Hoodoo Mountain

By Martin James

Dave ‘Bad News’ Barnes is a deputy sheriff who has transferred from the busy atmosphere of Las Vegas to a tranquil town in northeast Washington. On an autumn morning he responds to a call of an animal mutilation near Hoodoo Mountain. Later he is informed by another deputy, who is Native American, that the killer may be a supernatural creature thought to be a little-known mythical creature. This may explain the area’s history of missing people, or it may be just a bedtime story.

Thus begins the tale of a deputy, the town’s occupants, and how they become involved over time as the nights become dark earlier and the months grow cold, and people and their pets begin going missing... again. As October moves into November and then December, the snow begins to cover up clues. As the mystery deepens, so does the body count.

Deputy Barnes keeps track of the citizenry and searches for clues, real and otherwise, that offer possible solutions as to what is happening to the people and pets in the city and the outlying areas.

A tough and energetic female deputy adds to the intrigue and suspense as she just might be the one person who can unravel and close this case – for good.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886933567

Martin James

Born in Seattle, Martin grew up in eastern Washington. After graduating high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Army for three years as a paratrooper. He joined the U.S. Marshals Service in 1985 and was stationed in the District of Nevada at Las Vegas for three years before transferring to the Eastern District of Washington at Spokane. He retired as the Judicial Security Inspector in 2015 after 30 years. During his career, he was the lead and arresting agent on a Top-15 case, was on the arrest team of four high profile Top-15 cases and made a major case arrest. He was assigned to many high threat trials, the 2002 Winter Olympics, and as personal security in 1999 to the Foreign Minister of Iran and in 2006 to the Foreign Minister of Afghanistan during the annual United Nations General Assembly.

Book preview

About the Author

Born in Seattle, Martin grew up in eastern Washington. After graduating high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Army for three years as a paratrooper. He joined the U.S. Marshals Service in 1985 and was stationed in the District of Nevada at Las Vegas for three years before transferring to the Eastern District of Washington at Spokane. He retired as the Judicial Security Inspector in 2015 after 30 years.

During his career, he was the lead and arresting agent on a Top-15 case, was on the arrest team of four high profile Top-15 cases and made a major case arrest. He was assigned to many high threat trials, the 2002 Winter Olympics, and as personal security in 1999 to the Foreign Minister of Iran and in 2006 to the Foreign Minister of Afghanistan during the annual United Nations General Assembly.

Dedication

My wife Linda who provided the support and suggestions that made

this story come together.

Copyright Information ©

Martin James 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

James, Martin

Hoodoo Mountain

ISBN 9798886933550 (Paperback)

ISBN 9798886933567 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023904311

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

20230712

Chapter 1

Welcome to Newport

Deputy Sheriff David ‘Bad News’ Barnes stepped outside through the opened glass paned front door of the sheriff’s office and into the morning sunlight of the first day of October. Dave was assigned as a uniformed day shift patrol officer for the Pend Oreille County Sheriff’s office in Newport Washington and was now in his second year there. He had a feeling as he walked out of the daily roll call meeting in the briefing room that it was going to be a good day. During the roll call briefing, it was relayed that nothing of note had happened overnight, no assaults, no Alzheimer patient had walked away unaccounted for, no one was a runaway and no thefts or burglaries, so yeah it was a good way to start the day.

Dave smiled as he breathed in the crisp fresh scent of the fir and pine trees surrounding the community as he continued to walk through the parking lot to his marked white sheriff’s SUV in the secured parking behind the sheriff’s office building. He opened the rear hatch door and stowed his gear bag and a small plastic cooler he kept bottled water in. After closing the hatch, he opened driver’s door and slid into the seat, buckled up, then leaned over to his right and set in place and adjusted his assigned laptop on to the center column post. Dave pushed the on button and the laptop illuminated with neon green lettering as the system came online. Dave typed in his PIN code, pushed the enter key and logged in to begin his shift.

David Barnes seemed like an odd fit initially to most of the people in Newport. Odd for this department and, for that matter, to most of the residents he had met here during his first year. He had transferred from what seemed like an equally unlikely agency, the Las Vegas Metro Police Department. He had gone from a big-time high-profile department to what some might call a little fish agency in comparison. He had left sunny tan hot temperatures nearly year-round and the exciting glitz of bright lights 24 hours a day in the action-soaked Las Vegas Metro area with a population of over 2 million to what some people might think of as a backwater area where there was six months of cold, snow and rain; well, that was how some people in Las Vegas saw things when Dave told his fellow officers that he was going to transfer there. They thought and told Dave he might just die of boredom there and that his pocketbook was going to die of shock as well. Dave would nod his head and try to explain the benefits of the environment there as he saw it, but he acknowledged that this type of move was something that most people couldn’t or wouldn’t comprehend no matter how much of a sales pitch Dave put on.

At the time of his transfer, he had been a police officer in Las Vegas for just over 3 years and they had been some truly awesome years. Everything a person in law enforcement could imagine happening in their career had happened to him already, some were multiple times events and that was virtually every month as he reflected on them. Then one morning Barnes looked out of his office window while sitting at his desk working a case on the Joint Terrorism Task Force. He saw the city spread out to infinity and he knew he had hit a wall, an invisible roadblock in his life. As the task force team later drove out to an apartment complex on a felony warrant, he did a quick evaluation in his mind of where he was at and what he wanted to be accomplishing in the next five to ten years.

The excitement of the non-stop action and lights at night in Sin City had slowly ebbed away. It had become simply his life, it had become something maybe worse, and it had become a routine. He still worked out each morning in the department’s weight room before going to work and looked forward to hearing the stories everyone had to tell from their last shift when he was in the locker room dressing out later, but that one morning he had felt listless and dissatisfied. That same night before he fell asleep in his two-room apartment he typed in his symptoms into the search engine on his personal laptop to see if he possibly had a medical condition he should be aware of. He wasn’t sure of the pronunciation of the word that seemed to identify his general air of malaise: Ennui. Well, that didn’t help, he thought, but it fit how he felt from the description.

That night he lay back on his queen-sized bed listening to late night radio personality Art Bell on his broadcast show ‘Coast to Coast AM’ on the local Las Vegas A.M. affiliate radio station. The lights were off in his apartment and he felt tranquil for the first time that day. No white noise from the street seeping in, no flashing lights, nobody yelling, no one complaining, just peace. Art came on at 10:00 P.M. and always had thought provoking agendas ranging from the paranormal to conspiracy theories to space aliens and time travel. Art’s show was broadcast from his home in Pahrump Nevada which was just over an hour to the west of Las Vegas. Dave couldn’t recall what the episode covered that night, or how long he listened before reaching over and turned off his clock radio, but he remembered thinking about how Sasquatch lived in Washington State and that’s where maybe he should be living too.

***

The next day, at the end of his shift in Las Vegas, and for weeks thereafter, he found himself doing a quick search of available job announcements on the L.E. Jobs internet webpage before he left the office. A few weeks later, he saw the announcement for a lateral transfer opening in the Pend Oreille S.O. in Newport, Washington. It sounded intriguing and he made a general inquiry phone call. At the end of the month, he had advised a Metro Sergeant of his intentions; took a deep breath and put in his notice that he was transferring. At the end of that summer, he found he was driving north for 3 long days in barren lunar landscapes to his new home with everything that he owned stuffed into the back of his Jeep Wrangler. He left out a small go bag with hygiene essentials on the front passenger seat and a couple of books to read at night to decompress in whatever hotel he ended up staying in, in whatever small city he had stopped in. He had two books to read, the hardback copy he owned of Chariots of the Gods by Von Daniken, which had black and white pictures of places he would like to see on his own some day; and the other book was a soft bound copy of The Spaceships of Ezekiel by Josef F. Blumrich. Blumrich was once a NASA engineer working in Huntsville, Alabama. This was the same government facility that employed aerospace engineer Wehrner von Braun, the German-American scientist who led the U.S. effort to develop the Saturn rocket technology that put men on the moon in the space race with the Soviet Union.

At the end of World War II, the U.S. put Operation Paperclip into effect to bring von Braun and over 1,200 leading scientists from Germany to the U.S. to assist and lead in the space program among other causes. Von Braun had developed the V-2 rocket in Germany that devastated parts of London and Blumrich worked with von Braun for a time in Huntsville. Dave found some of the presentations in both books to be interesting and thought provoking, but nothing more.

Initially, when Dave had informed his colleagues he was transferring up to Washington, they just assumed he had meant D.C., as in Washington D.C. They thought he was nuts until he explained it was Washington State, except that there everyone just calls it Washington. He had found out two things right away after arriving in Newport. Number one, little old Newport is the big city in the area and number two, as you travel eastbound in Newport and go across State Street, you were actually in the sliver of Idaho that was on the west side of the Pend Oreille River and now you were in the larger portion of Oldtown Idaho. For the Pend Oreille Sheriff’s office, that was only important if a person had committed a crime or was arrested there because Oldtown’s closest law enforcement agency is not even in that sliver of Idaho, it’s just across State Street in Newport-Washington.

If you drive east across the Thompson Memorial Bridge, the only bridge there is in the area, into Idaho proper and head east on State Route 2 you come to the city of Priest River, about 7 miles further away. As a professional courtesy the Pend Oreille Sheriff’s office in Newport handles virtually all of the calls for law enforcement assistance in the Oldtown area in the west side sliver of Idaho, especially if that call is south of Newport.

If you were an Idaho citizen residing south of Oldtown and waiting on a responding call from the PRPD, it could be an hour, and even longer in the winter. There’s only one way into Washington from Idaho if you live on the east side of the Pend Oreille River and that’s by driving, riding a bike or walking across the aforementioned Thompson Memorial Bridge. When you travel west across the bridge from Idaho proper, the third street that you come to is State Street, the street that once again actually divides Idaho from Washington. Newport has a larger population, around 2,000, compared to Oldtown at just over 200 people, according to the 2010 census that Dave had looked at before moving. Most people in Newport consider Oldtown to be a suburb of their city and each city has their share of fast-food restaurants and civic spirit. The people that live in the Oldtown section across the Pend Oreille River in Idaho proper live mostly along the river where they mind their own business and enjoying being left alone with nature.

***

Barnes advised dispatch on the hand mic that he was in service as he pulled out of the sheriff’s parking lot and began the day shift in a city where he thought he just might live for the rest of his life. People were generally friendly here; they waved at him while he was on patrol and he would smile and wave back. People were cordial here and conversed with you, which was kind of nice, Barnes reflected on. There hadn’t been one homicide in the area in the time that Dave had worked here, no foot pursuits or car chases, no drug deals where a firefight ensued and no one swearing at you from behind your back.

There were no trips every few days to the hospital to get an arrestee repaired before booking them into the jail and no time spent after work filling out other reports like chain of custody reports on seized property like drugs and paraphernalia, knives, pistols and other stuff that could make a person’s head spin. Life was good for him here he had to admit. He had a nice place to live, all the amenities he wanted were here and he even had a relationship starting up with a woman who liked the fact he was a deputy. Yes, life was good here. David Barnes smiled, life was good and he could almost picture how nothing bad could ever happen here.

It starts getting cold in this area, usually in October as winter approaches. Frost comes in the evenings and the leaves on the trees turn brilliant shades of burning reds, golden yellow ochers and sienna browns as the air gets heavy with moisture for winter snow. The Pend Oreille River is a deep and wide slate green river with a powerful current and in the late autumn months you don’t see too many people out in their boats fishing. Dave, out of curiosity, had looked up the meaning of the name Pend Oreille one day. It’s a French word and means hangs from ears. Weird, thought Dave as he read on.

The early voyageurs used it to describe the Kalispel Tribe members in the area who wore shell or bone earrings that dangled from their ears, so that is what the trappers called the Natives, hangs from ears. Most of the time there is snow on the ground by Halloween or shortly thereafter. The snowfalls ease their way down from the white peaked surrounding mountains and eventually cover up almost everything in sight under a deep layer of snow and in December everyone has a white Christmas. Maybe not the white Christmas that Bing Crosby or other crooners like Nat King Cole would sing about on the radio or that you see on TV holiday specials, but that’s because the continuing recession has hurt everyone here especially hard. From the logging industry to all the local area businesses, you name it; everyone has felt the economic pinch.

A lot of the people suffer in silence as do some people that you never see or hear from. There aren’t as many of the social services here like you see in the big cities like Spokane or Coeur d’Alene, up here you tend to rely on each other or you suffer. The Farmer’s Almanac had predicted this to be a heavy snow year. The snow covers up a lot of things, things you do see—and some things you don’t—until the spring thaw.

Chapter 2

October

David ‘Bad News’ Barnes enjoyed being a deputy on the Pend Oreille County Sheriff’s Department in Newport Washington. He had considered it a fresh start and he felt rejuvenated. The one thing that Dave hadn’t shared with anyone, so far, was the story of the nickname that had traveled with him from his Metro Police Department days in Las Vegas, the nickname of Bad News. It just sounded, well, like bad news. His colleagues were aware that he had come on as a lateral transfer from the L.V.M. P.D. and that was about all that most of them knew. Dave was a friendly enough guy with an engaging smile, knowledgeable about the law and he seemed like an ideal fit within the department. Dave had a surfer’s good looks, he stood around six feet tall with sandy cropped blonde hair and steely blue eyes, was physically fit and could tell stories that could light up any room with laughter or diffuse a hostile situation into one where it became simply an arrest without incident.

Over time, the other deputies had learned from Dave that he had come here because, as he had said, he had decided he had wanted to live in the pristine beauty the area afforded. He wanted to go kayaking, hike in the mountains, go fishing and see the wildlife. His fellow deputies accepted this and there was nothing else to talk about in regards to Dave’s decision in transferring up to scenic Newport.

On this crisp clear first day of October, Deputy Barnes had been driving slowly north on Union Avenue in his marked white sheriff’s SUV, when radio squelch broke the silence of his blue-sky morning. The dispatcher called out his assigned deputy number over the air. Barnes reached down and grabbed the hand mic without taking his eyes off the road as he drove and responded with his call sign number. The incoming call was itself not all that unusual as Barnes had learned over the past year plus; a call had come in requesting assistance south of Oldtown Idaho.

The call was from a residence down on Hoo Doo Loop Road on a reported animal mutilation and that in itself was unusual. dispatch gave the residential address and a point of contact and then forwarded a copy of the call to him that showed up on the SUV monitor screen a moment later. Barnes responded with his call sign and Copy. He took a right over to State Street and then headed south as it becomes Highway 41. Dave could remember watching police TV shows when he was a kid and how the responding officer, if he was working alone, always had to park the vehicle to write down all the pertinent information on his notepad including the time of the call, the address and the name of the point of contact on the call.

On Adam-12, the show that hooked him on being a police officer, the dispatcher always started with the 10 series call in progress followed by the location or see the man with whatever haywire antic was going on.

Technology now enabled an officer to respond immediately as Dave looked at the name and address of Will Richardson on the monitor, but not in the manner of a request for emergency assistance. Instead, Dave drove the speed limit and didn’t activate his lights or siren. Barnes was familiar with the area as he drove and after a time, he took a left on to Old Priest River Road. After a minute, Dave then proceeded to take a right onto Hoo Doo Loop Road and continued southbound. As he drove, he again noticed on the screen that the point of contact was named Will Richardson, which was followed by the resident address. Barnes looked up and saw the silhouette of Hoodoo Mountain standing like a dark and foreboding sentinel to the east.

Barnes hadn’t responded to a call like this before in his time here, an animal mutilation, but he knew there were plenty of cougars in the area and a few wolf packs. When you toss in a black bear, the random grizzly or coyotes or some of the other hungry animals out there, well, if you don’t keep track of your livestock or pets something is bound to make a meal out of the easy to reach animals. At least, this shouldn’t be one of those crazy calls where you hear about a guy talking on a TV show about how space aliens had abducted him and his wife for science experiments or mutilated their cows like you see on that Ancient Aliens TV show, Dave smiled. That show always had someone being interviewed on an episode it seemed, someone like old Farmer Bob from someplace like Morningwood Wyoming who claimed a UFO shaped like a saucer had come and landed late one night on his property as he pointed over to a patch of land.

It landed right over there, Farmer Bob would say as he walked over to a circular spot of barren grass and with a sad face tell the viewer how "These small gray space alien fellas with black almond shaped eyes had come out of their saucer shaped ship, walked right down the gangplank and siphoned gas right out of my combine right over there," (Farmer Bob points with a meaty dirty finger at the combine sitting silently) and then they tipped over a cow. Damnedest thing. Then one of them little buggers shot my cow with some kinda ray gun and it turned it inside out, why? Cause they’re just damn rotten little buggers, that’s why!

They should make that stuff into a category on a game show Dave laughed to himself as he drove.

Dave could see it right then, there was Alex Trebek from Jeopardy on the TV screen. He was holding a card and saying at the beginning of the show, Farmer Bob, you have been selected to open the board. Go ahead.

Thank ya, Alex, says Farmer Bob, wearing his finest bib overalls. I’d like to start with Space Alien Animal Mutilations for $100.00 please. Farmer Bob nods his head with a self-assured ‘I got this’ smile because he has firsthand experience that he believes makes him a virtual ringer.

Alex said, Of course you would, Farmer Bob, and remember your answer must be in the form of a question. The answer is, ‘It happened on 9 September 1967.’

Farmer Bob buzzes in: Umm, what are space aliens first begin monitoring methane production by cows on Earth. Farmer Bob has a self-assured smug smile on his face.

Alex: Um, no Farmer Bob, I’m sorry that is incorrect…anyone else?

Bzzzzz.

Alex: Giorgio, you’ve signed in, go ahead.

Giorgio: What is finding a more efficient way to manage electrons in a battery by using carbon nanotubes?

Alex: No, I’m sorry Giorgio; that is also incorrect. Erich, any guess?

Erich: Umm, what is when Erich von Däniken was wrongly put in jail for tax fraud?

Alex: No Erich, I’m sorry. The correct answer is ‘What was the 1st successful test flight of a Saturn V rocket?’ Okay… …and then chaos ensues as Farmer Bob, Giorgio and Erich start yelling and throwing chairs at each other on the set while Alex takes cover and screams. Barnes shook his head and laughed out loud as the SUV tires continued to hum along on the asphalt.

The turn off the highway to the residence came up on Dave’s left. Barnes slowed and turned the SUV on to the graded dirt road. The sheriff vehicle rumbled over the long forgotten once painted yellow metal cattle guard and maneuvered slowly up the muddy looking roadway and into the dark forest. Here the dirt road became pitted and Dave angled the SUV around the water filled pots and ruts.

Not much actually grew on the forest floor here, Barnes had noticed because little sunlight ever made its way through the canopy of dense tree limbs high overhead. The SUV continued to roll and pitch as Dave negotiated the slowly climbing roadway and soon a small clearing appeared and with it off to the southeast stood a slowly deteriorating once Bluebonnet Blue painted single story rancher home that now had a sun faded appearance. Barnes called out to dispatch from the SUV on the handset mike on his left shoulder epaulet that he would be out of service temporarily to take a report at the residence as he made a turn in the small grassy cul-de-sac.

Barnes parked the white SUV in the pockmarked drive that abruptly became the grassy front yard. Dave looked around for his sheriff’s baseball cap, thought better about putting it over his somewhat thinning sandy blonde hair, and stepped out of his vehicle. In the forested areas, the temperature was always a good five degrees colder and today it felt even cooler, thought Dave. He shut the driver’s door behind him and walked toward the front door of the home. The door opened and a man Dave’s own size walked out. Will Richardson was wearing a blue and black checkered Pendleton shirt and blue jeans.

Dave noticed the man wore black roper boots and that they were pretty worn, the sign of a working man. The man tugged a green John Deere hat down onto his head as he walked over and said Morning Sheriff, Will Richardson. The man said this with a firm jutted jaw that had two days’ worth of permanent stubble as he stuck out his right hand for Dave to shake. Dave noticed a firm shake and replied, Nice to meet ya Will. Dave Barnes, I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances. What have ya got going on here?

Will nodded his head and said, I’ll show ya. Follow me and we’ll walk on up to the spot.

Without any further conversation, Will had already turned and began walking toward the north side of his home. Barnes appreciated that the man was a no nonsense let’s get to business guy. As they walked toward the back of the house, Barnes noticed a good sized tan colored dog peering out of the living room window at them. It was hunched up over the couch so that all Dave could see were its fore paws and head. It didn’t bark or put its paws up on the glass, it just peered at them, almost like it was thinking it was nice knowing ya, thought Barnes.

A big old dog like that out here in the country staying in the house? Dave wondered why. You’d think that dog would be out running around all day chasing squirrels and whatever else he could smell. It musta got in a bit a trouble with Will here or have a bit of the injury bug, thought Dave. The dog just watched the two men walk away, the dog with its mouth closed shut, unblinking marble black eyes. Dave was pretty sure it was a yellow Labrador but didn’t ask since he wasn’t really up on all the dog breeds.

What’s your dog’s name? Barnes asked as they hiked along at a good pace.

That one in the house there is Buddha. He’s a good old boy. We’ve had him for over eight years now. Will didn’t offer any more than that as they continued walking.

They walked around the corner of the house and into the backyard area, which looked as barren as the front yard. Almost as an afterthought Will added, He’s been inside since the first frost hit at the end of last week, but I wasn’t too sure why. I think I know now though; you’ll see. I thought originally maybe he might be getting some dog arthritis, happens, big dogs only live into their mid-teens. Up here… Will stopped talking even as he kept trudging along and Dave respected the fact the man had probably just lost a different dog, a family member.

They had walked through the backyard which Barnes saw was empty grass and about the same size as the front yard. The grass appeared to have never been mowed and just quit growing when it got a few inches long. There was no picnic table with a couple of benches, no barbeque rusting outside, no toys, nothing. Maybe it was lack of sunlight that gave the place a sickly feel, Dave thought, maybe the type of grass, but the deer probably enjoyed stopping off here, Barnes thought as they continued to walk past what Richards had just pointed out and called his chicken shack. It stood awkwardly leaning up against a couple of pine trees at the edge of the lawn and was nothing more than a small dilapidated woodshed coup with a couple of off kilter screened windows and some hay or straw strewn out into the lawn, Dave wasn’t sure, and there were no chickens to be seen.

It was a handmade makeshift shack that appeared to be sided with rough cut faded pine that had aged gray after it had been hammered together in probably less than an hour Dave calculated. The roof looked like nothing but brown dead pine needles that covered all but a few exposed portions of the rusting corrugated sheet of rusted tin roof. The actual door leading in, yes there was a door Dave saw, was barely connected somehow and hung open far enough that Dave envisioned every critter in the area had come in for a free chicken dinner in the past or might be nesting in there right now, or would be, but Will had walked on past it now and continued on a path that led up further into the trees.

How does Will ever even find anything out here? Barnes wondered.

How much further, Will? Barnes called out as they continued walking off toward the tree line. He didn’t tell dispatch he would be off the air for longer than 15 minutes and that would be a violation of protocol, grimaced Dave as he walked along behind Will. dispatch might even send another unit out just to make sure Dave hadn’t gotten in over his head. Dave was thinking about this very thing and wondering if he was even in radio range here when Will replied.

Not much, said Will. We got a big fire pit just past the tree line there, bit of an open glade back there. Us and some families and friends get together a few times a year for a potluck here…bonfire, have some laughs under the stars. Good times. You ever even been to a potluck deputy, you know, living in Las Vegas?

Oh yeah, said Barnes. I worked there, but I didn’t grow up there. My mom grew up in Montana; I spent time every summer there, like it or not. I ended up missing the four seasons down in Las Vegas, part of why I wanted to get back up here.

That’s good to hear, Sheriff. People talk ya know, sometimes they just flat out make up stuff, maybe even ’bout you to fill in what they think sounds right, said Will.

It was a bit hard to hear exactly what Will was saying as all Barnes could see was the backside of Will as he continued to walk in front in front of Dave.

"Wow, well that’s good to know. I guess it’s just human nature that when people don’t have any answers to their questions, they just fill in the blanks with what sounds about right. So are the