Murder of the Prodigal Father: Connor Pierce Mystery Series

By Mark Wm Smith

Small town amateur sleuth Connor Pierce faces off with local law enforcement to solve the murder of his estranged father, uncovering a twisted web of deceit and danger.

It's the Winter of '96 and Connor Pierce is forced to leave behind his failing marriage in the tropics to confront the demons of his past in his hometown. But burying his estranged father is just the beginning.

 

As he delves into the twisted details of Dixon Pierce's last moments, Connor realizes that his father's death was no accident. With small town law enforcement dismissing his claims, Connor is left to his own devices to solve the case. But can he trust his old high school classmates, now a local deputy and his former lover, to help him uncover the truth?

 

Navigating the murky waters of his family's dark secrets, Connor finds himself drawn into a dangerous game of cat and mouse. The closer he gets to the truth, the more he puts himself at risk. And when a sniper takes aim at him, Connor must fight to stay alive long enough to unmask the killer.

 

With sexual betrayals, buried secrets, and a legacy of philandering, the stakes couldn't be higher. Can Connor untangle the web of lies and deceit that surrounds him and bring his father's killer to justice? Or will he become the next victim of a family that will stop at nothing to protect their own?

 

Murder of the Prodigal Father is the first book in the Connor Pierce private investigator mystery suspense series. If you like amateur sleuths, domestic malice, honest characters and surprising twists, then you'll love Mark Wm Smith's page-turning mystery.

 

Join Connor Pierce on a journey of redemption, revenge, and ultimately, survival in this gripping murder mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Wm Smith
• Release date: Apr 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386944126

Mark Wm Smith

Mark Wm Smith was born in Miles City, Montana and raised all around the Big Sky Country. He writes mystery and suspense, novel and story length, with a little poetry a la carte, all designed to stimulate your senses and engage your mind. He writes with a stick in his mouth, drooling through fast-paced scenes and emotional disturbances, leading you to a surprising and meaningful conclusion.  Murder mysteries and suspense stories filled with interesting characters compelled to unravel the riddle of death and solve (or commit) crimes for comprehensible reasons in relevant circumstances, Mark’s fiction rises to the level of fresh and vigorous. Mark’s characters battle one another and reveal reasons we connect with. If you love mystery, action, revelation and humor, rendered at a proper pace with unexpected twists and turns, you’ll love his work.  Enjoy the free readings to make a decision about buying a book.

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Murder of the Prodigal Father

Mark Wm Smith

Copyright © 2016 by Mark Wm Smith

All rights reserved.

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.

Contents

1.Up In The Air

2.Bull Rider

3.Shot Down

4.Hard Landing

5.Reunited

6.Remember When?

7.Protégé

8.Lost Hope

9.Detective Connor

10.Reminiscing

11.Death Trap

12.In The Raw

13.Murder Spin

14.The 600

15.Temptation Rising

16.Dixon's Dream

17.Maternal Love

18.Who Am I?

19.Abandoned

20.Confusion Say

21.Surprise!

22.Young Love

23.Patsy's Song

24.Dirt Blanket

25.Cold Room

26.Montana Men

27.Deep Frieze

28.The Montana

29.Sneaky Granger

30.Unfolding

31.Hot Deals

32.Hometown PI

33.Granger's Gun

34.Walking After Midnight

35.A Study In Loyalty

36.The Cost Of Mistakes

37.Secret Asian Man

38.Neighborly Love

39.Confessions Of A Yakuza

40.Homeward, Cowboy

41.Back On The Trail

42.Jail Time

43.Secrets

44.Fratricide?

45.Death

46.Payment Due

47.Resurrection

48.Up And At 'Em

49.Life Troubles

50.Frieze Unfrozen

51.Asian Wisdom

52.Smackdown

53.Like Father, Like Son

54.Love Lost

55.Discovery

56.Capture

57.Frieze Unthawed

58.Repercussion

59.Past Love

60.Future Love

About the Author

Chapter one

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 her auburn hair lit to a campfire ember across the aisle and one seat up from me. I recalled her smile as we boarded. A little steamier than kind. Slightly more seductive than friendly. Rita Hayworth of the air.

The nineteen-passenger, twin-turboprop Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner bounced against an unexpected cross stream of air.

My sweating hands gripped the armrests, imprinting every nick and design flaw into permanent memory.

Eyes shut tight, I focused on that tawny-haired, exotic temptress. The meditative drone of the Metro’s engines transported us from the obnoxious hum of certain death into a mountain meadow fantasy where I chased her gleeful, naked form across thick, dew-laden grass. Wild and free, her flowing mane beckoned with its copper promise, her skin silkier than cream skimmed from the top of those thick glass, half-gallon jugs Gram used to pull from the front porch on a cool Montana morning. Wild-eyed, Rita and I tumbled to the flowering grass, giggling with sexual hysteria, blood rushing toward the promised rumpus.

Gravity left us, shattering the trance.

My belly button took a leap toward my chin. Honey-coated peanuts and overpriced beer gathered in the back of my throat.

Breathe in. One, two, three, four. Breathe out. One, two—

The airframe shuddered. Immorality threatened to bring this bird down. Rita was married. I’d seen her board with her new husband who doted and bragged on what a fine catch she was, never thinking for a minute that she would be the death of us all.

My heart pounded out a rhythm that darkened the edges of the world.

I used to be afraid of flying, a youthful voice across the narrow aisle interrupted.

I willed him into focus.

Grayson. Ten years old. Mother couldn’t make the trip. Flight attendant’s request that I keep track of him.

Glad you’re the one sat next to me, he said.

How’s that?

The boy’s undersized arms tucked the complimentary pillow into the hollow of his neck. He leaned against the portal.

A vast and eternal blue expanse taunted me over the kid's youthful dependence and a trembling aircraft wing. Details of the Metro’s build history and the current model’s numerous drag-reducing airframe modifications raced around the inside bowl of my skull.

Sitting next to an airplane fixer makes me feel much better, he assured himself with closed eyes.

I released my death hold long enough to pat his leg. Four-bladed props driven by TPE331-10 engines. Solid. Secure. Turning away from the bright blue promise of death, I mumbled, Capable of handling violent turbulence. My head lolled against the headrest to mimic the young man’s tranquility. As soon as my eyes blinked shut, a mental View-Master flashed images of my panicked efforts to prevent a crash landing.

Schwick. Connor charges cockpit. Schwick. Connor forces emergency exit door. Schwick. Debris soars through the tiny passenger cabin knocking the unsuspecting off their feet. Schwick. Unbelted travelers launch over seat backs and slide forward on the downward-canted aisle.

I ended the show and stared at the Air Force blue upholstery.

How appropriate of them to decorate this flying casket with team colors.

Enlistment as an Air Force Aerospace Maintenance Crew Chief had only intensified aversion to air travel. The duty title sounded ridiculous now. Staying awake had me ruminating on dropped panel screws. Dozing invoked specters popping rivets into nearby cloud banks. Every turbulent bump and drift nudged me closer to the spray of disassembled components over an Eastern Montana wheat field.

A list of horrifying possibilities ran like ticker tape. The steel trim on the arm rests sliced my palms. Eyelids tightened against thoughts of airframe failure, my father’s life flashed before my eyes. I was him, flying high, riding the wind until the crash that ruined our idyllic home.

The 19-passenger, pressurized, twin-turboprop airliner shivered a tumultuous vibration. Dishes rattled, magazines slipped into the walkway and an IBM ThinkPad slid from a businessman’s makeshift tray to the floor with a torrent of curses.

Fantasy lover, Rita, maintained a calm confidence, the gleam of firelight sparking vitality into the obnoxious hum of certain death. Delusions of carnality danced the lurid seduction of a succubus. Enticement both terrifying and irresistible, indistinguishable from that temptress my father hunted to his death.

Maintain sanity without sexual fantasy.

The mantra had kept its promise from the tarmac at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa through airports in Osaka, Anchorage and Billings. Big planes. Lots of distraction. The small metroliner contained none of those diversions, but was filled with temptations that hastened death.

My father’s biography grappled for headspace. Thrown out of the house before I was a teen. Best loved and most hated businessman in town.

No more. Dead at fifty-six. A strong argument for self-restraint.

I settled for 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.

Sorry for the turbulence, the Pilot’s voice declared from a metal can in the ceiling. Flight attendant Nancy, please strap in.

Great! The cute little lady with the flirtatious smile and the heart of a servant has my wife’s name.

The Swearingen gave another rumbling shudder with a sideways slide.

A baby wailed from behind. My teen titan seatmate, Grayson, slept on.

Hang in there, folks, the Captain reassured us with tinny glee. We’ll be on the ground in a jiffy.

Choice words, I grumbled.

The twin-jet plummeted a hundred feet.

I braced for impact. The mental View-Master flashed scenes of two small children at my funeral.

Schwick. Quentin Roger and Penelope Jane, crestfallen between two fresh graves chiseled out of the frozen Montana dirt. Schwick. Matching headstones with identical epithets for Daddy and Granddaddy, final episode. Schwick. Mother, sitting in the background, a secretive smile mocking my refusal to share my children’s time with her. Schwick. Wife Nanci, eyes dry with disappointment, one of Mother’s knitted shawls wrapping her shoulders. Schwick. Closed casket. Schwick. Legos spread across the lid, children searching for Daddy among the wreckage. Schwick. Kids with broad smiles eating ice cream with Mommy.

The airplane bucked, twisting with the wind before slamming against an updraft. This raucous tactic popped my eyelids wide.

A squarely built young cowboy crouched in the one-man aisle between me and young Grayson, Stetson clutched with the determination of a rodeo circuit rider ready to float this metal bronc into the dirt.

I figured him to be about twenty-five. Strong chin. Oversized build for full extension in the sixty-nine inch interior. One of the threesome that boarded along with my dreamy accomplice, Rita.

This is how I will die. Stuck in a pipe dream about the woman he boarded the plane with while he abandons reality and tears the cabin into an exploded parts schematic.

I swallowed my stomach and compacted my bowels, forcing blood-oxygen northward into my brain. Make-believe sex was a bad idea, anyway. My father’s game. I’d vowed before leaving my wife and children behind, no more looking, no more touching, no more fantasizing about old girlfriends, missed liaisons or charming flight attendants. These would bring this plane down—what others called karma and my bride, Nansi, labeled my sin nature. Violent words. Spit in my face a hundred times, they’d carved out a superstition.

In today’s episode of my untimely death, a panicked aerophobic with the strength to wrestle a full-grown bull to the ground but no capacity for free-fall turbulence, found himself trapped in the tiny cabin of a commuter plane while I daydreamed of an illicit encounter with his mysterious travel partner.

A mistake with terminal consequences.

Chapter two

Rita remained unperturbed in the seat just up from us, spellbound by a magazine article.

The husky wrangler maintained a combat stance. His barrel chest swelled and collapsed with the rhythm of a street monkey’s accordion.

Flight attendant Nancy faced rearward, surveilling our rabid cowhand, concern twisting her pleasant features into the hardened lines of a prison warden. She reached for her seatbelt latch.

Cowboy sunk deeper into his crouch.

Nancy called out, Sir? I’ll need you to get back into your seat.

Four of the six heads in the forward rows turned.

Cowboy’s noggin jerked about with the urgency of a hungry bird, peering through cabin portals in search of freedom.

Flight attendant Nancy stood. The airplane bounced against a decent-halting airstream, shoving her backwards. She struggled to regain footing.

I twisted against my restraint, hunting for the older gent our unnerved buckaroo climbed on board with at the Billings Airport.

The solidly built rancher caught my eye. That’s my boy, Ransom. He don’t cotton to air travel, he charmed me with a voice as weathered as a cedar fence post.

Doesn’t fly much? I jacked my thumb for emphasis.

No, sir. Pitched a fit over this trip. Higher than 16 hands and he gets skittish. Near had to hogtie and chuck him in the cargo hold. His rough-hewn laughter exposed a decided ignorance of his son’s terror at dying in a plane crash.

The familiar nature of it rankled. His boarding companion’s perfume drifted downstream, bearing a load of guilt. The shame must have colored me pink.

The old man grinned. I’ll be Walt Morrison. Never could sit still, that boy. I quit that hope years back.

With a half-smile, I tossed a nod at the broncobuster fixing to straddle this metal stallion to its last corral. You think maybe he could handle this better?

Ah, hell. He’ll be all right. Gentle as a newborn calf.

Seems a little agitated. I let my volume rise on the word.

Tends to get stuck on a thing is all.

Ransom’s leg trembled. Eyes locked front and center, he bore down on the aircrew’s cabin door.

Kinda’ like the folks built our town, Walt continued. Ransom don’t back out of a thing.

I raised my eyebrows to telegraph that this might be a thing better worked out after we landed.

His old man scowled. Been that way since he was knee high.

Hope fluttered within my chest.

Broke his arm trying to bronco a calf at roundup. His eyes wandered after the memory. Twice, as I recall, he finished the phrase with a chuckle.

Hope scattered. Walt’s failure to attend to the immediate moment was too familiar. I clenched my jaw against the reminder of my father.

The overgrown cowboy, Ransom, rotated his Stetson. Each revolution slowed to a crawl when he came to the brim’s front-most edge. The move of a bronc rider contemplating the coming eight seconds, resolving uncertainty before settling into the ride.

My peripheral vision caught movement.

Nancy the flight attendant had found her sea legs. She staggered toward Ransom’s predicament.

Cowboy placed that hat with a firm tug on the brim. His shoulders angled forward as he loaded a charge.

Nancy faltered, white-knuckle grip on the seatback meant to steady her advance. Faced with a man twice her size and half her sanity, the width of the small commuter craft left no room for escape. Her brow quivered with the energy to hold back visible signs of fear. This wasn’t a scenario taught in airline disaster training. Although, after today they might start.

I sucked a pound of air. A slap on the cowboy’s thigh with the back of my hand signed the contract.

He glanced down.

Can I help you, buddy? I asked with a salesman’s grin. You seem a mite unsettled.

I’m fine, he replied, retraining his eyes on the cockpit door.

Yeah. I snagged the newspaper out of my seatback and unfolded it with a snap. I get jittery every little bump myself. And I work on these tubs for a living.

Airplanes? Trance broken. Card well played.

An internal pressure valve released a half-pound of air. As a matter of fact. I tipped my head to offer a Pierce-guided missile of friendly confidence. A trait bequeathed by my charming father. Heavies, mostly. My body relaxed, melting into the sale. The fat ones. Nothing at all like this streamlined beauty. The birds I work are more likely to drop with the aerodynamics of a rock. I paused.

But they don’t?

Miracle of science. Marvel of man. I gave the paper another assertive snap as I returned my attention to it. We’ll be fine.

Now you wait for his buy in. My father’s voice checking off bartering points in my head. Don’t waver. Don’t let your fear of losing the sale switch their skepticism back on. Trust your gut, son. They’ll buy. Nice words when you're dealing in foreign cars on nationalist soil. It took a bit more intestinal fortitude to bet against a run for the cockpit and airborne chaos that might spread our little transport across the Eastern Montana tundra.

Cowboy stuck his open hand in front of me. Ransom, he said. Name’s Ransom Morrison.

His rugged grip calmed my own nerves. If we crashed, he’d probably be the one to carry the lot of us to safety.

Pleasure, I responded. Connor Pierce. The surname was risky. Local notoriety might turn this transaction on its head.

I do appreciate your reassurance. Ransom eased back into his seat. The belt latch clicked and he closed his eyes.

A laugh banged on my throat. I denied entry. Not a problem. My lips tightened against the urge to add, Come on inside. We’ll get this deal done.

Captain Cheerful piped in over the impulse. Seems we’ve cleared the rough spot, folks, his voice peppered the passenger cabin with tinny glee. About fifteen minutes to landing. It’s a balmy fourteen degrees above the zero mark in Miles City, Montana this morning. Don’t forget your sunscreen.

Passengers tittered.

My teenaged seat companion stretched from his catnap. Dang, that guy’s noisy, he said around a yawn. Can’t hardly catch a wink.

It roused a chuckle from the restless center of my gut. Guess he doesn’t know you’re a light sleeper, kid.

My breathing returned to normal. The airframe lost its vinegar. Ideas of sexual adventure scattered, leaving a deep longing to clasp my wife’s tender hand, hug my children, settle into an ordinary life. Tears welled at the dream. I’d been an idiot to leave them behind. A selfish jerk.

Flight attendant Nancy approached my seat smelling of Jasmine, triggering a memory from my teens, a former lover virtually forgotten. She crossed an arm over my body and laid her opposing palm on my shoulder. Bent forward, she pressed her feverish chest against my burning cheek. The smooth warmth of her skin caressed my day-old beard. Good work, mister Pierce, she whispered while squeezing a scrap of paper into the folds of my sweaty fingers. The crew would like to thank you.

Arousal soared with my heartbeat and glued my tongue to the roof of my mouth.

Nancy, not my wife, shimmied up the aisle. Her sensual hips passed the subdued auburn hair of the dream girl I’d sworn off. The redhead turned and winked. The type of wink that sets fires.

Chapter three

The inexhaustible hum of turbo-props labored beneath me, their unwavering drudgery a promise to quell those double-dealing thoughts. Flight Attendant Nancy’s perfume loomed, a thunderhead cloudbank on a hot summer day.

I buried my shame in the leaves of The Miles City Star, found stuffed behind the airplane survival pamphlet.

Yesterday’s headliner recounted the story of a man shot in a bar fight. Over a woman.

Dixon.

Maybe this was his story. Murder over a dalliance with another man’s wife. Killer walked home and climbed into bed with the dead man’s bride. Arrested before breakfast by Sheriff Ox Crandall, claiming no recollection of the shooting. He’d been drinking with a friend, must have come home to the wrong house.

Dissociative? Delusional?

Detached exploits with the other woman floated like a bad odor up from the pages. Women like Walt Morrison’s wife. Memories that sickened me.

A brush of fabric. A snort of compressed cabin air. My chest swelled with humiliation. A flush of heat beneath the freshly grown beard. The tiny note burned in my palm.

Walt stood in the aisle with his hand out.

Wanted to thank you for helping the boy, he said in that rugged Western resonance.

I accepted his grip, too quickly.

The eyes were brown and warm. Walt Morrison, he reminded, the same aged cedar used to make his voice box wrapping me in cowboy comfort. From up near Jordan way.

Connor, I replied, hoping the poor cabin lighting hid my girlish tint.

He waited a beat.

I withheld family history, relying on the charming glow inherited from my father.

Crazy story, he said poking a thick finger at the newspaper. Friendship don’t stop stupid.

Agreed, I said, the flight attendant’s phone number clenched tightly. A flash memory of body heat. Morality wrestled it. My own Nansi jumped in, crystal blue peepers staring as I climbed into Garboski’s car for a ride to the airport. It’s easier, hon, I’d assured, if I go as usual. The children are comfortable with me traveling for work. My son piped in, TD Why? with a giggle. Nansi glared. Bouncing out of the driveway with G-man behind the wheel was more like heading for a strip joint. I felt it. G spoke it. Nansi authenticated it with her scowl.

Liquid guilt flooded my ear canals. The tiny scrap of carnal invitation in my fist bisected my soul. In minutes, we’d touchdown at Frank Wiley Field. My faultfinding mother and choleric sister would be waiting to scold me.

Walt was telling me about Milestown. Got her start with a feud, he said. Telling the wife, just married out to the coast, near Seattle. Her people out there. Anyway, I was telling my wife about, oh hell, that darling woman up yonder is Karina O’Doyle, I mean Morrison, now. Circus color fought for distinction among his working class creases. You might have seen we climbed aboard this crate together.

Karina. Better name than Rita. Bigger problem for untempered passion. Just ask the men from the newspaper story.

Karina twisted to say, Hi, Connor.

My eyebrows rose. How do you keep secrets from a woman with catlike hearing? The glimpse of green irises sparked a flame. I acknowledged them openly.

Her gaze lingered a split second. She returned to Western Living magazine.

Walt went on about Carrol in a voice as soothing as the airplane engines. Wasn’t about to let those lucrative liquor sales float downstream over high falutin’ morality. When General Miles packs up the troops and his strong aversion to whiskey with plans to end the winter-time drinking, Carrol loads his whiskey and shuttles the kit and kaboodle of Milestown right along with him. He told it with vigor.

Karina turned and beamed, bright, straight teeth underscoring the punch line.

I pondered the flight attendant’s offer with my fingertips.

Miles City cut its teeth on a whiskey brawl! Walt popped the story with a finger flip. And here we are a hundred and twenty years later! The newlyweds burst into laughter, Walt’s loud and low, Karina’s sharper, with a severity I hadn’t anticipated.

The kid poked me. Funny, ain’t he?

I smiled a bit, nodded. Walt used some of the same tricks my father, Dixon Pierce, local celebrity car salesman, employed to enthrall and captivate. Another article in the Star told of a group of anarchists, men Walt’d likely gone to school with in his hometown of Jordan, Montana, north of Miles City, who threatened the government with contrived liens and propaganda. One of them sat in the same cell block with the shooter who’d started the whole conversation.

Walt’s the best storyteller ever, Karina O’Doyle Morrison said, those jade colored irises challenging the chance disagreement. I’m Irish! Grew up with the best of them.

I smiled around the decision to dismiss fantastical adventures with her. Discovery of the meaning behind her flirtatious winks had lost its appeal. The weight of her was noticeable in its absence. The old cowboy deserved respect, not disregard. He personified the better part of Dixon Pierce—the part I loved and missed.

With a surreptitious tuck into the seatback pocket, I ended the dialogue turning in the tips of my fingers. The tiny scrap of temptation vanished into the sleeve, taking another pound of guilt with it.

The sixteen-passenger Fairchild circled Miles City, a predatory hawk and its telling shadow undulating across the snow-covered prairie. The image of our descent dipped into the Tongue River at Miles City’s western edge before splashing through the icy waves of the Yellowstone as we approached the airport.

Father’s dead body rested in a casket at Grave’s Funeral Home a few hundred yards from the jail on Main Street. An imaginary headline, Dixon Pierce’s Potential Snuffed Out by Bad Choices, haunted me. Logic folded its hand against lust. If Kasparov hadn’t beaten the Deep Blue Supercomputer last week, I’d have no hope left.

The airplane cut several hundred feet of altitude as it banked north.

Dozens of raucous sorties inside the belly of a C-130 gathered in my gut to hoorah zero gravity. I clutched the barf bag and peered over my seatmate at the increasing size of objects on the ground.

Wow, said the kid. That was cool.

It’s okay to stop talking near the end of a flight, ace.

He scowled at me, but obliged.

A shiver of familial dishonor tickled my spine. I reached to pat his thigh.

The pilot turned three-sixty plus degrees, dropping altitude at 500 feet per minute to accommodate the shorter runway of Frank Wiley Field.

My stomach rolled with the plane’s slope. I locked onto Eastern Montana’s pinto-colored welcome mat. Winter here came in shades of gray, charcoal and variations on dormant buff.

The plane leveled, whipping past the tundra at a hundred miles per hour. Tires bounced and chirped. Deceleration roared its protest. My heart roared with it. The pressure against my hipbone reminded me that Renée would be late. Walt and Ransom would escort their new matriarch into the wild frontier, while I was left standing beside my luggage, longing to hug my children and kiss my wife.

A fitting return to a home I no longer knew.

Chapter four

Stepping from the hatch, Montana’s Winter of ’96 gift-wrapped me in eternal pessimism. Tightened coat collar and bunched shoulders, I did my best to block the kid from the frigid welcome.

We teetered down the aircraft’s makeshift stairway, a channel of frozen air guiding the group of us toward the airport entrance.

Eleven in the morning. Already the small breeze forced my eyelids into slits. Perspiration from the close quarters on the airbus morphed into a frozen body glove. I’d hidden behind the glass bank of windows at the air terminal in Billings and a train of luggage carts during boarding. The cityscape on final approach had kept my attention off of the pilot’s dutiful weather report.

Grayson and I tramped along with the group toward the miniscule air terminal in traditional Montana form, anticipating its cozy warmth. We crowded into the terminal like cattle piling out of a loading chute.

Nine degrees, for the love of Pete! Walt the rancher spouted as we stepped inside. He stamped his feet and squeezed his quavering bride across her petite shoulders.

I smirked, placing imaginary bets on how long he could detain the tawny-haired dream in this frigid state. Fragments of residual guilt had frozen and shattered on the tarmac.

The crew made quick work of our baggage, rolling it off the tarmac and around our huddle toward the center of the small building. The rattle of the luggage cart prompted an image of my father’s dead body resting in a wooden box.

My charge, Grayson the kid, waved desperately as his impatient aunty drug him back into the cold. I bobbed my chin in the encouraging way of men, grabbed my suitcase and duffel from the