To Kill and Kill Again by John Coston

Author:John Coston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2016-08-30T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The Bear Hunter

The orb-shaped fragment that lay among the rounded rocks was the top of a human skull. It rested at the bottom of a slope in the crease of a parched creek bed. Come spring, the clear mountain waters would return, running downhill to the Clark Fork River in the valley below. But now, on this Monday afternoon in September, the man who tramped uphill through this rugged mountain terrain was on dry ground. He was a bear hunter slowly ascending a logging road along a ridge that led up to the meager beginnings of this drainage called Crystal Creek. His eyes were peeled to the ground. He was scanning for any telltale sign that he was still on the trail of a wounded black bear.

He was looking for tracks, or a blood drop, a broken branch, and at whatever fell within his tight-grid vision, when he spotted the distinct rounded object that wasn’t, he could tell, an ordinary, water-polished rock in the stream bed.

It was the Monday afternoon of September 9, 1985. Later that day, when sheriff’s deputies, led by Captain Weatherman, would climb to the shoulder of the ridge, to a spot that marked the nearly imperceptible headwater of this mountain creek, they would find most of the rest of the skeleton. It belonged to a young woman. It appeared that she had been dumped on the side of the slope at least a year ago and maybe longer.

One large leg bone, the femur, was found nearby, as were numerous bits and pieces of bone. There was evidence of a lot of dental work, and that encouraged Captain Weatherman. The skull of this latest victim showed two bullet holes. She had been shot once in the back of the head and once in the temple. Two .32-caliber slugs were found at the site.

A forensic examination of the skeleton would eventually tell Weatherman that this victim was smaller than Debbie Deer Creek. She was between twenty and twenty-two years old. Her height was probably five feet to five-foot-two. Her weight was estimated at approximately a hundred pounds. She had light brown hair and may have been of partial Asian descent. Forensic determinations suggested she may have been right handed, and she was definitely a smoker. Ballistics examination of the slugs were fairly conclusive. They were Winchester/Western Silver Tip bullets, which could have been fired from any of the following gun makes: Ceska, Walther, Llama, Star, Savage, or Astra.

But Weatherman didn’t have a weapon. All he had was another body of a murdered female. No clothing or personal items were found at the site. This woman had been shot, stripped, and left nude on the ground. Animals may have disturbed the body, and the force of water would have washed the rounded skull down the grade.

As the crow flies, this body was three miles southeast of the Bonner Dam, where Debbie Deer Creek had been found. What was more sobering to Weatherman was the relative proximity not only to Debbie Deer Creek, but also to Siobhan McGuinness and the Beavertail Hill Girl.

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