Читать книгу Hard Rain - B.J. Daniels - Страница 9

CHAPTER TWO

SENATOR BUCKMASTER HAMILTON rubbed his temples, his headache worsening. He caught his reflection in a wall of glass on the other side of the room. He was a big man who looked like the Montana rancher he was. His blond hair had grayed at the temples. He wondered if he’d be totally gray by the election.

Often, he feared he wasn’t cut out for this. He hated these staff meetings and all the minutiae that went with them. Angelina had always handled the things that didn’t require his personal attention, which apparently had been most everything. His appreciation of her had gone up tenfold since his wife’s death. No wonder the Silver Bow County sheriff still suspected him of her death. It was the guilt he felt that the sheriff was picking up on. The night of her death, he’d planned to tell her he was leaving her for his former wife, Sarah.

“It comes down to who can win,” his campaign manager, Jerrod Williston, was saying. “Everyone thinks you have the Republican primary in the bag. Not until you’re the nominee are we going to let up, though.”

Buckmaster half listened to Jerrod as he looked around the conference table. Angelina had handpicked everyone here from the finance director and press secretary to the field director, treasurer and volunteer coordinator. Under them were political organizers, schedulers, technology managers, office managers and legal advisers. Fortunately, Jerrod had stepped up since Angelina’s death, making it possible for him to stay on the election trail without facing a lot of the organization that came with such a huge campaign.

Angelina had hired Jerrod, saying he was the best. He’d only run a few other campaigns for presidential candidates, but he came highly recommended, according to her.

“He’s tough, but he has charm,” Angelina had said. “He’ll be dead honest with you about how the campaign is going, but lie like a pro on camera. And he looks damn good on TV. One look at him and you see a Republican.”

Jerrod looked like a movie star and dressed like a CEO. He was in his midthirties, had numerous degrees and spoke as if born with a silver spoon in his mouth. It was easy to see why Angelina had chosen him.

“He’ll get you elected,” she’d said as if there had never been any doubt.

“We’re out of the honeymoon period with the media,” Jerrod was saying. “They loved you, hung on your every word, treated you like the father they wished they’d had. But now that we’re coming down to the wire, every reporter assigned to you is waiting for you to screw up so they can get that sound bite. Be careful. Warn your family, too. This is the point where we have to be scandal-free. And that applies to everyone in this room.”

As the rest left, Jerrod brought him over two aspirin tablets and a glass of water. Buckmaster smiled and downed them.

“Not what you expected, huh?” his campaign manager said, pulling out a chair next to him.

He had to admit it wasn’t. He’d spent months traveling across the country, visiting foreign governments, eating on the run, sleeping in so many hotels that he often woke up and didn’t know where he was. He’d talked until he was sick of his own voice. “I thought that if I was elected, I could help my country. Make it a better place for my children and grandchildren. Do my part in making it a better world.”

Jerrod laughed. “A noble enterprise.”

“Is it?” he asked. “I read somewhere that this race between all the candidates is going to cost six billion dollars. Aren’t there places all that money could be better spent?”

“Look how many jobs a lot of us have because a bunch of men and women have decided to run for president,” Jerrod said with a laugh. “It’s democracy at work.” He got to his feet. “You’ll feel better after the primaries.”

“Only if I win,” Buckmaster said, and forced a smile.

“You will. I’ll see to that. In the meantime...”

“Right. Don’t say anything stupid. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“And keep those daughters of yours out of trouble.”

The senator got to his feet with a chuckle. “No problem. My six daughters have always been perfect in every way.”

Jerrod chuckled. “Right. Perfect angels. We’re so close now, we can’t let anything stop us.” He hesitated only a moment, his blue-eyed gaze sharpening. “I wanted to talk about your former wife.”

Sarah. The woman who, twenty-three years ago, had tried to kill herself, and failing that, had disappeared only to return with seemingly no memory of where she’d been or why she’d done what she had. Buck had hated her bitterly for leaving him to raise their six daughters alone. But when she’d returned from the dead after twenty-two years, he’d also realized that she was the only woman he’d ever truly loved.

“About Sarah...” Buckmaster said, but was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone.

* * *

SARAH JOHNSON HAMILTON tried the number again. The wind had come up outside. She watched a dust devil whip across the yard of the old farmhouse. Closer, she studied her reflection in the glass. On the surface, she looked like a shy, fiftysomething, blonde, blue-eyed, ingenuous woman. Not like a woman who had dark secrets.

The phone at the other end rang a fourth time and then went to voice mail.

As grit pelted the front window, she stepped back and disconnected. She didn’t leave a message this time. Russell hadn’t called her back after her other messages. She doubted he would now.

Sarah knew she shouldn’t be calling Russell, especially after she’d broken their engagement. If Buck knew, he would have a fit and make more of it than it was.

She just needed to hear Russell’s voice and know that he was all right. But, if she was honest with herself, that wasn’t the only reason. After fainting at her daughter Bo’s wedding, she’d been running scared. Maybe there was more wrong with her than the neurologist said. Or maybe he was right, and it was all in her head.

She couldn’t remember why she’d fainted but when she’d opened her eyes, her daughter Kat had been leaning over her. “What?” Sarah had said at her daughter’s angry expression.

“She’s all right,” Kat said as she’d helped her mother to her chair. “Everyone just move back and give her some air. You, too, Dad.”

It wasn’t until they’d all stepped back that Kat had said, “Who was he? The man you saw standing outside the reception who made you turn ghost white and faint?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sarah had said. “I don’t remember seeing—”

“That’s right. You don’t remember anything,” Kat had said sarcastically.

She had gritted her teeth, reminding herself that Kat had always been the impossible child, but also one of the smartest. Kat had seen something. “What did this man look like?” she’d asked.

“Handsome even after all these years. He looked like your former lover from The Prophecy, Joe Landon. Ring any bells? No, that’s right, you didn’t recognize anyone in the photo I showed you. Not even the image of the alleged former Sarah Johnson. Or should I call her Red?”

She hadn’t recognized any of the people in the photograph—even the redheaded woman who held a slight resemblance to herself—let alone the handsome man standing next to the woman.

“Kat,” she’d said impatiently. “I wasn’t a member of some anarchist group.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Sarah. But you just saw one of the men and fainted. Try to explain that away.”

She’d been shaken throughout the rest of the wedding festivities and had had to hide it from her husband and her other five daughters. As far as she could tell, Kat hadn’t told her sisters about her suspicions. No one believed her that she couldn’t remember the twenty-two years she’d been gone—let alone something Kat believed she’d done in college.

Wasn’t that why she desperately needed to talk to Russell? He had always been able to calm her down. Mostly, she needed someone that she could trust to talk to. But could she still trust Russell after breaking his heart?

“I’m worried about Russell.” In retrospect she shouldn’t have voiced that worry to Buck the last time he was home from his presidential campaign. He was still jealous of the man who’d found her the day she returned to Beartooth. Not only had Russell rescued her, but he’d taken her in, made sure she had everything she’d needed, and offered her kindness and, months later, love and marriage.

Buck, who’d remarried in her twenty-two-year absence, was jealous even though she’d recently broken off her engagement to Russell.

“I heard he’s on a cruise, probably visiting some tropical island and you are the last person on his mind,” her former husband had snapped. Because she was believed dead those years, their marriage had been declared null and void. Otherwise, Buck would have been a bigamist when he’d remarried.

She’d had six daughters with Buck so she should have expected this reaction. Still, she had a bad feeling that Russell might be in trouble. She needed someone to talk to and Buck was gone so much of the time...

“It’s just that Russell took it really hard when I gave him back his ring,” she’d said, hoping to make him understand. “He was...angry. Which isn’t like him.” Nor was it like him to go on a cruise. He was Montana born and bred. If he’d left the state, then he was even more upset with her than she’d originally thought. So why did she suspect he hadn’t left?

“I’m afraid of what he might do,” she’d said, trying to get her husband to see that she was truly worried and possibly for a good reason. “Maybe you could say something to the sheriff. Russell has a daughter here. I can’t imagine him leaving her and his grandchildren, even for a short time. You don’t know how kind Russell is, how caring and forgiving.”

“He’s a saint,” Buck had said impatiently. “Can we please not talk about him? He’s gone. You’re with me now.”

Not exactly, she thought as she pocketed her phone now and glanced out the window again. She was on Hamilton Ranch again but not living at the main house as Buck’s wife. Instead, she lived in a ranch house that had come with one of his land purchases. She couldn’t even see the main house from where she lived, and she certainly couldn’t move back in. Not with Buck’s wife’s only months in her grave. The media would have had a field day if they knew about her and Buck.

Not to mention how much more suspicious it would make the sheriff up in Silver Bow County. He already suspected Buck had something to do with Angelina’s car accident.

Distractedly, she watched the gale sway the tall pines next to the house. Beyond them, a wide swatch of expansive land ran for miles before colliding with the unforgiving Crazy Mountains. All of it Hamilton Ranch.

It had been hers and her husband Buck’s twenty-three years ago. The ranch was larger now. Buck didn’t understand the word enough. He had to conquer, to control, to lead, she thought, thinking of his success at ranching and politics. Now he was hurtling toward the White House like a minuteman missile—that was, if nothing detonated his campaign before he reached his goal.

She’d nearly done that when she’d returned after letting everyone believe she was dead for all those years. It only made more copy for the gossip columns that she couldn’t recall any of it, including why she had evidently driven her car into the Yellowstone River in the middle of winter in an attempted suicide several months after the twins were born.

When her body wasn’t found, she was ruled legally dead. Somehow, she had survived, though she’d had no idea how or where she had gone after that. The last thing she remembered was giving birth to Harper and Cassidy, who were now out of grad school. She’d missed all six of her girls’ lives. She’d missed years with Buck. Worse, in her absence, he’d replaced her.

Some days, it all seemed too much. Her daughters didn’t know her and didn’t seem to want to get to know her. She’d come back to find her husband remarried. He’d been the only man she’d ever loved—at least as far as she could recall—and to return to find Angelina Broadwater Hamilton living in her house... The media had tried to paint a love triangle between the three of them.

But neither her astonishing return from the dead nor Angelina’s death in a car accident four months ago had derailed Buck’s propulsion toward the presidency. Instead, the polls had him rising even higher seemingly because of it.

Where Sarah fit into it, though, was still to be decided.

“It’s too early for us to announce that we’re getting back together,” Buck had said. “But I have my staff ready to put a spin on our reunion as soon as it is time.” Jerrod Williston was his campaign manager. She’d never met him, but she knew from what Buck had said that he didn’t approve.

“I’ll keep after Jerrod,” Buck had told her. “He always comes down on the cautious side in these things. But it won’t be long, I promise,” he’d said as he’d taken her in his arms. “We will be together as husband and wife in the White House.”

Sarah had tried to see herself there with him and couldn’t, and that frightened her. Sometimes, like now, alone in the middle of the huge ranch Buck had built, she thought she should have married Russell. He had promised her a “normal” life. Isn’t that what she’d always wanted?

Outside, she saw with growing concern that a storm was rolling in. Dark clouds shrouded the Crazies, as the locals called the massive mountain range. The wind wailed, making the tree limbs lash the house. She shuddered at the thought of another thunderstorm like the one from a few nights before.

She’d always hated storms—just like her daughter Bo had when she was young. Russell knew how she hated the thunder and lightning, the unrelenting rain. He would never have left her alone with a storm coming in. Not that Buck could have come to her even if he’d been in town. He was at some caucus or other and not expected back for days.

Her phone rang. She hurriedly pulled it out, hoping it was Russell. She needed to hear his voice, to know he was all right, to be assured that he had forgiven her for hurting him. Forgiven Buck for drawing her back.

Russell was determined that the reason she’d tried to kill herself all those years ago was because of something unforgivable that Buck had done, something she’d pushed into the dark recesses of her memory, unable to face it. Or worse, Russell had a crazy theory that Buck had somehow had her brain purposely “wiped” so she couldn’t remember.

Russell’s hatred of Buck scared her. Her fear was that she’d changed the loving, caring man and that now he might do something crazy in an ill-conceived attempt to save her from Buck.

She glanced at the phone, saw who was calling and felt a rush of guilty disappointment that she quickly smothered. It was her daughter Harper calling. The only one of her six daughters who had reached out to her.

* * *

SHERIFF FRANK CURRY shoved back his Stetson and gazed up the hillside. He was a big strong man, even now that he was in his midsixties, with a gunfighter mustache that was more gray than blond anymore.

Earlier, he’d been having lunch with his wife, Lynette, on a picnic table outside the Beartooth General Store when he’d gotten the call.

“One of these days we’re going to get through a meal without being interrupted,” he’d said as he’d tossed his half-eaten sandwich into the small brown bag.

“And you would be bored to tears and driving me crazy,” Lynette had said. She’d said it jokingly, but there was underlying worry in her expression.

He’d been threatening retirement but hadn’t been able to quit just yet. There was one case—not even an official one—that he couldn’t leave until he saw it through to the end. But after that...

The return of Sarah Johnson Hamilton from the grave had been like a pebble thrown into a quiet pond. The ripples just kept getting bigger. He knew he was waiting, all his instincts telling him there was more to her return. The fact that her former husband was running for president only made him more concerned.

But when he’d had the FBI look into it, they had found nothing that threw up any red flags for them. Some people saw Sarah as a nutcase. Others were convinced she’d been suffering from postpartum depression after giving birth to the twins. Still, it left a lot of unanswered questions.

Unfortunately, Frank was left to worry alone. Now standing at the bottom of a hillside on Hamilton Ranch, Frank had a bad feeling that this was another ripple that eventually would be like a tsunami, threatening to drown the entire community, if not the country.

“I figure that gully washer of a storm we had the other night loosened the soil up on the hilltop,” Undersheriff Dillon Lawson was saying. “The old wooden casket swept right down the hill to end up broken open in the pines.”

Frank nodded in agreement at Dillon’s assessment as he shifted his gaze to the corpse. He’d seen photographs of mummified bodies, but this was his first in the flesh. The skin was dark and hard, stretched over the bones in a gruesome grimace. The victim had shrunk to skin and bones, her clothing pooling around the shriveled torso and limbs.

What made the sight even more ghastly was the long hair still attached to the skull. Now, covered with mud, the woman’s hair lay in muddy waves above her.

“This is remarkable,” Coroner Charlie Brooks said as he knelt next to the corpse. “I’ve never seen one preserved quite this well. The body had apparently been buried in this wooden box, which kept it from animals, but the fact that it didn’t decompose...” He scratched his head. “Remarkable.”

Frank thought about what a shock it must have been for Harper Hamilton and Brody McTavish when they’d found it. He’d taken both of their statements after getting the call and rushing to the scene. While the two had come by horseback, he and Dillon had taken an old logging road that ended at the top of the hillside—and the original burial site, given the hole left there.

Brody had assured him that they hadn’t touched anything. “We called as soon as we saw what it was.”

Harper had been visibly upset. “Who is it?” she’d asked in a whisper.

“We don’t know yet, but it appears to be an old grave,” he’d told her.

“So, not anyone we might know,” she’d said, sounding relieved.

“More than likely not,” Frank had said, though he couldn’t be sure of that until after Charlie did his job. Unfortunately, he had his own suspicions. He just hoped he was wrong.

“You’re both free to go, but we’re going to treat this area as a crime scene until we know more,” he’d told them.

“What would make it mummify like that?” Dillon asked Charlie now.

“Probably a variety of things. There are two kinds of mummies, anthropogenic, those created by the living, and spontaneous, which are created unintentionally due to natural conditions. I’d say this one is spontaneous.”

“Spontaneous?” Dillon asked.

Charlie looked up from his inspection of the corpse. “The internal organs are removed from the anthropogenic mummies and chemicals are used to preserve the bodies. Spontaneous ones have occurred in extreme heat or cold or conditions such as those found in bogs.”

“This certainly isn’t a bog,” Dillon pointed out.

“True,” the coroner agreed. “In order for the body to mummify under these conditions, I’d say she was buried at the top of the hill where there is little vegetation and the soil is much drier than the soil down here in the trees. The body would have had to go into the ground in late fall before the soil was completely frozen and then the weather would have had to have gotten very cold after that. The winter temperatures would explain the absence of flesh-eating organisms, like maggots. Cold also slows or completely stops the body’s bacteria from decomposition, resulting in a mummified body that could last thousands of years.”

“So it could be an old settler’s grave, right?” Dillon asked. “Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve uncovered one in Montana.”

The coroner shook his head. “The nails in the coffin aren’t that old. Also, the clothing’s all wrong. She’s wearing jeans.”

“Don’t blue jeans date back to the late eighteen hundreds?” Dillon pointed out.

Charlie considered the corpse. “If I had to guess, I’d say she hasn’t been here that long. I could be wrong. She is well preserved.”

Frank said nothing. He had a bad feeling he knew exactly how long this woman had been here. “Any way to estimate how old she was when she was buried?”

The coroner considered the mummified corpse for a moment. “Young. Maybe teens, early twenties. I’ll know more when I get her on the autopsy table.”

“What are the chances of getting any DNA that we could use to try to identify her?” Frank asked.

“I’m hopeful,” Charlie said. “Scientists have been able to extract DNA from mummies a whole lot older than this one. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Will be interesting to find out who she was,” the undersheriff said as he motioned to the shattered remains of the wooden box the body had been buried in. “Wasn’t much of a burial.”

“Looks like an old feed box found on places all around this county,” Frank said. “Let’s make sure we take the box in as evidence.”

“Wait,” Dillon said. “You’re thinking foul play?”

“Just covering all bets.” Nothing like a hard rain to loosen the soil and unearth all kinds of things, he thought.

Charlie reached out to take some strands of the victim’s hair between his fingers. Rubbing off the mud, he said, “I can tell you one thing. She was a redhead.”

Frank stepped away, needing to take a breath. Dread had settled like a bad meal low in his belly.

Behind him, he heard the coroner ask Dillon, “Have you taken all the photos you need? Then I’m ready to move her.” An assistant who’d been waiting patiently in the pines at some distance now moved in with a body bag. “Let’s roll her over. Easy... Hold up.”

Frank had been lost in thought when he heard Charlie say, “Sheriff, I think you might want to see this.”

With growing dread, he stepped back to the scene.

“She was wearing a leather Western belt,” the coroner said, looking up at him. “Assuming it’s her belt, her name is tooled into the leather. It says Maggie.”