Bitter Past

Excerpt

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Chapter One

Sheriff Zak Waller of Lost Trail, Montana, was preparing to meet with a man he’d once suspected of murder. He collected the papers on his desk, and returned them to the file labeled “Eve Brooks,” in the bottom drawer of his battle-scarred desk. Through the window he watched as a dark-blue SUV angle parked into a space across from his office. The plates began with the number ‘7’, which told him the vehicle had been registered in Flathead County.

Right on time for their meeting, Brent Culver emerged from the driver’s seat. Still tall, obviously, but broader, with the substance of a man in his prime. Brent glanced up and down the street, before crossing to the Sheriff’s Office.

Zak hadn’t seen Brent since they’d worked a summer together with the US Forest Service. Zak had been nineteen at the time, Brent a few years older. It had been a wonderful four months filled with rewarding work and camaraderie, right up until that last night when they and their co-workers found the dead body in the forest.

There was a tap on his door, then his dispatcher, Bea Rollins, opened it wide. A retired school secretary, Bea was both smart and efficient, the perfect addition to his small four-person office. Just five years ago Zak had been in Bea’s position. A lot had changed since then.

“Hey, Zak. Brent Culver to see you.” Bea let the tall man in, then closed the door quietly.

Zak crossed the room to shake hands. Brent was clean-shaven, his medium-brown hair professionally styled. His smile was confident and the cut of his pants and tapered shirt spoke of both quality and fashion. Life had clearly been good to the man.

It was just a four-hour drive from where Brent lived in Flathead County, to the county seat of Lost Trail where Zak was Sheriff, but there was a world of difference between the two communities. Flathead County was affluent and trendy, a magnet to young people and tourists thanks to its proximity to Glacier National Park and pristine Flathead Lake. In contrast Lost Trail, tucked into a remote corner of the Bitterroot Valley, served a mostly rural population of ranchers and forestry workers with a median income—and fashion sensibility—well below that of Flathead County.

“Thanks for seeing me, Zak. It’s been a long time.” Brent’s blue-gray eyes looked at him with a direct, business-like cordiality.

“It has.” He gestured for Brent to sit, then went to the mini fridge and snagged himself a bottle of apple juice. “Want anything to drink?”

“I’m good.” Brent leaned forward in his chair, hands planted on his muscular thighs. “You still running marathons?”

“I still run. But marathons? No time for those.” Zak had been raised by a father who was a bully, along with three older brothers, also bullies. Running had provided a physical and emotional escape back then, but while he still loved running for clearing his mind and keeping fit, he had no need or time for marathons.

Brent adjusted a picture frame on Zak’s desk so he could see it better. “Ah, married now. And a kid.”

The photo from last Christmas showed Zak’s wife Nadine—also one of the two deputies who worked out of this office—perched on the railing of their front porch, with their one-year-old son in her arms. Colored lights from their tree sparkled through the window behind her.

“Yup. Jett is almost a year and a half now. You have kids too, right?” Just a few weeks ago Brent and his family had been big news across Montana when he was announced as the fourth winner of the Montana Millionaire Lottery. The draw had happened back in December, but the story as reported was that Brent had totally forgotten he’d bought a ticket until he happened to put on a jacket he rarely wore, and found the ticket crumpled at the bottom of one of the pockets. This happened just two weeks prior to the six-month cut-off. A different fashion choice and the million-dollar payout might have been lost forever.

“That’s right. My wife, Olivia, and I had twins five years ago. As you say, keeps a man busy.” Brent focused on the badge pinned to Zak’s chest. “I never figured you for law enforcement. How long have you been Sheriff?”

“Going on three years. And you? Living the life of leisure since your big lottery win?”

Brent gave an easy laugh, then crossed his legs, resting an ankle on his thigh. “I’d drive my wife crazy if I retired.”

“So you’re still an investigator with her law firm?” Brent’s profession was something else Zak had learned from that article.

Brent nodded. “But I’m not here in that capacity. This is personal. I wanted to ask you about that last night the summer we worked together. And the body we found.”

Though he’d suspected this was what Brent wanted to see him about, Zak bought time to think, taking a long drink of his antioxidant-rich apple juice. Back when she was pregnant, Nadine had developed a craving for apples. Both the fruit and the juice. And now he was hooked too. Besides a fridge stocked with juice, he also kept a fruit bowl on his desk. “What did you want to ask?”

Brent cleared his throat. “Seems to me we should be able to figure out who it was we found. I’ve checked missing persons reports in the area during that time period. There was an elderly man with dementia who wandered away from his care home, a teenager with a known drug problem. And then there was her.” Brent took a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket, unfolded it, and placed it on Zak’s desk.

Zak didn’t need to look. “Eve Brooks.”

“Yeah.” Brent’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve looked into this too?”

“One of the first things I did after I was elected.” He had a stack of files in the bottom drawer of his desk—cases from the Ford–Butterfield years of law enforcement. The net result was at least six cases where justice had definitely not been done. Eve Brooks’ disappearance was one of them.

“Then you know the story. Eve Brooks was through-hiking the Continental Divide Trail that summer we worked for the forest service. Her last reported sighting was here in Lost Trail. Her husband and young daughter were supposed to meet her a week later in Leadore. But she never showed.”

The town of Leadore was south, on the other side of the Idaho border. About a two-hour drive by car, it would have taken Eve Brooks over a week of hiking to get there. “That was a long time ago, Brent.” Sixteen years to be exact. “Why the sudden interest in this case?”

Brent left his chair and strode to the window. Was he looking for something? Or someone? Brent’s chest expanded, then contracted slowly. When he turned back to Zak, his expression was once again tightly controlled.

“I’ve thought about that night so many times. You may have thought I needed those photos as a reminder, but they weren’t necessary.”

Zak knew the photos he was referring to but didn’t say anything.

Brent raised his eyebrows, implying, really? Then he shrugged. “You guys thought I killed her. Didn’t you?”

“At the time, maybe. But we were all wasted. Not thinking clearly. By morning we all realized the blood on her chest was already dry.” The five of them—himself and Brent, as well as Amanda McKinnon, Wyatt Cocker, and Shawn Ward—had been celebrating the end of their summer work term. They’d driven to Chief Joseph Pass, then hiked up to a viewpoint that was along the official Continental Divide Trail, where they’d set up a propane stove so they could barbecue burgers. A fair number of beers, and a little weed, had been consumed too.

It had been dark, almost midnight, when Brent proposed a shooting game. He’d challenged them all to hit an old pine tree, blackened from a long-ago lightning strike, about fifty yards away. But after he took his first shot—missing the mark entirely—Amanda, who’d been his girlfriend at the time, had told them all not to be stupid. They were too wasted to be messing with firearms.

The mood had dampened instantly, and Zak had suggested it was time to hike back to the truck. As they packed up the stove and all their trash, Brent went off into the woods to relieve himself. A minute later, he was yelling at them to come.

They had hurried to his side, then frozen. Twenty feet away, the body of a woman had been clearly visible in the pale moonlight. Though partially hidden in the undergrowth, they could see her gray face, her vacant eyes, a bloom of red over her heart. No one had gone closer—they’d been totally freaked out and it wasn’t like they could help her since she was clearly dead.

“We need to call the Sheriff,” Amanda had said, but Wyatt immediately objected.

“We’re all wasted. Zak is underage. We’ll get in a world of trouble.”

“We could call it in after we’ve sobered up,” Shawn said.

“Yeah,” Wyatt had agreed. “That’s the smart plan. Let’s meet in the parking lot tomorrow at nine. We can tell the Sheriff we found her on an early morning hike. Until then, we all keep quiet. Don’t tell anyone.”

They’d all agreed to the plan. But Shawn had been so upset when he got home that his mother, Myrtle, got the story out of him. Then she’d told his father, Sam, who had told his best friend, Wyatt’s father Edward, and of course Wyatt’s mother Vera found out about it too.

Sam and Edward, the two dads—both expert hikers and trackers—had come up with a different strategy. They’d called a breakfast meeting with all five of them and had told them to stay put. They would hike up the mountain, find the body, and report it to the authorities. Thereby keeping all of the younger folks out of it.

It had seemed a good plan. Except when Sam and Edward got to the location where Shawn and the others had found the body—there was nothing. No trace of blood, or any disturbance to show where it had been.

Brent could have had time—maybe—to go up himself in the dead of night and dispose of the body. But did he have the skill to completely cover his tracks and fool a couple of experts like Sam and Edward? Zak and the others had wondered, but none of them had told the parents about Brent’s wild shot into the dark that night.

“For the record, I didn’t go back that night to move the body,” Brent said, guessing at Zak’s thought process. “And I couldn’t have covered my tracks, no matter how hard I tried. So what do you think happened to her?”

Zak leaned back in his chair. “Whoever killed her must have moved her after we left. For all we know the killer was hiding in the forest while we partied, waiting for us to leave.”

“But the scene was so clean the next morning. No blood. No impression on the ground. Not a trace of evidence…how is that possible?”

“If a professional crime scene crew had gone over the place, they might have found something,” Zak said. “We should have reported what we’d seen even though the body was gone.” That said, would Sheriff Ford have taken the trouble to call a team out from Missoula to check for evidence? Zak doubted the man would have bothered.

“I contacted Eve Brooks’ husband yesterday,” Brent said. “They never found out what happened to her. Still don’t know for sure if she’s dead or alive.”

Almost assuredly dead, Zak thought. But without evidence, that brought no closure or comfort to the family. “Let me ask you again—after all these years, why the interest now?”

Brent’s hand went to his pocket, the one where he’d kept the article about Eve Brooks. Did he have something else in there? But he dropped his hand and sighed.

“I’ll give you an answer, Zak. But first I need to check a few things.”

“That’s cryptic.”

“Sorry, buddy. I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus without just cause.”

Zak frowned. He didn’t like the sound of that. “I can be discreet.”

“I know. Just give me a day. Maybe two. You’ll hear from me soon.”

But Zak didn’t. The next day a news report came out of Flathead County. A man in a blue SUV had been killed in a hit-and-run, T-boned by a semi driving full highway speed. The dead man’s name was Brent Culver

end of excerpt