2 Years Ago (Wednesday, July 27, 2020) Lockwood, Montana, United States

Isaac watched through his scope at the mangy mountain cat, it’s belly was still breathing in desperate hurried gasps as it bled out.

Isaac waited. He wasn’t in a rush and he didn’t want the damn thing to get a bite in if he approached too soon. He kept his rifle on it until the breathing stopped. And then a minute more.

He pulled out his CB and radioed it in, “Got the animal. Looks like it was desperate. Tell Pa his chickens are safe.”

The voice on the other end was garbled but Isaac took it as an affirmation. He checked his rifle and approached. Poked it a couple of times with his barrel.

“Whatcha doing out here?”

He put his hand to his neck where underneath all the layers was a white feather.

As he headed back, the radio came alive.

“Isaac, better come back. Someone’s asking for you. Says he is FBI.”

Isaac made his way back to his father's and cleaned out the muddy spring dirt off as best as he could, hanging everything up neatly in the mudroom before walking in. His father had started keeping his place blazingly hot, the kerosene heater burning away. Said he was getting too old to tough it out.

“Hey Pa, I’m home.”

His father and another fellow came out. Black guy. Not from around here.

“Officer Wolf?”

“It’s Black Wolf. System never liked the two last names. Call me Isaac.”

“Special Agent Caleb Jackson, nice to meet you.” He held out a hand.

Isaac shook it and they went back to the kitchen. His pa poured then both some tea, but Isaac went and grabbed a beer.

“You’ve been acting lead down here for how long now?”

“Just about two years. Old captain slid off the road and died. They said they were going to send someone to take his place but never did.”

“I understand you put in a resignation letter quite a while ago. Why?”

“Mister, when people here leave a job, you don’t just go out and hire someone to replace them. It takes time.”

“Why you and not the other officer?”

“Other officer?”

The FBI agent rifled through his papers, “Peter… Peter..”

“Oh him. He didn’t want it. Dead drunk most of the time. Haven’t seen him in six months actually.”

“I see.”

“Where are you going?”

“East.”

“Care to be more specific?”

“Sure. Got a scholarship for law school at Columbia.” And then Isaac added, “New York City.”

The agent took another look at him and gave a low whistle. “You a smart one?”

“No. Affirmative action.” What Isaac always said when it came up. He took a swig of his beer. Blah. Skunky. He took another swig.

Special Agent Jackson looked like he was reassessing Isaac. It was a look that Isaac didn’t care much for.

“Officer Black Wolf, tell me about the killings.”

“We’ve had four around these parts.” And Isaac went through each of them. There was little rhyme or reason to the victims that he could see.

“So four killings, each raped brutally, each missing an organ and a different one each time?”

“That’s right.”

The agent pulled out another file from the bag by his chair. He opened it up.

“First killing is still unidentified. About 75 years old, East Asian woman of unknown descent. Missing her liver.”

“Second was identified.”

Isaac perked up, he hadn’t known that.

“32 year-old Arthur Jennings of Tallahassee, Florida. Disappeared about a month ago when he went out for groceries. Missing his lungs. Interestingly his wife said he was a heavy smoker and had quit when he found out he had metastatic lung cancer. He was going to die in the next year anyway.”

Isaac wondered how the wife felt about that. And then he thought he was stupid for even thinking about it, time was precious the more limited it was.

“Third, unidentified 10 year-old boy. Missing… he was drained of his blood.”

“And fourth, the young Miss Campbell. Missing most of her colon. She also had a disease, did you know that?”

“Nope. Cancer again?”

“Crohn’s disease. Mostly in her missing colon.”

Well damn thought Isaac.

The agent then pulled out another file. “And here are the other dead folks we have found around here.”

Isaac picked up the file and began to look through them. Most of them were unknown and varied as much in demographic. All were missing an organ and each time a different one. And the two others that were identified, both had had their diseased organs taken.

“So this killer…” Isaac started, and then amended his statement, “this serial killer, he likes to collect diseased organs. That is his MO?”

“That is his MO,” agreed the agent.

“Well besides being gross, what’s that go to do with us?”

In response, the agent put down a map of southeast Montana. With Xs surrounding just under half of Crow territory.

“So… it is a Crow?” Isaac sat back and breathed out slowly.

The agent smiled, “Sorry Ivy League. You are wrong.”

“Wait why?” Isaac looked at the mapping. A series of bodies surrounded the borders of the Crow Nation. Evenly spaced with a center directly in the middle of Crow land. It didn’t come to him.

“Would it help you if I said we found this one by just knowing the two around it?” The agent was pointing to an X in the old Blackfoot territory.

And then it came to him.

“Damn. They are just too regular.”

“Yep. Someone was a bit too clever. Who is going to drive exactly an even distance from the exact center of the Crow reservation? That boy you found, your report says the body was 200 yards? See, that is just about the closest one.”

“This is a setup?”

“Yeah. I think so. I went to the middle of this circle, right here, and there wasn’t much.”

Isaac sat back again to think.

“Hey Pa, I’m heading over to mom’s. She said you should come visit her.”

“I might. I just might.” His pa sounded tired. “Been thinking it might be time to get out of here. Move up to Billings with your mom or, hell, head somewhere else. Somewhere without ghosts.”

Isaac stopped packing up the truck and turned back to face his dad. He had never heard this from him, this defeat.

“Pa, I know it has been tough. Come on, hop in.”

His father had never been spontaneous. But Isaac coaxed him into the truck and they drove up taking to Lockwood and to his mother's.

She was outside gardening and didn’t even notice the truck as it pulled up. So she jumped when Isaac came over and grabbed the shovel out of her hand to help dig.

And then she was doubly surprised to see who was with him.

“Jim, what are you doing here?” Her voice was wondrous.

“Hi Sally, I think I should have come here a long time ago.” And he came over and gave her a hug.

Isaac kept shoveling giving them what privacy he could. So he pretended to not hear her yelling at him for being a stubborn fool and waiting so long. And then she slapped him once and then kissed him.

Isaac felt something warm in his heart.

That night he dreamt… the white bird had returned.

I’m a raven you idiot.

“But you are white.”

I’m an albino raven, okay? There are like six of us in the world. This is a big deal.

“Yeah.”

Don’t pull that laconic cowboy bullshit here. You aren’t as cool as you think you are. I used to be all mystical and shit with riddles and all that.

“And now?”

Now I have no idea what is happening. So figure it out. Bad stuff is going to happen if you don’t. The bird muttered, Had to get stuck with the idiot. Oh, he’s going to Columbia on a scholarship, he’ll be smart. Nope. Idiot.

“Shut up bird.”

No.

And then in his dream the white raven flew at him and rammed his beak right into his eye. He shot out of bed with a yell.

Looking around and getting his bearings, he lay back down, “Damn bird. Why can’t I have a sex dream like a normal person?”

The next morning Isaac and his father went back to pack up the old place.

“What you going to do with it?” The home was tiny and poorly built. Leaked hot air like nothing and was one good rain away from collapsing.

“Probably give it away to someone. Like how someone gave it to me.”

They packed up his fathers stuff in the truck, a whole person’s life in the back of an old Chevy Blazer.

They stood outside the house and Isaac said, “I’ll take it for a little while, before I go. Live on the res for a little while.”

Then they head back into Lockwood.

Isaac looked at the copy of the map that he had been provided. He was in his hunting gear, under a small triangular blind looking down his scope, ready.

“Let’s assume he is just going counterclockwise. If that is the case the next two bodies will be here and here.” Agent Jackson had pointed at two spots on the map. “I want to stake those out and see if we can catch the bastard. We will get some other officers with us and stake these out.”

Isaac shook his head no, “Good luck with that. Ain’t nobody going to bother. And Pete? Pete is a liability.”

“So what then?”

“Let’s go.”

And they had been too late to that site. A middle aged woman’s body lay there. Partially frozen but not all the way. The coyotes had found her and she was savaged.

Isaac had placed his hand over the agents hand when he had gone to call it in.

“She ain’t going anywhere. Let’s check the next site.”

They had gotten there and nothing. So Agent Jackson had decided to head back to call in the latest find.

But the feather on Isaac’s chest, where he had put it on a necklace, had begun to itch something fierce on their way here. And Isaac couldn’t quite think right. It was so irritating.

“I think I’ll stay. I gotta feeling.”

And so now he found himself under a little triangle of a tent which he used for hunting. He looked through his scope and waited and chewed on a Snickers.

Wake up! The raven screeched.

Isaac’s eyes shot open to see someone where he thought they should be. And they had someone else with them who was stumbling after them.

He got the scope up and he saw the first person stick the second up against a tree and start stripping the second out of their clothes. They held a sharp knife to the throat of a woman, someone who looked not a little bit like his mother.

His finger moved off the guard to the trigger.

And then the killer, for who else could it be, had to use his both hands to pull down a zipper. The knife wasn’t at her neck. Isaac breathed out and squeezed the trigger.

The splash of blood streaked the woman’s face. Isaac was up and standing, working the bolt action, and he fired another round into the body on the ground. And then another.

“You okay ma’am?”

She slid down the tree trunk crying.

“Who was it?”

“Do you really want to know? It isn’t pretty.”

Pa sat there and thought. “Yes, I think I do. He almost brought disaster on us. Who was he? Why did he do what he did?”

“He was one of those people who just show up here — about seven years ago. He would occasionally show up at the store in Fromberg or Joliet to buy supplies. Then he disappeared from sight a couple years back.”

“And?”

“Then a couple of months ago, he suddenly started showing up again. He was a changed man. Muttering to himself, prone to strange violent outbursts. The shopkeeper, an old vet, said he knew men like him, broken men.”

Isaac paused to take a sip of beer.

“He had two small trailers parked out in the middle of nowhere. The first one was in bad shape: ceiling leaking, rotting food…”

“The second trailer, it was bad. Real bad. There was blood and maggots and the stench.” Isaac paused and shuddered at the memory, downed his beer and went and grabbed another.

“We found most of what you’d call a body there. Made up of the pieces he had taken out of the others.”

Isaac took another gulp of beer. That was enough, when he and the FBI had gone into that trailer, well some images you don’t want to remember. Other images make you want to move away. Isaac was glad it was almost time to leave.

“And the rapes?” his father asked quietly

“Underneath his trailer we found some journals he kept. Started out as drawings, pastorals mostly. And then suddenly switched over to deranged stuff about strange places and evil spirits. And the rapes, well, he kept mentioning having to exchange life for death.”

“I see.” His father held out his hand and Isaac handed over the beer.

“Why the Crow? Why us?”

“Do you remember how I told you it was centered around the damn middle of the res? Well, we had gone there and it was just a field with a tree in. A grand old thing but just a tree. His journals had a drawing of that tree when they took that turn to the crazy.”

His father took another sip of beer and stared at the fireplace.

Isaac added, “I chopped down that tree.” He gestured to the fireplace, “you’ll have plenty of firewood.”

“So now you leave?”

“Yeah.”

“It’ll be different.”

“Yeah.”

“You earned that scholarship. Get away from this dead end.” His father looked at him. “This place isn’t really ours anymore, it is us living with ghosts.”

“I’ll be back to help.”

“They all say that.”