A Shooting in Bannack

By RJ Harrison

A voice ... a shooting ... an old mystery ... a lost romance.

Laura, a retired librarian, hears a voice in a historic gold rush town and uncovers a 150-year-old mystery. She fears the mental illness that stalks women in her family is upon her, not aware ghosts of the past have found her in the present.

Her husband Harry, who has counted on retirement to rekindle their romance, tackles the mystery with impatient anxiety only to become trapped in a deadly chain of events set off as he tries to solve Laura's puzzle ... and the puzzle of Laura.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RJ Harrison
• Release date: Jun 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533779595

Book preview

The Woman Who Heard Voices

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our day.

Margaret Atwood, from A Handmaid’s Tale

****

****

Bannack, Montana

One

Bannack, Montana - August, 2011

Wavy blonde pony tail and unbuttoned denim jacket spoke youth. White tee-shirt and faded blue jeans hugged mature and well-maintained curves and left no doubt this was a woman and not a girl. Other than scattered silver streaks in her pale gold hair, nothing suggested Laura Livingston was a woman well into her sixties.

Laura sighed, closed the book she’d been halfheartedly reading and set it down on the picnic table. It had been less than two years but seemed a lot longer. That horrible illness … the doctors couldn’t figure out the cause. Outward symptoms, the fever, the nausea and the headaches, those had been easy for the doctors to treat. When the symptoms abated they pronounced her well enough to go back to work and she went.

There was one symptom she hadn’t told anyone about, not the whole truth anyway. She’d mentioned to her doctor that she had noises in her ears. He said that wasn’t unusual and made a note. She’d been afraid to tell the doctor or Harry or anyone that the strange pulsing noises were actually not in her ears but in her head, like some determined insect buzzing and scratching, trying to get out. Thankfully the noises had lessened and gone away along with the other symptoms.

Back at her library, Laura couldn’t focus, couldn’t do her work as she’d always done. Harry and the doctors believed she suffered from post-illness depression. But for Laura, it was simple and crippling fear, fear of what the those noises in her head might signal, that they might be a precursor to the mental illness that stalked the women in her family. She thought about her cousin and her great aunt and a few others who had succumbed to insanity, who died alone in institutions. Would she be next? With no rational explanation for or against, she became like a person listening for a burglar in the night, awake and alone, holding her breath, afraid to move or do anything that might cause her to miss the faint sounds. For months and months she’d listened and the noise hadn’t returned—not until yesterday.

To break her mood, Laura stood, stretched her arms and strolled to the bank of Grasshopper Creek, She stopped near a thick stand of willows, inhaled the faint aroma of new-cut hay that hung in the listless air, wrapped her arms around her chest against the chill by the stream and gazed into the clear water. Now on this sparkling day, in this new place, the anxiety of that time seemed far away. Thinking about Harry, she felt reassured and wished she’d gone walking in Bannack with him today. Surely he was right, yesterday was some kind of fainting spell from the heat and the wind. After all, it had only been for a moment and then it was gone.

She turned to walk along the creek bank and stepped right into it—right into the same pulsing insect-like static she’d heard back then, faint at first, but before she could stop herself she’d taken another step and that terrible sound filled her head louder than ever. She halted, unsure what to do next, took another hesitant step and froze. Broken by the static but clear, she heard a woman speaking,

 … (static)… is it hidden … (static) … yes, at the … (static) … dugout … (static) … near … (static) … Rattlesnake Ranch … (static) … akota … (static) … not for me, it’s for Ellie … (static) … back to West … (static) … Cedar … (static) … I promise … (static)…

The sound stopped like a radio had been turned off. Laura stood frozen for a long moment, oddly calm and curious. She was amazed to find she could replay the message over and over in her head, word for word, sound for sound, like it was recorded there. She turned and looked back into the tangled clump of willows. The voice had to be coming from somewhere. She saw nothing. Her thoughts raced over the possibilities. Maybe someone she couldn’t see making a call on a cell phone, or a radio, maybe someone hiding and playing a prank?

When no visible source of the voice revealed itself, the old cold fear of mental illness crept over Laura in a shudder and she prayed. Please let me be okay. She wanted very much to get into the truck and have Harry come and take her home.

She turned and headed toward the parking area where Harry had parked the truck. Almost there, she shaded her eyes, stared across the footbridge in the direction he’d gone and called, Harry, where are you? Her throat parched and her voice didn’t carry over the noise of the creek. Get a grip, Laura. Come on, relax … breathe … again … again … again. Her shoulders sagged. She breathed deeply, slowly, and made herself walk toward the truck’s passenger door.

It hit her again, hit her so hard her body jerked as from an electric shock. Like a short wave radio abruptly receiving a distant signal, the woman’s voice spoke again, sounding increasingly afraid, but unmistakably the same voice,

 … (static) … no, my husband has gone … (static) … yes, he is here, but he’s ill … (static) … please come back tomorrow … (static) … perhaps I can tell him for you … (static) … I don’t know … (static) … no, please, you can’t come in … (static) … Wait! What do you want with him? Do you know what these men … (static) … yes, I remember … (static)… you cannot … (static) … no, please don’t … (static) … oh God … oh, no …

The woman’s pleading words trailed off.

When thoughts came to her again, Laura realized her mouth was gaping. Had she cried out too? A few unsteady steps and she had the door of the little truck open, but she shook so hard she couldn’t lift her foot to climb into the cab. She grasped the back of the seat and tried to calm herself.

But Laura couldn’t calm herself. Nothing seemed real. Her mind spun into fragments, Am I going crazy? Oh God—Oh my God—who is this woman—why does she want to—make me crazy—Harry—don’t want to hear her any more—make her stop—take me home—Harry—Harry—where are you? Where the hell are you?

Still she saw no Harry, but what she did see, resting on the back seat, was Harry’s old double-barreled shotgun. Without knowing how it got there, she had the cool smooth heavy gun in her hands. It’s loaded, she knew, but couldn’t remember how she knew.

Blind with the terror of the moment and desperate to stop the intrusions into her brain, Laura walked unsteadily back toward the spot where she’d first heard the voice. Holding the shotgun at arm’s length, she cocked the hammers like she’d seen Harry do, pointed it at the willow thicket and screamed, Goddammit, I’m not crazy! You leave me the hell alone! and pulled both triggers at once.

As the ringing blackness began to clear Laura became aware she was collapsed on her knees, sobbing as if heartbroken, breath coming in panting, rasping gulps, nose dripping freely. Her left forefinger felt like it had been ripped off. Then she heard another voice and cringed even closer to the ground.

Two

Bannack, Montana - August, 2011

And there it stood. I smiled in spite of the urgency in my bladder. Something about an outhouse always makes me smile. Boyhood memories most likely, rubber overshoes on bare feet, flashlight piercing a snowy night, pages torn from old catalogs, small-town Halloween pranks.

This particular privy, this ramshackle construction of weathered boards and rusty tin, wasn’t remarkable in a ghost town, it just tickled me. I’d been expecting something … well something more park-like. I opened the door and smiled again, realizing I wasn’t the first to be fooled by the disguise. The inside of the outhouse gleamed, clean and fresh with a white enameled steel fixture, paper dispenser and hand sanitizer. It was time travel in a toilet, rustic exterior blending into the historic landscape.

Outside again and feeling relieved, I found myself only steps from Bannack’s two historic jails. From Montana History class back in junior high, I remembered the older and smaller of the two was built in 1863 by the outlaw sheriff, Henry Plummer himself.

I regarded the squat little structure, massive hewn and dovetailed logs, roof with boards and battens over heavy timbers. I chuckled at the irony that a jail might be the only building in Bannack left unlocked today. Creaking open the heavy plank door, I ducked the low jamb and turned to peer out the one tiny glassless window with its square wrought iron bars. The ceiling pressed near my head, the space hot and stuffy, musky odors emanating from sun-baked wood. I was preparing to leave the oppressive cell when I saw, framed in the window, the old gallows standing on the dry brown hill to the north. I knew of Bannack’s violent history, but this brought it home. This door and these bars had felt Henry Plummer’s hands. I imagined how he must have chained a man to the rusty iron ring in the floor, how the door was slammed and padlocked, leaving the prisoner in dark and dingy confinement. The dirt trail winding through the sagebrush between here and Hangman’s Gulch had borne Plummer’s footsteps. He died up there.

Lost in my thoughts, I left the jail and walked to the east end of the street past a few nondescript unpainted old buildings, turned and began my walk back to the Yankee Flats picnic area. Laura waited there at a shady table, said she wanted to sit and read today. I hadn’t argued.

As I strolled and snapped more photos, I imagined a time-lapse movie about age and beauty, how these buildings were once new and vibrant with paint and furniture, how they had buzzed with the activity of people. The people and furniture vanished with the passage of years. The paint wore away from the abrasion of sun and wind. Once-rigid roof beams sagged into tired catenaries under the relentless snows of many winters. The soft tissue of wood desiccated until the hard grain stood out in burnished relief, an exquisite beauty of pattern and texture. I hoped against all my fears that Laura and I would have time now, that aging would treat us with such dignity.

Other than the single State Parks truck at the visitor center, Bannack appeared to be empty of people today, a good day for this kind of reflection. My detour to the outhouse had taken me on a detour into my own head, got me thinking how history leaves its traces, residue of things past, things we try to connect with, ghosts if you will. We all have ghosts—the ghosts of our pasts, the ghosts of our dreams and fantasies. Some troubled people live with truly grotesque and savage ghosts.

I felt more than heard the concussion of a blast, a quick loud whump-whump, overlapping, almost simultaneous … sounded like a shotgun. Too early for hunting season. I walked faster ─ and then I ran.

Three

Bannack, Montana - August 2011

The acrid smell of spent gunpowder tickled my nose. What happened? Laura turned her head to look up at me in dazed bewilderment. I put my hand on her shoulder, Lou, tell me what happened?

Sir, step back, came a young male voice from behind me, Please don’t touch the gun.

Who are you? Where did you come from?

The young man in State Parks uniform didn’t answer the question. I work here, sir. Shooting in the park isn’t allowed, it’s against the law.

No, I meant how did you get here so quickly?

Oh … I was outside the visitor center and heard the shots. I saw you running and followed.

Whatever … I’m Dr. Harry Livingston.

You’re a doctor?

PhD actually. She’s my wife, Laura. Can’t you see she’s hurt? I need to get her to a doctor … a real doctor, have her finger taken care of. Can’t this wait? I tried to hide how furious I felt with this officious, gawky before-photo for acne treatment.

I’m only following policy, sir. Please back away and stay back. Ma’am, as soon as you can stand, I need you to walk with me to the park office. Then I’ll call the sheriff. He should be out here in less than an hour.

Laura choked back her sobs, Wait! No! There was a voice … there was a woman I couldn’t see … I shot the gun so she’d stop. I motioned for her to be quiet with a finger to my lips but she didn’t see and continued, I’m so sorry I did that. Please let us go home. We won’t come back.

I kept my distance and knelt in front of Laura. We stayed that way for several minutes, looking into each other’s eyes until her breathing calmed. Lou, can you get up and walk? Let’s go with the ranger or whatever he is. Maybe he’ll let you use the restroom and get something to drink.

"Harry, you believe me don’t you? I did hear a woman. Maybe she was talking on her cell phone. I just don’t know … couldn’t see anyone … got really scared. Am I crazy … you know, hearing things?" Her eyes searched me, pleading. The ponytail had come undone, gold and silver hair trailed across her face, sticking to wet cheeks.

I wanted only to comfort her, It’s okay, Lou. I believe you heard someone. Just don’t talk. We’ll get this all sorted out and go home. We don’t need to come back. I spoke calmly, but didn’t feel calm. I eyed her injured index finger, obviously broken, bent at a sharp sideways angle. It had to be horribly painful.

But it was her mental and emotional state that worried me most. My first thought when I heard the shots had been that Laura might have tried to harm herself. I knew about her family history and had my own fears.

Why did I leave the damn thing loaded? I’d intended to shoot a woodpecker, but Laura stopped me, told me it was against the law, said we’d find another way to discourage the bird. I knew she was right. I was going to shoot it because it was annoying, woke me up early in the morning tapping on the rafter tails. Shooting little critters was part of the culture I’d grown up in here and it shamed me to think I’d fallen back into those ways after all this time. We were about to leave for Dillon and, wanting to get the shotgun out of Laura’s sight, I’d stuck it in the back seat.

Was there a woman out there? I knew the answer. The only vehicle I’d seen at the park for the past two hours, other than the State truck, was ours. In the direction Laura had fired, shredded yellow-green lancet-shaped willow leaves lay on the darker grass. Anyone hiding in those bushes would certainly have been flushed out if they weren’t injured or killed. The park aide had checked and found no sign.

Laura was allowed to use the restroom in the park office. I helped her clean up, carefully avoiding her injured finger. We were then led to a small meeting room where the door was closed behind us.

The Sheriff and a deputy arrived, ambulance trailing. Through the window, I saw the park aide speaking to them. He gestured across the creek toward the willows in question and then toward us. The Sheriff got back into his truck and drove to the picnic area while the others entered the building. The park aide spoke first, Ma’am, you’ll go in the ambulance as soon as the deputy talks to you. I was glad to see the irritating young man go away, back to his mundane park duties.

The deputy was a short, balding, middle-aged man with a uniform in need of ironing, a respectable peace officer’s paunch and a practiced indifference. After a rough approximation of Miranda Rights, he told Laura she was being placed under arrest for discharging a firearm in a State Park and for something else he called reckless endangerment. Asked if she understood, Laura nodded, softly adding yes almost as an afterthought. He told her to accompany the medical technicians to the ambulance, which she did, walking more steadily now. She didn’t try to speak again. The deputy told me they were going to take her to the hospital in Dillon to get her finger treated. He’d find out from the Sheriff what would happen after that. He said he’d remain with her in the ambulance and at the hospital because she was in custody. I asked if I could follow and he told me I could.

Meanwhile the Sheriff investigated the crime scene. My old shotgun, two spent shells and some willow leaves would have to be his physical evidence for now. What Laura had already said and might yet say about the voice she’d heard would also be evidence, but to what end?

Later that afternoon, in the small Dillon hospital, the deputy told me I could see Laura for a few minutes. He leaned back in a chair outside the private room and left the door ajar. The room smelled of disinfectant and deodorizer and made me increasingly aware of our new situation. She’d been given a sedative and her eyes were closed, her face pale and drawn but peacefully beautiful on the starched white pillowcase. The injured left hand rested beside her, an aluminum splint protruding from a wrapped gauze bandage. I automatically extended my hand to brush a strand of hair from her face, Oh, Lou …

Her eyes opened and she looked up at me drowsily, Harry … oh Harry, I’m so sorry.

It’s okay, Lou. I wanted more than anything to know what had happened, what she’d heard. I held her right hand as she slid back into sleep.

Outside in the corridor again, the deputy told me he’d just spoken to the sheriff. He said the crimes Laura was arrested for were relatively minor, probably not enough to hold her in jail for long. However, given the unusual circumstances, he said they couldn’t be certain she wasn’t somehow dangerous so she’d be kept in the hospital in Dillon until they could make arrangements for a mental evaluation. Such an evaluation wasn’t available in Dillon so it would be performed either in Butte or Missoula. Like some Montanans, I harbor a lifelong prejudice against Butte, and even if Butte were much closer, I said I’d prefer it be Missoula.

I asked when she would be moved and the deputy replied, One of us deputies has to be with her in the hospital so sooner the better.

In the end, that was the factor that determined her destination to be Missoula. Turns out the hospital in Missoula has a secure ward for mental patients and a deputy in the hallway wouldn’t be required. The next day an ambulance would take Laura to Missoula.

Not sure what else to do, I drove home to the cabin, took the groceries out of the truck, put them away and gathered a few things for a stay in Missoula, for how long I wasn’t sure. The little house seemed stunned into silence without Laura’s busy presence. I had no appetite but ate some cold leftover chicken in the evening and sat staring into the woodstove fire.

My head spun with the events of the past two days. What could this all mean? I wondered if it even occurred to Laura that she’d attempted murder. That she might be fined or put in jail bothered me far less than the possibility she’d be locked up in a mental hospital because she heard voices and shot at imaginary women.

Four

Missoula, Montana – August, 2011

Slumped in an overstuffed leather chair in an otherwise vacant waiting room at Saint John’s Hospital, I stared ahead at nothing, a forgotten travel magazine unread on my lap. What does this mean? I simply couldn’t fathom what had happened that would cause Laura to hear voices and try to shoot someone. Yet here she was—locked in a hospital psych ward.

Two weeks ago, we’d been a librarian and college professor embarking on a modest and idyllic retirement at our cabin in the mountains of southwest Montana. I’d hoped the peace and quiet and the change of landscape would help bring Laura back from her depression and help us rekindle the romance we’d let languish over years of work, kids, stress and just plain getting on each other’s nerves.

I wasn’t sure what Laura had hoped. She hadn’t said. A long time had passed, too many years in fact, since we’d shared those kind of hopes and dreams, since we’d done much more than slog through our familial duties and assume this future would be our reward for doing so. We each seemed to be trying to connect with the other now, but I was watchful, careful. I knew of couples who had knit their marriages together through tough times with shared responsibilities and social lives and just enough sex to make the marriage interesting, and then woke one day after the kids had gone to find themselves drifted so far apart they couldn’t find each other after all. Perhaps bringing our earthy old love story back to life was naïve of me.

I knew by the way my brain struggled I was exhausted. I also knew I’d need to function now — somehow — for her. I tried to focus, tried to make myself recall all that had happened, tried to figure anything at all to get this craziness to make sense. Think, Harry, think back. There must be something you’ve missed, something you can’t remember, some clue that will help get Laura out of this mess.

Harry’s Obsession

Even when I’m dead, I’ll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

Jeffrey McDaniel from The Archipelago of Kisses

****

****

Harry and Laura’s Emigration

****

Five

Grand Junction, Colorado – 1980

And so I drifted back — all the way back to our beginning.

Laura never talked much about her first marriage. Something dark about that time, something that shamed her. We agreed to respect each others’ secrets about our prior lives. I think divorced and remarried people have to do that. Yet she knew her past troubled me when its shadow passed over. She told me not to worry, said her ghosts had nothing to do with us.

I knew she’d come to stay with a friend in Grand Junction to get away from something in California. Her friend and a friend of mine, who happened to know each other, contrived for us to meet at a summer potluck. I’d been told this woman was attractive, but I wasn’t prepared for a young Meryl Streep standing across the room. Laura, as the vision turned out to be, walked over under my helpless stare, placed her cool slender hand on my forearm, left it resting there and greeted me with the most knock-me-down-dead smile I ever saw. I have no idea what she said, but after that first smile I was a goner. I’m sure she was equally spellbound with my mumbling and sweating.

When Laura and I were dating and then cohabiting, we were never far away from the time-consuming duties of children and careers. Yet, as divorced-with-children couples must, we stole private time. We couldn’t wait for those moments. Our incendiary mixture of sexual flame and oxygen made up for time wasted in mismatched prior marriages. Laura turned out to be a no-holds-barred tigress behind our bedroom door and—a few other places not so private. I wondered if I could keep up with her. On more than one occasion, lost in the wet heat of our coupling, I caught a glimpse of a Laura who had experienced some pretty wild things, things that both frightened and excited me. The one time I asked, she put a finger to my lips and told me she was mine now, my willing captive.

As our hormonal attraction morphed into genuine love, we felt an increasing need to know each other better, to find more intimacy. One solution came in the form of friends who took Laura’s son once a month for a Friday night, sometimes a weekend, allowing us a dinner-movie date and some long private time together. For a few hours we could walk shoulder to shoulder, discuss the esoteric stuff that cluttered our heads, laugh at the absurdities of life, laze naked on our bed in the morning just for the wordless pleasure of doing so, caress one other in that tacit invitation that always leads to its own acceptance, tender and sometimes exotic sex, drowsing together until we woke hungry and happy.

In the fall, I asked her to join me for Christmas in Montana. The thought that she and her young son were going to meet the parents never occurred to me. It did occur to Laura. She said she fell in love with Montana first and me second, said I impressed her with my skill in finding and cutting the perfect Christmas tree in a snowy forest, said I was her mountain man. I believe my ratty old red and black buffalo plaid wool jacket did the trick that day. I still feel like a charlatan. Perhaps it doesn’t take too much woodcraft to impress a California girl.

Over the years after our wedding and after our own son was born and my teenage son came to live with us, mounting career pressures ate into our time together and romance had to wait for the weekends. Then weekends and evenings became full of growing kids’ activities and social obligations.