Devil's Fall: Doug Fletcher, #5

By Dean Hovey

Doug Fletcher's Thanksgiving vacation is interrupted by a phone call from his Texas U.S. Park Service superintendent. A Wyoming coroner determines that a climber's fall from Devils Tower isn't the accident it first appeared to be.

 

Doug is thrown into an investigation where he peels back the layers of rumors and lies provided by colorful Black Hills residents to find a murderer in a region where the deer hunting season is winding down and everyone has a gun in their pickup truck.  

 

Editorial Reviews for Doug Fletcher series

Praise for Stolen Past:

-Dean has become a master at weaving a good tales. A few times the pages flew by as I was trying to keep up with the suspense-nice!

-Great story line makes the book hard to put down. An easy read that's well researched and written.

 

Praise for Dead in the Water:

-This book kept me reading all day and night.

-Lots of tension…a real page turner. Highly recommended if you like crime, detective, murder, suspense-thriller novels.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: BWL Publishing Inc.
• Release date: May 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9780228613268

Book preview

Chapter One

Friday

Franklin (Chip) Stone was a second-generation well driller. With the drought sapping the water tables, he’d been working six days a week and had been forced to refer business to his competitors in Sundance and Spearfish. He’d inherited the drilling rig from his father, so his overhead was minimal. He’d worked hard, building on the reputation his father had established in the northeast corner of Wyoming. He drove a pickup with 250,000 miles on the odometer and lived modestly in a home near the golf course. His wife, Charlotte, was a part-time receptionist at the Hulett clinic, and his children attended the Hulett school. To anyone looking at his lifestyle, he was just another businessman eking out a living in a small town surrounded by ranches where it took more than twenty acres to feed one steer. For the most part, the ranchers were land rich but cash poor, most living on land they’d inherited from their parents.

Only Larry Hawes, Chip’s banker, knew he’d been making a healthy profit on the drilling business and had amassed a bank account and investments totaling over three million dollars. That allowed Chip some creature comforts and hobbies that he mostly kept hidden from the prying eyes of the local rumor mill. One of his hobbies was rock climbing. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, he and Robert (Beau) Masters loaded their climbing gear into Chip’s pickup and drove to Devils Tower, only twenty miles from his home.

They were free climbing the Belle Fourche Buttress, going over a bald rock with a crack wide enough for a handhold without using tie-offs and ropes. Chip was above Beau, using the maneuver they’d practiced on this same side of Devils Tower a dozen times between their more challenging vacation trips to places like Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks.

Beau looked around, then shouted to be heard above the whistling wind. Are you getting this on your GoPro?

Chip paused at the top of the traverse. He took the Hero8 camera off his climbing helmet and checked the LCD display. The view was spectacular, so he took a second to pan across the landscape from their 600-foot elevation above the base. There wasn’t another person or vehicle in sight. Meandering 1,200 feet below them, the nearly dry Belle Fourche River trickled through the dry prairie. In the distance were steep bluffs below mesas. The only colors visible were the rusty bluffs, the green tops of the Ponderosa pines, the brown prairie, and the dusty olive-green sagebrush. Yeah, I’m getting it all in living color.

A blue mass brushed past Beau, close enough to touch. With adrenaline pumping, he climbed down, gripping the stone crack with his fingers and jamming the toes of his boots against the rocky face. In a few seconds, he’d gone down the crack to a rocky outcropping below. Making an assessment of himself, he determined that his calloused hands were nearly raw from the quick descent. He peered down and saw a red and blue lump. The unmoving bright-colored mass on the ledge below him was Chip. The red was blood soaking through Chip’s blue climbing outfit. Beau looked around, but there was no one else near him on the rock face, nor was there anyone on the trail below.

Chapter Two

The November trip to visit my new in-laws in South Dakota had been sprung on me during our Texas wedding reception. I’d tried to be a good sport, agreeing to the first request made of me by Molly Rickowski, my new mother-in-law, but I’d been dreading it.

Thanksgiving had been a quiet family dinner with my in-laws. Al and Molly filled the day with stories about Jill’s childhood on their two-section ranch. Al was more subdued when he spoke about selling off nearly two square miles of land, keeping only a hobby ranch with the house, barn, and outbuildings.

In contrast, the day after Thanksgiving was an absolute zoo, sold to Jill and me as a mini-wedding reception. Al dragged me around their crowded house, introducing me to their neighbors. They were hard-working ranch people with weathered faces and calloused hands. Several of them had holstered pistols, a mix of old six-shooters and modern automatic pistols. Jill had suggested that I clip my Sig holster on my belt when we’d dressed, but I’d declined. I didn’t believe her when she told me that a pistol would be part of most men’s ensembles. I could see that I was underdressed, at least from a weapon standpoint.

I was a city kid, and they all knew it. Despite that, every one of them shook my hand, smiled, and congratulated me on being the one to finally catch Jill Rickowski. I overheard side conversations between the neighbors wondering why Jill had chosen a city guy when there were five eligible bachelors in the county. A couple of the women were pooh-poohing my lack of ranch credentials as I slipped past on my way to the coffee pot. One whispered that Jill was lucky to find someone tall and ruggedly handsome.

I’d been introduced to two of the eligible bachelors, who were in their seventies. Both wore holstered guns and carried soda pop cans to spit into as they chewed the wad of snuff tucked under their lips.

Al, the proud father and father-in-law, bragged about his daughter, the Park Service ranger, and his new son-in-law who could outshoot a Texas ranger. He asked me repeatedly to pull up the newspaper stories about shootouts I’d been involved in on the Port Aransas canal and Corpus Christi mall parking lot. I declined, but I could see Al getting more frustrated after each refusal. Jill intervened by pulling my smart phone out of my pocket, downloading two of the stories, and handing it to Al who quickly made the rounds of the room with it.

I was irritated but watched quietly as Jill and Al made a circuit, showing friends the wire service stories. I was struck by Jill’s resemblance to Al. They were both slender with similar facial features. I looked at Molly, who was always busy in the kitchen, pulling out baking pans of appetizers and making coffee. I saw the kindness in Molly’s face that softened Jill’s features. Molly was matronly, with dimples when she smiled—the same dimples I saw when Jill smiled.

After showing the stories on my phone, Jill pecked me on the cheek and slipped the phone into my hand. She leaned close and whispered, Humor him, Doug. He’s not used to hearing ‘no,’ and he’s very proud of you and your exploits.

I’m not used to hearing demands, nor am I interested in showing your neighbors pictures of the bloody mess at the shopping mall.

She countered, He’s the last father-in-law you’ll ever have.

I shut down my phone and pocketed it. I’m not proud of killing those kids.

"Those kids had machine pistols and could’ve killed you and your partner, not to mention the other dozen cops at the scene."

I bit my tongue and gave her a hug. If Al asks me to go out back and shoot bottles off the fence rail, I’m going to say no.

She smiled. Actually, I think I’ll suggest it! Before I could stop her, she slipped away and waded through the crowd to Al then said something in his ear.

I saw the smile creep across his face, then he looked at me and nodded toward the door. I was inclined to shake my head but knew I’d declined too many of his requests already. Shit.

Al spoke to a group of people, and several men eased toward the back door. Jill appeared at my side with a coy smile. Let’s go out back.

I feel like the dumb city kid who’s being suckered into something.

Jill hooked her arm around mine and tugged gently. C’mon, it’ll be okay. She smiled and her eyes sparkled, making the offer impossible to refuse.

We followed the men out the back door and around the corner of a metal pole building behind the house. There was a mound of dirt behind the barn with a row of silhouette targets lined up in front of the dirt pile. Al unlocked a cabinet mounted on the backside of the barn as the four male guests lined up at a wooden table facing the silhouettes.

I looked at Jill. Really? Your dad has a pistol range in his backyard?

Grab a pair of earmuffs. Al held out a pair of orange hearing protectors to me. He had another half dozen slung over his left arm. I balked, but Jill took two sets of them, handing one to me and putting the other around her neck. She took the rest and gave them to the other men, who each had a handgun on his belt.

They carry their guns openly? I whispered.

Jill nodded. South Dakota is an ‘open carry’ state. I see people in town shopping with guns on their belts all the time.

Really?

Al overheard our conversation as he carried several boxes of ammunition to the table. Doug, there are no mall shootings here. If someone pulled a gun out to rob a store in Spearfish or Sturgis, I doubt he’d make it out of the door alive. That’s a pretty big crime deterrent.

Al pulled a six-shot pistol out of his holster and handed it, butt-end first, to Jill. I know you prefer to shoot the 9mm but see if you can hit that right target with my .357 magnum.

Jill set the gun on the first table, pulled the earmuffs onto her head, and put on a pair of yellow-tinted safety glasses. She stepped up to the table that appeared to be about ten yards from the targets and picked up Al’s pistol. The guests all stepped aside and pulled up their hearing protectors. Jill rolled her shoulders, spread her feet shoulder-width apart, squared herself with the target, pulled back the hammer, took the gun with both hands and fired once. A hole appeared in the center of the silhouette’s chest.

I expected her to hand the gun back to Al, but instead, she raised it and fired five rapid shots, each tightly grouped in the center of the silhouette. When the gun was empty, she stepped away from the table, opened the cylinder, and handed it back to Al. The left side of his mouth was curled in a grin, the pride oozing from him when he turned to me and winked.

Jill looked smug.

I didn’t know you could shoot, I said loud enough to be heard with the hearing muffs on.

She pulled off her muffs. I guess the topic never came up.

Al nonchalantly ejected the empty cases and reloaded the cylinder from a box of shells on the table. Yance, why don’t you see if you can hit the paper with that plastic piece of crap you carry.

The youngest of the guests, the man who’d bought Rickowski ranch, pulled a Glock pistol out of his holster and took a firing stance behind the table. He aimed for the head of the silhouette Jill had fired at and put a pattern around it that looked like a grouping made by a shotgun. Most hit the black, but I knew that more than half wouldn’t have mortally wounded a bad guy. When the Glock’s slide locked open on the empty magazine, he glanced back at me, looking proud.

Tom. Your turn. Al said.

A grizzled man pulled a revolver out and sized up the second target. He took six, slow, methodical shots, and scattered them around the chest of the silhouette. As soon as Tom was done, Al took his reloaded pistol and fired six quick shots into the chest of the second silhouette. They were carefully aimed and grouped tightly.

Al looked at the fourth neighbor, who’d be introduced to me as Chester Watkins. Chet, you want to take a crack at the third target?

Chet, who appeared to be around seventy, was one of the bachelors the ladies thought Jill should have considered for marriage. He had a bow-legged gait that looked like he’d spent his life on a horse. Pulling a long-barreled, single-action revolver from his holster, he spat a stream of tobacco juice, then casually raised the gun one-handed, and fired off six shots, spreading them broadly around the target’s chest area.

Al held out his revolver to me. I knew that the challenge had been laid, but I really didn’t want to play.

Jill sensed my reluctance, took the gun from Al and stuck it into my hand. She lifted the left side of my earmuffs and leaned close. I’d like to see a smiley face, she said, referring to a note that had been in my file when she’d first considered hiring me. I’d ‘qualified’ on the St. Paul Police Department firing range just before my retirement, and I’d decided to be a smartass and had taken my shots, making a smiling face on the silhouette, much to the chagrin of the Rangemaster who’d ripped down the target, crumpled it up, and threw it into the wastebasket before any of the other shooters saw it.

I looked at Jill and mouthed, no.

She gave me a pleading look. Al cocked his head, trying to figure out what was going on. His buddies were watching. Chet spit a stream of tobacco juice and shook his head. I took that to mean he’d decided the city kid didn’t know how to shoot. The other five neighbor men, who hadn’t been carrying pistols, had gathered behind us, awaiting the embarrassing end of the city kid’s shooting attempt.

Jill took off her yellow shooting glasses and slid them over my eyes. I adjusted the glasses, took Al’s pistol, and walked to the table. I squared myself with the silhouette in an isosceles stance, took a deep breath, let half of it out, bent my knees, raised the pistol in two hands, and fired. Left eye. Right eye. Nose. Three-shot smile. Without looking at the crowd, I opened the cylinder and handed the pistol to Al.

Your S&W shoots about an inch to the left. I handed him the glasses and earmuffs. Chet spat another stream of tobacco juice, then smiled.

Al shook his head as he reloaded. He put the gun back into his holster. It’s too bad you don’t know how to ride.

Jill took my hand and pulled me toward the house. After we rounded the corner of the barn, out of sight of the men, she pulled me close and kissed me. You just became part of the family.

What?

You stood up to Daddy in Texas, and you just showed his friends you know how to handle a pistol. Those make you worthy.

Worthy of what?

Worthy of being my husband. She pulled me toward the back door. It’s too bad, you don’t know how to ride a horse.

I saw her dimples, and my heart melted again.

The women were lined up inside the kitchen, silently looking out the window facing the barn. Jill smiled at them when we walked in and nodded to her mother. I could see the tension ease and conversation restarted.

My cellphone vibrated, and I edged toward one of the bedrooms to answer it, hoping it would give me an excuse to hide from the return of Al and the male neighbors. I was surprised to see Matt Mattson’s name on the caller ID. Matt was my boss at the North Padre Island National Seashore. I assumed he was either calling to wish me a happy Thanksgiving or to see if I was surviving the first days of a week with my new in-laws. The men entered, all chattering, just as the phone connected.

Hi, Matt.

It sounds like you’re at a party.

Rickowskis invited the neighbors over for a mini-wedding reception, and the house is jammed with people.

I hate to interrupt that, but I got a call requesting your assistance.

I immediately felt guilty. I was way too happy about having an excuse to leave.

Who, what, when, and where?

"The superintendent at Devils Tower National Monument called headquarters looking for assistance with an investigation, and I got a call from Washington asking if you were available for a temporary assignment. It’s serendipity that you happen to be in the Black Hills.

The Crook County sheriff’s department responded to a climber’s fall at Devils Tower. The coroner pronounced the climber dead, and he transported the body to Spearfish, South Dakota. You’re at Rickowski’s ranch in Spearfish, right?

The ranch is outside of town, but yes, the mailing address is Spearfish. When did this guy fall?

They removed the body about three hours ago. It’s at a Spearfish mortuary.

Again, I felt guilty but seized the opportunity to escape from the party. I’ll grab my badge and gun. I’ll make apologies to the crowd and hop in my rental car.

Take Jill with you.

Why?

Doug, you’re a team. She’s a ranger and has been a part of your last several investigations. That and Jill called Mandy yesterday and said she was just about ready to pull her hair out after two days with her parents.

I shut down the phone and slipped through the room. Jill stood on the fringe of a group of women who were talking. I took her elbow and steered her away from the kitchen.

Matt Mattson just called. A climber died at Devils Tower, and the Park Service asked us to help with the investigation.

Us? As in you and me?

I nodded. I’ll grab my holster and our badges. You apologize to your mom and dad about ducking out of the party.

Jill looked around nervously, but I could see her eyes twinkle at the prospect of vacating the celebration. Daddy will be excited and proud. Mom’s going to be irritated.

What can I say? Duty calls. Grab our coats and meet me outside.

I was nearing the door, and Jill was apologizing. Al stepped away from the crowd and reached on top of the refrigerator. He pulled down a small automatic pistol in a leather holster and held it out to me.

I patted the government-issued Sig Sauer pistol clipped to my belt. I’ve got my service weapon.

Jill met us at the door and took the holster.

Al smiled. That’s Jill’s FNX. I bought it for her on her fourteenth birthday. It’s light, reliable, and the 9mm doesn’t kick much.

Jill wiped a thin layer of dust off the holster. You’ve kept my FNX on top of the refrigerator?

I’ve shot a couple skunks in the yard, Al said, smiling. The clip is loaded, but the chamber is empty.

I’d hate to get stopped with a second, uncased gun in the car, I said.

Jill can legally own a gun and can carry one concealed or open on her belt. Besides, Jill’s a ranger.

I looked at Jill, who struggled to get the holster clipped to her waistband.

Al opened the door. Go get ’em, rangers.

Jill pulled out the small FNX pistol as we walked to the car. She quickly