“It’s their job to find bad guys, Connor,” Tony told me after I gave a detailed review of my condition. “LEOs train for that sort of thing. We sign up to take a beating. Or a bullet.” He sighed and shook his head. “It’s not your job to get yourself smacked around by psychos.”

It wasn’t the supportive lecture I’d hoped for. My chest still smoldered with shame. Each breath raked across my lungs and the swell of my chest felt like a knife in the vitals. Tony’s agreement with the law enforcement motto added fuel to the guilt-laden bonfire. 

I kept my trap shut and my hands on the wheel, face forward, taking the dressing down I deserved.

“You’re going to get yourself killed messing around with dangerous people. And another thing,” he went on, since I wasn’t talking. “If I have to tell Nansi that you got yourself killed up here in the mountains, on my vacation time no less, I will follow you through the veil of death just to knock you in the head.” 

I guffawed and immediately groaned at the multiple points of pain inflamed by laughter.

We pulled up next to the library. Since the Sheriff refused to help, we needed backstory. The sign on the glass door told us they were due to close at seven o’clock, giving us a half hour to learn something valuable. 

A hush settled over us when we stepped inside. 

I pulled up short, catching Tony’s sleeve with a hand. 

“Quiet,” I said, breaking out of my pout. 

“Too quiet,” Tony said in a pseudo whisper.

We both chuckled at our childish humor. I doubled over in the suffering. 

An irritated woman of Nordic ancestry wearing a calico dress appeared from behind the checkout counter to scold us. If they had a “keep your mouth shut” sign on the wall, it would include her forward lean and pronounced scowl.

My neck swiveled to scan the room. Not another soul. I shrugged and tried to appear as ignorant as a child. Not hard to do for a guy who was just snuck up on, whacked on the head, choked out, left in the street to freeze to death, who insisted on chasing the specter who did it.

“No more jokes for me,” I whispered. 

She scowled harder, if that was possible. Her brow furrowed deeper, her lips pursed to a point so sharp they disappeared, and her slope became that of a specter, unrestrained by gravity. 

I held her angry glare for a moment, just to see if she’d topple over. The posture was immediately followed by a military about face with stomping motion back to whence she came. 

Tony rolled his eyes toward me, facial muscles drawn in mock fright. The expression accentuated those thick, dark eyebrows and the creative swoop of his broad mustache into slapstick. “Friendly,” he mouthed.

I huffed to contain an actual laugh. “Stop joking me,” I commanded. “Let’s find the newspaper archives.” 

He punched my arm lightly and leaned so close that his damned Pancho Villa mustache tickled my ear when he said, “It’s still a quiet zone.”

“Oh, now you’re the lie-berry police?” I whispered back.

A rack of magazines also housed dowel rods draped in newspapers. I headed toward them while Tony went for the multi-drawer card catalog that sat against the back wall. 

Newspapers from five major cities included a ten-pager that covered Eureka and its nearby neighbors. The Wall Street Journal held nothing of interest, so I skipped over that one. A quick glance at Kalispell, Missoula, Helena and Billings headlines offered nothing useful either. 

I pulled the Eureka paper, The Tobacco Valley News, and scanned the pages. No print anywhere on a lost child found next to her deceased father. Disturbing at best. A few words to honor Thanksgiving included mention of minimum coverage by the local Sheriff’s office. They might as well announce open doors to the criminal element.

Libby’s Western News covered the story of a dead man from Eureka who had been searching for his lost little girl on page two. Local law enforcement suspected a custody dispute had started the whole thing but were clear that the death was unrelated to the child’s disappearance.

My fingers clenched, digging into the edges of the newspaper with crushing pressure. The delicate paper crackled in my tightening grip.

“Sir!” Our nemesis the librarian materialized from the ether and extracted the paper from my fingers.

“My apologies,” I said, feigning shame by dropping my gaze to her skirt hem.

“These items are public property.” She said this as if she didn’t know the Sheriff and local police were downsizing for the holiday. “And this is a quiet zone.”

I glanced up. Her pursed lips and clouded brow held no sign of humor.

“Sorry, again, miss—”

“Helga?” Tony said from right beside me. Appearances from the mist were becoming a motif in this baffling environment.

Our Little Viking Queen turned on him with the swiftness of a cornered cat. Uncertainty and a degree of recognition softened the lines slightly. “Tony?” 

“Wow!” said my friend. “I didn’t even recognize you with your hair up. When you told me you were a librarian I’d pictured a larger scale historic building. Maybe the Montana State Library in Helena. Fancy this,” he exclaimed. 

It always surprised me when I witnessed this side of my old friend. Tony the socialite.

“Oh my word!” Helga’s face transformed from malevolent gate keeper to angelic hostess in a twinkle. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize that adorable facial decoration.” The Keeper of the Valley Archives lit up like a votive Christmas candle. She actually reached out to brush a curl of his outrageous facial ornament with her palm. “Didn’t you adore the Artist in Resident Retreat?”  

“The best I’ve been,” he declared. “A venue for gods and the masterclass.” His grin matched hers for glow.

I toyed with the remaining newspapers while they chatted about the key Western artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bierstadt, Catlin, Moran, Remington and a couple of locals I’d never heard of. It went on for five eternal minutes before I grunted like a wild pig.

Tony cocked his head back to eyeball me.

“Oh.” He clutched the venerable Helga’s hand. “We actually came in to search the newspaper archives. Can you help with that?”

Helga afforded me an elitist glare, but gave Tony a sympathetic smile and said sure she could help. Turned out, her minor was in history.

My mind was on searching historical newspaper evidence for troubles in the valley that might unravel the mystery of Aidan’s murder. There had to be something about a logging company wanting Aidan’s property. Or an old feud about the Christmas Tree industry that he refused to engage.

The pile was high and deep. They had a small number of files on a Macintosh computer, but most were still on microfiche.

I let the two of them play around with the electronics. Helga the librarian knew the system, so she helped Tony while chatting about their adventures at the retreat.

A couple of articles covered altercations between landowners and loggers. Apparently, disputes of that sort weren’t as common as I thought. It might be that big money from the logging cartels suppressed those stories. I’d guess the locals coveted loggers’ money for harvesting rights to cut their trees down and took the win without complaint.

What surprised me more were the number of stories about people who went missing.

“Misty Starling disappeared without a trace. She was 16 and her parents fear she ran off with a vicar’s son to New York City.” One follow up mentioned a town father who hopped a train one day from the family farm in North Dakota and spent most of the 1920’s as a hobo traveling the country until he landed in Eureka, Montana and got it in his blood. Locals suspected that the girl had done the same, only in a different direction.

In 1972, I found a series of articles about the hullabaloo over a half-breed Indian boy who had disappeared from the abusive home of his uncle. The author must have gotten a burr under their saddle about the mistreatment of Native children, because the story ran for weeks. The uncle demanded the law take the matter seriously, citing racial bias. It stirred up the community and they began turning over rocks until it was discovered the obnoxious uncle had sold the boy to modern day slavers. It stopped a local ring of human trafficking and sent the man to prison. But the boy was never found.

The biggest news came from the accompanying photo. The kid looked eerily similar to a baby Stan Spiesz. 

Both Faye from the diner and Officer Ollie had mentioned Spiesz’s uncanny familiarity with the territory. Faye made it sound like a spiritual connection between a Native American and the land. Ollie, being Native himself, questioned the deputy’s proclaimed Eastern background based on his uncanny knowledge of local terrain. 

Their stories, combined with these articles, suggested a simpler explanation. If Spiesz lived in Eureka as a young child, disappeared, and then returned as an adult, he would know the area. 

But why join the Sheriff’s Department? And why didn’t he talk about his association with Eureka? It made sense to share that kind of thing when you’re looking for a job. 

Unless he had reason to keep the secret.

These ideas sparked like flint against my recent trauma. Graveled whisper in my ear. “Try this every night… Toyed with like a cruel kid’s doll baby… sell you like meat… I got away… by becoming badder than they could be.”

“Tony,” I said, interrupting his artistic recollections. “I think I found a conspiracy of a different sort.”

The two art hounds poked heads in on my research table. “How’s that?”

I showed them the photo of the child. “This Native kid disappears in the seventies and the local cops determine his uncle sold him to human traffickers.”

“That’s Deputy Spiesz!” Helga exclaimed.

“Are you sure?” Tony wondered aloud. “That’s a wild story.”

“I spent some time working an aging project for missing kids,” the Librarian Warrior said. “I’d bet money on it. That’s Stan Spiesz.”

“I believe you.” A cold shiver tickled my spine. “The crazy bastard who attacked me ranted on about retaliation for being sold like meat. This is about vengeance.”

“My God,” Helga whispered. The radiant joy that had captured her darkened to abject sorrow. “That poor boy.”

I nodded, lips pinched together at memories of the torment he’d doused upon me. “He was a poor boy once upon a time. Looks like the ordeal turned him into a sociopath. Possibly a killer. Now what do we do about it? Tell the Sheriff? He’s been a virtual brick wall since I started looking into Kayla’s disappearance.”

“Might not be the best idea,” Tony said, eyes narrowing with logic. “Could be an innocent answer. Let’s just talk to Spiesz.”

“I don’t know, partner. If he’s the guy that tortured me, he’s one disturbed individual. Could be the one killed Aidan Peale.”

“Maybe. But he’s law enforcement. I’d like to give him a chance to explain.”

Helga, Librarian Warrior, volunteered a skeptical frown. “No offense, but he seems a bit slow in the head for conspiracies.” 

“That’s very likely an act,” I countered. “He’s said and done some things that suggest high intelligence. And it doesn’t matter. We have to find out what we can and Spiesz is more likely to reveal something than the Sheriff. We have to risk his denials. Or attempts to steer things the wrong way.”

“Or that he might attack you.” Helga clutched at Tony’s sleeve. “It sounds like he’s become extremely dangerous.”

Tony gave her a comforting simper. “No worries, Helga. I do this sort of thing for a living. We’ll be fine.”

I hoped he believed what he said.