Page 34 of Snow River

“Hi Buster.I’m so glad to meet you.I’m Lila and I have so many questions for you.”

“Oh yeah?An old guy like me?”

Buster had a jowly face and the thousand-yard stare of someone used to scanning the horizon.He seemed friendly enough, so Lila launched right in.

“I’ve been hoping to talk to someone who remembered the shootings that happened here back in the eighties.”

“Nineteen eighty-seven, you mean.December 15, 1987.”

A shiver ran through Lila’s body.Up until now, no one had ever said the exact date when it had happened.Everyone always said “the eighties.”Even that podcast had been uncertain of the dates.

“You were the pilot that day?”

Buster gestured for the beer bottle.She uncapped it and handed it to him.“I was scrambling for my firearm, but he was done by the time I got hold of it.Back in those days, we always carried weapons with us when we flew into the wilderness.Gotta be prepared for a crash.Three people died that day on the airstrip, and two more over the next week while that bastard hid from justice.”

“The killer was Paul Anthony Bowman, right?”According to the podcast, he’d signed a confession and gone to prison, where he had eventually died.

“Yeah, but we didn’t know who it was at first.”

“Really?What happened?”

“We had the whole town out looking for whoever did it.Some folks followed his tracks in the snow.I did overflights of this entire sector looking for smoke or a trail in the snow.Anything.Rough week.Only about forty people lived here at that time.Everyone was on edge that he might kill more folks.Siege mentality took over.It didn’t help that a snowstorm dropped two feet of snow the day after the shooting.No one could land, the roads were closed.The town was cut off.”

Lila could just imagine the fear of being trapped in a snowbound outpost with a killer on the run.

“How did you finally find him?And where?”

“We found him holed up at the abandoned train station, the one they used for copper during mining days.After all that, he surrendered without a fuss.Handed over his firearm.I heard the bullets matched.”

The train station.The same train station where someone had just written a warning in syrup?In shock, Lila listened to Buster’s flow of words, the easy pace of a natural storyteller.

“I was kinda surprised he just gave in like that, but ain’t no one gonna survive on their own in the winter, not even in a train station.He probably saw the writing on the wall.”

Lila wished she had a tape recorder with her, then remembered that she had her phone.“Would you mind if I taped this?”She flashed him her phone.“This is oral history.I’ve been trying to find information about the murders but it’s really hard to come by.”

“Yeah, it’s a funny thing in today’s age.You think everything’s available on the internet.But it’s only there if someone puts it there.There’s a natural churn that happens in a place like this.People get burnt out on the winters, so they drift away.New folks with a spirit of adventure come in.But they don’t know the stories from before.That’s why I always spent my flights learning everything I could.”

“You’re a hero,” Lila said sincerely.She tapped the record button on her voice app.“We need our stories.Even the bloody ones.”

“After the murder spree happened, people didn’t want to talk about it.Kind of a mass trauma situation.”

April pushed back her chair and rose to her feet.“I’m of no use to you, sorry Lila.I was doing my own thing when those murders happened.Building the lodge, mostly.See ya around, Buster.”

With her erect posture, she strode off.Buster leaned forward and whispered, “She was doing a lot more than working on that lodge, according to the rumors I’ve heard.”

Apparently Buster was a bit of a gossip.All the better.But she didn’t want to talk about April, who was still close to Charlie.“Did you know Paul Anthony Bowman?”

“Sure.Not well enough to predict that he’d snap like that.I flew him in when he first moved out here.He’d just gotten divorced.He was still ranting and raving about his ex-wife, but then he also talked about getting her to move out here with him.Seemed pretty confused about that.Maybe that was a red flag.Now, it would be.”

“Did he ever say why he shot those people?”

“Never did.There was no trial.He confessed, pled guilty, then had a heart attack before they even got him into prison.Took his motives to the grave.”

Lila almost said something about the grave not necessarily being the end of things, but stopped herself just in time.“I’ve heard about the three people who died at the airstrip, but who were the other victims?”

“He killed them when he was trying to stay out of sight.Joe Baker, that was one of his victims.Joe was skiing in the woods, checking his trapline, and nearly ran him over.They had a bare-knuckle battle right there in the forest.We found Joe with a knife in his gut.”

Another chill swept through her.A knife.The train station.The name Casey.Could all these things possibly be a coincidence?

---