Murder of the Prodigal Father Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

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  Chapter One - Arrival

  Chapter Two - Welcome Back, Connor

  Chapter Three - Detective Connor

  Chapter Four - Back In Time

  Chapter Five - Anger Becomes Us

  Chapter Six - Who Am I?

  Chapter Seven - Confusion Says

  Chapter Eight - You Never Know Another

  Chapter Nine - In the Ground

  Chapter Ten - Montana Men

  Chapter Eleven - Unfolding Mysteries

  Chapter Twelve - Hometown Detective

  Chapter Thirteen - Family Dynamics

  Chapter Fourteen - Loyalties Gone By

  Chapter Fifteen - Secret Asian Man

  Chapter Sixteen - Homeward, Cowboy

  Chapter Seventeen - Back On The Trail

  Chapter Eighteen - Everybody Has A Secret

  Chapter Nineteen - Death

  Chapter Twenty - Resurrection

  Chapter Twenty-One - New Life Has Its Troubles

  Chapter Twenty-Two - Losing Ground

  Chapter Twenty-Three - Like Father Like Son

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Discovering Truth

  Chapter Twenty-Five - The Capture

  Chapter Twenty-Six - Reprecussion

  Chapter Twenty-Seven - Past and Future Love

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  About the Author

  MURDER OF THE PRODIGAL FATHER

  by

  Mark Wm Smith

  MURDER OF THE PRODIGAL FATHER

  Copyright © 2018 Mark Wm Smith

  All rights reserved.

  Visit the Author’s Website at:

  www.markwmsmith.com

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Arrival

  There are probably a million things that could send a commuter airplane hurtling to the earth from 18,500 vertical feet. At the moment, I was consumed with only one.

  A thin ribbon of auburn hair lit to a campfire ember across the aisle and one seat up from me. The owner of this lifeline sparked vitality into the obnoxious hum of certain death.

  I closed my eyes and let the compressed cabin air fill my lungs. The monotonous haze of sound wrapped around me like a pressurized containment room sanitized by workers in white pajamas.

  I’ve never liked airplanes. Becoming an airplane mechanic had only intensified my aversion. Staying awake meant thoughts of mechanics dropping panel screws. Dozing meant visualizing rivets popping loose and shooting into a nearby cloud bank. Every turbulent bump and drift hurled me closer to the spray of disassembled components across an Eastern Montana wheat field.

  To alleviate those lethal visions, I chose to ride the meditative drone into a fantasy, chasing the redhead’s gleeful, naked form through a mountain meadow. Wild and free, her hair slipped behind, beckoning my desire with its copper promise.

  Her name was Jane in my personalized daydream. Her skin like cream skimmed from the top of a fresh bottle of milk. Those thick glass half-gallons Gram used to pull from the front porch on a cool Montana morning. Jane and I tumbled to the flowering grass, giggling with sexual hysteria. Blood rushed toward the promised rumpus.

  A sudden absence of gravity in the world outside my reverie forced my eyes open. The plane bounced against a decent-halting airstream.

  I swallowed my stomach and tried to look calm. Make-believe sex was a bad idea anyway. Something my father would do. Not something the updated version of me would do. I’d vowed before leaving my wife and children behind, no more fantasizing about old girlfriends, missed liaisons or charming flight attendants. So far, I was batting a .300.

  That was the thing that would bring this plane down— my unbridled lust. What others labeled karma and my wife Nansi called my “sin nature.” Spitting those words into my face one hundred times had established my new superstition. I was destined to die young.

  The current object of my affection sat forward of me, unperturbed and spellbound by a magazine article.

  I returned to the newspaper with a tense shrug. Spending longer than two hours— in this case eighteen endless hours— packed with strangers in a flying tube of metal always hijacked my libido. Select the female most likely to give in to my cultivated charm. Fabricate a sensual life with her. Avoid rumination on the eight hundred and seventy-five airplane parts I could point out by name that might catastrophically fail and send us hurtling twenty-thousand feet into the winter-hardened tundra.

  Jane and I were building a cabin in the mountains to house our seven, redheaded children before I could wholly shift my focus back to to the Miles City news.

  “Say, son.” The heavily built rancher my dream girl accompanied broke my preoccupation from across the aisle. His voice had weathered like a cedar fence post. “Didn’t you say you’re from around here?”

  Not wanting conversation, I half-smiled at him and gently snapped the day old newspaper in my hands. His wife’s perfume drifted toward me, carrying a load of guilt. “I don’t recall saying, but yeah. I grew up in Miles.”

  He grinned.

  I smiled a bit more to put him off. Maybe he missed the newspaper. I turned a page.

  “You know, General Nelson Appleton Miles built this town.” He raised his eyebrows.

  Probably showing off for his new bride. He was starting to remind of my father. I clenched my jaw.

  “Twice,” he added.

  “Not much of a history buff.” I returned to my paper, letting the turbo-prop’s endless hum soothe my buzzing heart. In less than an hour, we’d touchdown at Frank Wiley Field and I’d be forced into a stand-off with my mother and sister for nearly twelve years of hiding.

  “I’m Walt Morrison.”

  He had his hand out.

  I gripped it, feeling that same cedar used to make his voice box. Weather lines around his eyes made him appear tough, but tenderness peered out at me. “Connor,” I said.

  He waited a beat to see if I’d finish my name.

  I decided that with charm like my father’s and an obvious interest in the local business scene, knowing my surname would only ignite conflict.

  “I was telling the wife here, we was just married out to the coast. Near Seattle. Her people out there.” He poked a thumb toward the seat behind him. “That’s my boy, Ransom, sleeping yonder.”

  A glance proved him right. Ransom's cowboy hat was tipped forward over his face. He looked about twenty-five with a strong chin like his father’s.

  Handsome Ransom, I thought, and smiled.

  This encouraged Walt. “So, I was telling my wife about, oh hell, this is Karina O’Doyle, I mean Morrison, now.” He blushed.

  Karina. Nice. Better than Jane.

  She twisted to nod. “Hi,
Connor.” Her gaze lingered that split second that indicates interest, and then went back to her Western Living magazine.

  The glimpse of green iris reminded me that I wasn’t out of the timber with lust just yet. I tipped my chin and closed my eyes. Nansi’s crystal blue peepers stared resolutely at me as I climbed into Garboski’s car for a ride to the airport. We’d decided it would be easier if I just went off to “work” for a few days. The children had gotten used to that. They knew Dad worked on airplanes in far distant lands— just another TDY with the crew.

  But bouncing out of the driveway with G-man felt like we were leaving for a strip club. I felt it. G felt it. Nansi definitely felt it.

  By the time I looked up, Walt was well into the story.

  “... about this Carrol feller,” he said, with a quick swivel to include both of us. His wife continued to read. He needn’t have worried. His voice handled the job easily. “General Miles proffered his concern for the troops as well as his distaste for whiskey. Mr. Carrol listens, nods, and then opens a bar two miles down river.” His chuckle rumbled, harmonizing with the engines.

  Karina glanced back and beamed, like brides should, with bright, straight teeth.

  I wondered if “proffered” was in the original version. And I realized I had started to like old Walt. Which riled me at the same time. Because Walt Morrison reminded me of my father, Dixon Pierce, in his ability to enthrall and captivate.

  “When General Miles moved the entire camp upstream, to keep his boys from the unholy brew, Carrol and the town packed their booze and moved right along with them!” The newlyweds burst into laughter, his busting out low and loud, hers sharper and more severe than I expected.

  At the end of it, she pierced me with a straight on stare. “Walt is the best storyteller ever.” Her jade irises challenged me. “And I’m Irish! I grew up on stories.”

  I offered a courtesy chuckle, partly for their odd cuteness, but more to acknowledge to his bride that I understood her message. There would be no hanky-panky with the newly wed Mrs. Morrison.

  I left them to their newfound joy, glad for the old cowboy. He represented the better part of Dixon Pierce— the part I still loved.

  Enduring the flight from Okinawa to Billings meant counting rivets in the wings and engine housings of jet airliners transporting me home. Most of my drowsy thoughts entangled the C-130 I’d left on Kadena’s flight ramp with the imagined needs of the 747s I rode in. Every creak and thump interrupting my half-sleep had me replacing an aileron hinge, a flap drive screw, or one of a hundred other maintenance issues I’d projected from my 130 onto those overcrowded Jumbos.

  The bumpy landing in Billings brought relief, and a temporary awareness that airplanes didn’t matter. My father would still be dead when I arrived.

  Fantasizing about Karina and snubbing Walt’s jovial interruptions kept me from thinking on my family for the remainder of the fifty-eight minute ride. The sixteen-passenger Cessna I now shared with the rancher, his lustrous wife, and his sleeping son circled Miles City like a predatory hawk. Its telling shadow undulated across the snow-covered prairie.

  I felt protected, ironically, like the rancher’s unsuspecting bride, within its vibrating belly.

  We crossed the Tongue River on Miles City’s western edge, winding over town to approach the airport from the northwest.

  My fingers thumbed the leaves of the newspaper, as I searched through the veiled rotor blades for my best guess at the location of the county jail.

  Behind Custer County’s steel bars a killer awaited trial. This according to yesterday’s news.

  I’d discovered The Miles City Star tucked in with the airplane survival pamphlet and the twice-read airline marketing magazine. An unbidden joy overtook me. Several book titles I’d scanned on my way past the terminal bookstore were haunting me for not buying them.

  The front page story of the ragged paper told of a man killed, and his suspected murderer found.

  Immediately, I thought of Dixon.

  But this was another man, shot in a bar fight, who died in the street before he could receive proper medical attention. The shooter had then gone home and climbed in bed with the dead man’s wife. Arrested before breakfast and in his skivvies by Sheriff Ox Crandall, the suspect claimed no recollection of the previous night’s violence. He’d only been drinking with a friend and must have come home to the wrong house.

  Mentioning the story to the rancher jogged his memory of local crime.

  “Friendship don’t stop a man from growing stupid,” he’d lamented. In his hometown of Jordan, Montana, north of Miles City, a group of anarchists, men he’d gone to school with, threatened the government with contrived liens and propaganda. Now one of them sat in the same cell block along with that killer.

  As the two stories coalesced in my mind, I imagined my father’s dead body resting in a casket at Grave’s Funeral Home a few hundred yards down Main Street from the jail. Maybe the rancher was right, people grow stupid despite their prospective strengths.

  Dixon Pierce’s Potential Snuffed Out by Bad Choices, the headline would read.

  It unsettled me. Logic meant so little in the affairs of men. If Kasparov hadn’t beaten the Deep Blue Supercomputer last week, there’d be no hope left in the world.

  The Cessna dipped harshly as we banked north, cutting a few hundred feet of altitude by the time we reached the eastern end of town.

  Even a hundred sorties in the back of a C-130 hadn’t made me immune to the rise of my stomach at zero gravity. I clenched the barf bag against my tightened gut.

  Dark lines sliced geometric angles into the prairie, mimicking the smaller shapes of the town’s buildings. Directly beneath us, the Yellowstone River meandered northeast after sidling up to the settlement it had conceived a hundred plus years ago— before it was a dry, overgrazed range.

  The plane turned three-sixty and some degrees, dropping more altitude and lining up with Frank Wiley Field.

  My stomach rolled with unease at this untimely, unexpected, and uncomfortable return. Staring out the porthole at Montana’s pinto-colored welcome mat, it occurred to me that winter in Eastern Montana came in shades of chill— gray, black, and variations on dormant buff.

  What would Nansi be doing right now? I glanced at my watch and mentally calculated. Getting the children ready for daycare, I guessed.

  I scanned the ground once more. Visual concentration often calmed my stomach. And my brain. This time I tried to pick out my sister’s car. “Hard to do when you don’t know what to look for,” I muttered into the aircraft’s hum.

  The Renée I knew would be late, anyway. Of course, she could have changed. Look how much you’ve changed, Self.

  Chuckling mercifully to myself I gave up my search, shut my eyes once again, and wished we were descending on Japanese soil. I needed to hug my children and kiss my wife. Instead, I was returning to a home I no longer knew.

  Stepping from the hatch, Montana’s Winter of ’96 gift-wrapped me with eternal pessimism. I tightened my coat collar and bunched my shoulders as I descended the plane’s makeshift stair.

  An envelope of frozen air thrust the group of us toward the airport door.

  Eleven in the morning and already the small breeze forced my eyelids into slits. Perspiration from the close quarters on the airbus transformed into a frozen glove against my skin. I’d hidden behind the glass bank of windows at the air terminal in Billings, and a train of luggage carts during boarding. Contemplating the cityscape while approaching Miles City had kept my attention off of the pilot’s weather report on approach.

  I cursed my unpreparedness and tramped toward the tiny air terminal in traditional Montana form, anticipating its cozy warmth. At least the cold bucked up my emotional well for a first meeting with Renée after twelve years. No need to start blubbering over lost time.

  “Nine degrees, for the love of Pete!” Walt the rancher was spouting as I stepped inside. He stamped his feet and squeezed his quavering bride across her
petite shoulders.

  I smiled, wondering how long he could detain her in this frigid state.

  The crew made quick work of our baggage, rolling it off the tarmac and into the small building. I grabbed my suitcase and duffel from the cart, turned to scan the waiting area for Renée, and ran into the worst mistake of my life.

  Jasia Weaver.

  “Surprise!” And her arms were around my neck.

  I dropped the luggage.

  At 5-foot-5, she stood a head shorter. I bent at the waist and hoisted her, a move that had always stimulated acute desire when we dated. It did so now.

  Her body heat penetrated multiple layers of clothing. She brushed her lips against my neck.

  Instinctively, I leaned in. Dark brown curls crushed into the skin of my face. She smelled of the same succulent jasmine. My heart pumped wickedly out of control. Frightened by the sudden intimacy, I pushed away, gripping her waist, which forced her arms free from my neck.

  “A surprise is right.” I grinned to hide my panic, searching beyond her for potential witnesses to my crime. I’d made it a point not to let her intrude on my memory as I packed, avoiding this segment of my Montana history.

  Now her hands rested on my shoulders, her Mediterranean smile nearly touched my lips, and her compactly alluring body tugged like a magnet at my loins. She’d grown more delectable since I’d stranded her.

  Caramel brown eyes glinted with seduction or humor, I wasn’t sure which. “Renée couldn’t break free.” She trailed slender fingers down my cheek. “So I thought I’d help out an old friend.”

  “I appreciate it.” I took a sweeping glance behind me as I stooped and snagged the duffel.

  Karina O’Doyle Morrison squinted her disapproval at me.

  I nodded toward her. “I’m surprised you knew I was coming in today.”