CHAPTER 12

IT WAS PAST 9:00 p.m. when Jan left Chuck Black at the Northern Hotel, drove fifteen blocks to Interstate 90, then fifteen miles southeast to the Laurel, Montana, junction, to pick up U.S. Highway 310.  He stopped at a Circle K for a cup of coffee.  He glanced wistfully as he passed Paula’s Poker Palace where a great holdem game was doubtless in full swing.

He watched his mirror intently as he left Billings, but saw nothing unusual.  Nevertheless, the SIG-Sauer lay on the seat beside him.  He cinched his seatbelt and shoulder harness tighter.

Jan dialed in KOMA—AM 1520, the clear channel station out of Oklahoma City, still spreading its wings over the Mountain West as it had when he was a teenager.  Ironically, forty years later the station still played the exact song list it did then, but now they were golden oldies.  Back then Marilee Smith’s head lolled on his shoulder in the sagebrush-scented night under the same astounding starlit sky, her slender body nestled beside him and her valentine face and violet eyes sparkling into his.  A saccharin wave of nostalgia swept over him.  Where was she today?  She married Johnny Dexter from Manderson; the last he heard she was living in Casper. She was Jan’s first love and the trial run that led him soon thereafter to his three-year high school relationship with Ginny.  Why had he and Ginny not married?  

He drifted down the 310, passing through the sleepy Sunday night hamlets of Fromberg, Bridger, and Warren—towns of 200-300 people.  Less than an hour after leaving Billings he crossed the Wyoming border two miles north of Frannie.  Ten more miles took him through Cowley, a typical Mormon village.  As he crossed the Shoshone River and entered Lovell, he could feel fear rising in him like a cold wave.  Leaving Lovell would put him on the twenty-five-mile deserted stretch as the clock approached midnight.  If there were to be trouble, it would be within the next thirty minutes.

On the main street of Lovell, Jan parked across from the Hyart Theatre.  He remembered when it was built in the ‘50s and how it attracted people from a hundred miles because of its spacious modernity.  The tall paintbrush marquee still clung to the front of the building.  Jan didn’t recognize the movie that was playing.  

He was sweating, even though the chill night air drifted through the rolled-down window.

“Brother!” he said and dug his cell phone out of his briefcase.  He dialed Monster’s home number.

“Yo.”

“John.  It’s Jan.”

“Where are you?”

“Parked across the street from the Hyart in Lovell.”

“Any problems?”

“Just my nerves.”

“I’ll be there in less than an hour.”

“I hate to ask you…”

“I know you do, but I’m glad you did.”

“Listen, why don’t I go ahead and start through the desert.  I’ll meet you halfway.  Blink your headlights three times at all approaching cars—which won’t be many.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Look,” Jan said, “I’ll wait fifteen minutes—that is if you are ready to roll—then you should meet me about half-way.  I just don’t want you to drive forty miles at this late hour.”

“I still don’t like it, cowboy.  But I guess if you are going to have company, it wouldn’t be at the city limits of Lovell.”

Jan stepped out of the rental car and leaned back against the automobile, looking over the darkened shops toward the sugar beet processing plant at the far west end of town.  Less than a mile further east, the highway turned south and cut through 900 square miles of alkaline desert populated by sagebrush and sedges, and the large wild horse herd.

Jan remembered that once he had come upon a portion of the herd grazing uncharacteristically close to the 310.  A huge sorrel stallion jerked his head up and ran for the hills, twenty mares and a few yearlings in tow.  “He looked so awesome!” The sound of his own voice in the deserted Lovell street startled him.  But he continued to visualize the sorrel—actually more of a true roan coat—but mainly he was a dirty old cocklebur-infested beggar.  Jan began to hum lines from “Strawberry Roan.”

Down in the horse corral standin' alone

Is an old Caballo, a Strawberry Roan

His legs are all spavined, he’s got pigeon toes

Little pig eyes and a big Roman nose

Little pin ears that touched at the tip

A big 44 brand was on his left hip

U-necked and old, with a long, lower jaw

I could see with one eye, he’s a regular outlaw.

Jan felt about as busted up as that old U-necked roan.  He got back in the car.

He swung the rental back into the street and headed out of town.  As the road climbed up onto the flat and eased south, for some reason KOMA would not come in.  He slapped the dashboard and clicked the radio off and on, but all he got was static and noise flashes; he knew lightning was striking somewhere in the Rocky Mountain West.  He watched steadily down the road hoping that Monster would be early.

What he saw in the distance, however, was what appeared to be a vehicle stopped on the shoulder of the road with its taillights flashing.  He didn’t like it.  Then, in his rear view mirror he saw a set of headlights.  Where had they come from?

The parked vehicle was about a mile ahead of him.  Checking the rear view mirror he saw that the headlights were now about a mile behind him.  With his right hand, he picked up the SIG-Sauer and began slowing.  As he approached the parked car, he could see that it was a Chevy Suburban.  Standing beside it was a short, stocky man.  He was smiling and waving with his left hand, looking very much like someone who was hoping Jan would stop and offer him some help with his stalled vehicle.

Jan could not see the man’s right hand.  Out of the corner of his eye he thought he detected movement in the shadows on the off-road side of the Suburban.  The lights in the vehicle behind him were coming up fast.

Jan rolled down the driver’s side window and steering with the hand holding the pistol, held his left hand out of the window in a gesture of greeting.  The man stepped away from his vehicle, crossing the centerline in the road, expecting Jan to slow to a stop.  Jan continued to wave and he smiled himself, although he doubted that the man could see his face.  He slowed to about thirty miles an hour, hoping that it looked like he was preparing to stop.

As the car behind him closed in, Jan shoved the gas pedal to the floor, the V6 engine caught and Jan heard a short squeal of rubber on the warm blacktop.  The man, whom Jan now recognized as Bill Campbell, jumped backward and nearly fell to the ground.  As Jan hurtled past, he saw Campbell raise his right arm while another man came around the front of the Suburban, also pointing at him.

Jan heard glass breaking and felt a burning sensation in his throat.  He continued to keep the pedal on the floor and, although he was feeling dizzy, held the car in the middle of the highway.  He glanced at the accelerator and noticed he was doing ninety.  

***

Monster Broadbeck saw a vehicle careening toward him.  Monster flashed his lights three times, but the approaching car didn’t slow down.  He watched as the vehicle began to drift toward the barrow pit.  The car was half a mile ahead of him when its right front tire left the blacktop and hit the soft roadbed extension.  The rear of the car lazily drifted in an arc coming nearly perpendicular to the highway when the driver apparently tried to correct the spin by yanking the wheel hard to the left.

For a moment Monster thought the car was going to cross over into his lane.  Instead, it rolled over three times down into the barrow pit.  By the time it came to rest, Monster had braked to a stop and flipped on the cruiser’s red lights.  Up the road he could see two vehicles turning around on the highway and heading away from the accident site.

As he heaved himself from the cruiser, he pointed his spotlight at the vehicle in the ditch.  “This is gonna be Jan,” he said.  He leaned inside the cruiser to grab the radio mike.  He keyed it and barked into it at the dispatcher who handled calls not only for the county, but for all the city police and fire departments within the county, and the medical emergency team from county hospital.

“Donna, this is Sheriff Broadbeck.  I’m about ten miles south of Lovell on the 310.  I need you to get the ambulance out here pronto!”

He didn’t wait for a reply, but threw the mike down and ran across the highway.

Jan’s car had come to rest upright on its wheels—nose pointed toward the highway—about fifty feet off the road itself.  The lights were on and the motor was racing.  When Monster looked in the driver’s side window he was surprised to find it was rolled down.  Jan was slumped over the wheel unconscious.  The windshield had popped out upon impact and the rear window was shattered.  Monster reached inside and switched the motor off.  He did a quick survey of the vehicle to see if it was in danger of bursting into flame and he noticed bullet holes in the front passenger window.

“Bad news,” he said.

The driver’s door, he was happy to discover, opened.  Monster knelt down and shined a flashlight on Jan’s face.  He was unconscious and, as he breathed, blood sputtered from a hole in his neck.

“Oh, no!  Jan! Can you hear me?” he yelled.

Monster ran back up the embankment to his car and grabbed the mike again.  “Donna, forget the ambulance.  Get Saint Vincent’s in Billings on the horn and tell them to scramble life flight.  Tell them I have a patient with a gunshot wound to the throat.  Tell them I will shoot the pilot if he isn’t here in twenty minutes.”

Back at Jan’s side Monster pulled the hunting knife from inside his boot and sliced the seat belts.  He dragged Jan out of the car, carried him up to the roadway, and stretched him out on the warm edge of the blacktop twenty feet in front of the cruiser, his head away from the vehicle.  Monster figured Jan would be out of the way of any possible traffic from either direction, not that he expected traffic on this road at this time of night.  He directed the beam of the spotlight onto Jan’s chest and face.

Monster leaned over Jan and put his ear to his chest.  He could detect a strong heartbeat.  Blood was gurgling from the neck wound.  Monster knew Jan was in danger of drowning in his own blood.  As he thrust his meaty fingers into the neck wound, his mind went to a similar scene in Vietnam: a medic bending over a wounded soldier, doing an emergency tracheotomy on him.  It had saved the man’s life.

Monster raced to the trunk of the cruiser and grabbed the blister-packed Spill Saver, a $5 item he required all the county vehicles to carry.  It was made out of two six-foot lengths of half-inch surgical tubing connected to each other by a rubber bulb.  Monster’s patrolmen used these devices to siphon gasoline to aid stalled motorists.  Monster did not want jugs of gasoline rolling around in the cruiser trunks.

Tearing open the blister pack, he cut off an eight-inch length of tubing.  He removed his jacket, rolled it up and shoved it under Jan’s neck so that his head tilted back and his throat was fully exposed.  Then Monster placed the tip of the hunting knife blade in the notch of Jan’s sternum and punched through the trachea.  He twisted the blade to spread the incision wide enough to insert the surgical tube.  Immediately the gurgling noise stopped, and Monster could hear the sound of air entering and leaving his lungs as Jan inhaled and exhaled.

“Dear God,” Monster said.  “If I ever needed a miracle, it’s now.”

The night was dead quiet.  The red flashers on the sheriff’s cruiser pumped eerily in the dark night.  Jan’s face was haloed by the spotlight.  Monster continued to hold the tube with his left hand while he cradled Jan’s head in his right hand.

“Where’s the freaking chopper?” he yelled into the night.