is tedious and dangerous work to remove snake fangs. Next time I may not have the patience. Next time I may leave the gift for someone close to you. Remember the others.

  She folded the note and shoved it deep into her shoulder bag. She knew it was a foolish hope that someday she might be able to use it against the sender, but Kelsie badly needed hope of any kind.

  She waited a few moments, struggling for composure. She told herself again and again that she was a fighter and a survivor. When she finally believed she could speak without a tremor in her voice, she picked up her cellular phone. She felt as if another woman were dialing, another woman listening to the first few rings.

  “Hello,” her husband said.

  “Clay, it’s me.”

  “It is,” he said, his voice cool. “How are you this evening.”

  She hated his formality. She hated the reason for it. “I'm fine,” she said, finding the strength to stop her voice from shaking. “I’ll be at the office awhile, all right? Don’t hold dinner for me.”

  “Sure.”

  If he had stayed on the line another few seconds, if there had been some warmth in his voice, she might have folded, might have cried, might have finally asked him for help. Instead, he hung up without a good-bye. She didn’t blame him.

  Kelsie stared sightlessly through her windshield.

  Something nudged her ankle. She looked down between her legs. No!

  Another rattlesnake slithered out from under the driver’s seat.

  She couldn’t find the breath to scream. When she finally unfroze, Kelsie lifted her legs and dove toward the passenger door, scrambling over the armrest in her panic to get ou
t.

  She leaned against the fender of her car trembling, struggling to breathe, her knees nearly buckling.

  After all these weeks of vigilance had she left the car door unlocked?

  Kelsie wanted to believe she’d been stupid and careless. Because if she had not left the door unlocked this morning, that could mean only one thing: The man who had been stalking her all this time had somehow managed to copy her keys.

  PART ONE

  Kalispell

  July, 1973

  Day 1

  2:31 a.m.

  In room 27 of the Bluebird Motel Doris Samson screamed soundlessly into the duct tape across her mouth. Smelling her cheap, rose-based perfume, the Watcher drifted back into boyhood, remembering another woman – white, and much older than this frightened Flathead Indian. The Watcher remembered how as a boy he had breathed in the smell of cloying rose perfume during long, frightening nights.

  In the Watcher’s memory, those nights were never far away. Nor was the old woman...

  Her perfume had overwhelmed him when she surprised him and pulled him onto her lap. She held him tight, burying his face in the wrinkled cleavage exposed by her half-open housecoat.

  “Little Bobby, I love you,” she crooned, holding him so firmly he could not push himself away. “I love you so much. Mommy just wants to hold you again.”

  She finally relinquished her smothering grip, and he was able to draw air. “I am not little Bobby!” He squirmed to get out of her lap.

  She squeezed his face between her hands. If she was aware that it hurt him, it didn’t show in the tender love on her face.

  “Little Bobby, it’s all right. We’re together again. Let your mommy give you love.”

  “I am not little Bobby!” He wiggled his head, trying to pull loose from her hands.

  She leaned forward and kissed his forehead. With the blond wig over her gray hair, the makeup she’d applied with shaky hands, and the light dimmed low enough, she might indeed pass for thirty years younger.

  “Little Bobby, let me help you into your pajamas.”

  “My name is not Bobby! My name is –”

  “Hush,” she said, pulling his face into the wrinkled valley of her chest. “Hush, little one. First I’ll bathe you. I’ll wash you everywhere. Then I’ll dress you in your favorite pajamas. We’ll spend the night together. Oh, yes, we’ll spend the night together.”

  She rocked the little boy back and forth. “And it will be like you were never gone.”

  6:30 a.m.

  Clay Garner stepped out of his Chevrolet sedan in the parking lot of the Bluebird Motel. He had no difficulty figuring out which was room 27. A sheriff’s car was parked at an angle directly in front. One deputy, tall and massively fat, stood in the open doorway of the room, facing inside. Another sat behind the steering wheel of the sheriff’s car, lips close to the radio mike he held in one hand.

  There were no flashing lights, however, and no rope or yellow tape cordoning off the parking stalls and sidewalk outside the room. At 6:30 a.m., perhaps, the deputies cared little about any risks from curious bystanders. Or, he thought, the deputies had just arrived and hadn’t had the time yet to mark off the crime scene. Or the deputies were sloppy or uncaring, or both.

  Clay decided they were sloppy and uncaring. They’d parked the sheriff’s car so close to the room that any evidence found on the asphalt beneath would be suspect at best, and at worst, disallowed in court.

  The deputy turned as he heard Clay’s footsteps. Recognition came a half moment later.

  “Hoover’s boy,” the deputy said derisively.

  Clay ignored the sarcastic tone. A man didn’t scrabble his way this far from West Virginia coal country without thick skin. Clay also knew in this situation his special agent’s badge worked against him. He was twenty-six; that was the second strike. As an outsider meddling in their jurisdiction, he knew the ball had crossed the plate long before he’d had a chance to step up to bat.

  “Who’s the investigator in charge here?” Clay asked.

  “Not you, hillbilly.” Slowly, the deputy used his tongue to shift a wad of chewing tobacco from one cheek to the other.

  “Who’s the investigator in charge?” Clay pushed back a flare of temper. Gangly, knobby at the joints, big-nosed, and just starting to fill his frame, he’d borne plenty of insults during his awkward teens. Work-hardened knuckles might have been a solution at county dances ten years earlier. Now, however, a fistfight would only mean paperwork and a reprimand in triplicate.

  “Come to step your FBI shoes over everything?” the deputy responded, pushing back his wide-brimmed hat.

  “Who’s the investigator in charge?” Clay was the same height as the deputy but probably a hundred pounds lighter. He didn’t flinch, however, as he stared into the deputy’s deep-set eyes.

  The deputy spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the toe of Clay’s polished right shoe.

  “I’ll look forward to the day we meet and you aren’t wearing a badge,” Clay said quietly. “I’ll invite you to try that again.”

  “Then what? You gonna –”

  “Back off, Two Car.” A hatless man, past fifty, barrel stout in a flannel shirt, suspenders, and blue jeans, squeezed between the deputy and doorframe into the sunlight. “Here’s the situation, Mr. FBI. I got called from a warm bed at six. Had an entire day planned flyfishing on the South Fork. Instead, I get this stiff, a real bleeder. If you had any brains, you wouldn’t add to my considerable irritation.”

  Sheriff Russell Fowler wore his gray hair in a military crew cut and had a small balding circle on the top of his skull. Clay knew this, because at six-foot-one, he looked down on Fowler’s five-feet-eight inches – a fact that almost certainly had brought a fourth strike into play during their first meeting the day before.

  “I’ll remind you the same as yesterday. I have no interest in scratching dirt like roosters in a circle,” Clay said. He spoke slowly, acutely aware that his West Virginia accent, with consonants polished like stones in running water, set him apart as surely as did his badge. He was too proud, however, to deny his heritage by snapping his vowels short. “I believe this here” – here came out in two syllables – “is a matter that involves the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  The deputy in the sheriff’s car stepped out silently and joined the first deputy in staring at Clay.

  “A matter for the FBI. I find that of particular interest,” Fowler said. “Not only do you manage to get here a half-hour after we do, but somehow you already know enough about the crime to tell us who’s in charge.” Fowler rubbed his nose, then grinned. “With knowledge like that, we should check your fingernails for blood, boy. Maybe it was you gone knife crazy in there, instead of one drunk Indian against another.”

  “I doubt it was a knife,” Clay said, wondering why Fowler had tried to mislead him.

  “No?” Fowler’s voice lost its insolent tone and became threatening. “I don’t like it that you’re so certain for someone who has no business here.”

  “How many knife fights have you tended to, Sheriff?” Clay asked.

  “Over thirty years? You obviously don’t limit your useless questions to train wrecks.”

  “Then you know enough to recognize the marks a knife leaves.” Clay regretted his first question, knowing it had sounded like a challenge. But he wasn’t going to back down now.

  “I know the marks. And I’ll bet my pension you ain’t seen real blood or real death since graduating, Special Agent Clay Garner. One year out of the academy, and most of that year on backdated draft-dodger files.” Fowler’s grin returned. “Don’t let the size of this state fool you, son. Took just one phone call to find out exactly how you’ve spent your time in Great Falls. You’ve been no closer to blood than a paper cut or a stapled finger.”

  To Clay Garner’s frustration, he couldn’t truthfully argue with the sheriff. After years of undistinguished traffic duty as a state trooper, his fledgling FBI career had not yet been much:
Nine weeks training in Quantico, Virginia; a brief swearing-in ceremony, devoid of the presence of J. Edgar himself; immediate transfer to Great Falls, Montana, and its backwater office of three; and fifty-four weeks of 25s – the Selective Service Act cases that meant trying to locate local draft dodgers – mainly by telephone, with all fifty-four weeks in discomfort because of J. Edgar Hoover’s enforced personal dress code: dark business suit, white shirt, dark conservative tie, dark socks, black shoes.

  Clay Garner hated his suit. He'd spent the previous two days visiting ranches and Indian reservations and had been greeted with suspicion or laughed at outright because of the cheap suit that barely reached his bony wrists. Only bankers and lawyers wore suits in this county, and both were welcomed like scorpions in a sleeping bag. Thinking of his age, badge, assignment, accent, and dress, Clay doubted he could deliberately find any more ways to make his job any more difficult in the Flathead Valley.

  “Knife wounds,” Clay continued, refusing to rise to Fowler’s bait. “Look for stab, puncture, or slice. Double-edged or single.” Stiff-suited and stiff-lipped, Clay would not concede this was memorized book knowledge, taken from grainy black-and-white textbook photos.

  “Take notes,” Fowler said to the deputy in a condescending tone. “Now we’re getting a lesson from a graduate.”

  “As you well know,” Clay said, “the corkscrew was still in the body.”

  “President Nixon himself don’t interfere with my investigation and get away with it,” Fowler said angrily, “let alone some wet-behind-the-ears ugly duckling with a memo from Hoover. If you stepped so much as a hair into this room before we got here –”

  “George Samson called me.”

  “Samson? How’s he know? We haven’t notified him yet.” Fowler’s face was blotched with red patches from barely contained anger.