Endangered Species

Chapter 1

 

Heads Up

May 28:  Gilliam's Guidepost

Heart Butte, Montana

 

Two years after the meteorites came down . . .

​​

 

      DEATH ARRIVED IN A STYROFOAM COFFIN.

      A severed Tyrannosaurus Rex head sat in the oversized Styrofoam chest on a bed of dry ice. Ribbons of misty vapor swirled from the container like ghostly snakes. FedEx had just delivered the alarming package not five minutes ago.

     Bryan Gilliam circled the dining room table, his eyes riveted on the prehistoric head as he viewed the atrocity from different angles. The beast’s glassy marbled eyes, set beneath bony ridges, seemed to follow him as he moved. The powerful jaws made him shudder. The banana-shaped, serrated teeth reminded him of curved knives. Sticky rust-colored blood glistened in a metallic sheen where the head had been cleaved from the body.

     The detached head was horrific enough, but the spread of five mangled photographs spiked on the beast’s teeth almost made him lose his lunch.

     Five snapshots—one for each member of the Gilliam family.

     The familiar photos pegged on those wicked teeth froze Bryan’s soul.

     His eyes drifted to the pic of himself, leaning on his walking cane, posing in front of one of the barns on their ranch here on the southern edge of the Blackfeet Indian reservation. Another shot of wife Loretta with her hand in a bowl of popcorn during a Gilliam family movie night. A print of nine-year-old daughter Lianne holding her two most precious dolls from her earlier years—Lyle the stuffed lion and Patches, her Cabbage Patch doll. Pictures of his two teenage sons: Ethan, decked out in his baseball uniform and Paul playing guitar and singing into a microphone onstage at a high school dance.

     Bryan and Loretta had taken these photographs recently. They resided on the family photo album site, a highly secure private network braced by impenetrable firewall security and accessible only by family.

     Someone has breached our digital platform.

     He was furious. Also rattled. The invasion of privacy brought back old fears that had only just begun to dissipate.

     Over the past two years the Gilliams had found themselves obtaining a level of celebrity that attracted the kooks and crazies of the world. The stalker types who wanted to rub shoulders with luminaries, the desperate souls who wanted to grab a little fame of their own, outsiders who wanted to be on the inside. The national spotlight had shone on the Gilliam family, and the glare got to be too much. So they had circled the wagons and closed down communications with the outside world. Kept everything on their 1,285-acre homestead as best they could. They were not to talk to the press or share their cell phone numbers with anyone they didn’t know. All members of the Gilliam clan were aware of the situation and respected their need for privacy.

     Even his teenage boys, Paul and Ethan, with their frequent activity on social media, understood.

     But is it possible one of them slipped up?

     Well, oldest son, eighteen-year-old Paul, had recently been leveraging the Gilliam fame to promote his rock band, Moonrise. But the boy knew where to draw the line between personal and business when doing media events. No, Bryan really couldn’t see any reason why Paul or Ethan would put these particular pics out there for the world to see. Logical thinking held that someone had hacked into the Gilliam online scrapbook.

     He checked the sender label on the lid: Western Adventures, with a PO box. Missoula, Montana 59802.

     Western Adventures, my ass! he thought, flinging the Styrofoam lid to the floor.

     He shuddered as he perused Lianne’s photo. Whoever had done this had positioned his daughter’s photo so that a pair of T-Rex teeth punctured her neck. Likewise a jagged tooth pierced Ethan’s eye in his pic.

     Those placements have to be deliberate. Bryan felt a hot anger rise in his throat. Threats against him and Loretta were one thing, but going after his children was an abomination.

     Here we go again, he thought. Their lives had been under threat much of the time since that cursed meteorite struck their east pasture two years ago to the day. That immense charred extraterrestrial boulder hatched out those damned Dromaeosaurs and had altered their way of life forever.

     We’ve paid the ultimate price for being the first humans to come in contact with dinosaurs. 

     Bryan often reflected on how much different their lives would be if that meteorite hadn’t hit their property.

     But his thoughts were now focused on who might be behind this decapitation debacle. He cycled through possible perpetrators. The prime suspect was Leonard Sheridan, leader of the Animal Emancipation Faction (AEF), a powerful radical animal rights group known to be a domestic terrorist organization. Bryan and Loretta had recently brought a criminal lawsuit against Sheridan for his part in the complete destruction of Gilliam’s Guidepost two summers ago. The Gilliams had already won a settlement of ten million dollars from the organization in their civil suit. Now, at the urging of their attorney¾Atlee Pinnaker¾they were going after Sheridan personally. Sheridan was currently incarcerated at Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, but Bryan knew full well that inmates could still run their crime syndicates from their cells.

     Another prime possibility was Thomas “Hoops” Terrell, a ranch hand whom Bryan¾and private investigator Mike Mathews¾had tracked down and helped convict in last year’s kidnapping/murder of Indigenous women that involved the Blackfoot wife of one of Bryan’s longtime hired hands. Terrell was also serving time in Montana State Prison without bail awaiting his first trial date, which had been postponed twice since last August.

     A third suspect was Kelton Rendaya, disgraced equine veterinarian who was convicted of illegal animal trafficking last year. Bryan had worked with PI Mathews to locate Rendaya’s dinosaur habitats and lead authorities to the dino holding pens, sealing the conviction. Rendaya had been hit with just a slap-on-the-wrist fine and two years’ probation on multiple trafficking charges, but the FBI later nailed him for the murders of two North Dakota state troopers. He was also doing hard time at Montana State Prison and would definitely have an ax to grind with the Gilliams.

     There were also any number of AEF sympathizers who could have sent this ominous package. Many staunch animal rights activists sided with the AEF after the deadly shootout at Gilliam’s Guidepost where several AEF stormtrooper gunmen were killed. An outpouring of sympathy went to AEF even though they invaded Gilliam’s Guidepost, setting free the dinosaurs, murdering partygoers, nearly killing Bryan, and burning all buildings on the Gilliam ranch to the ground. The sympathetic response was due largely to the misdirected and erroneous notion that Bryan and family tortured and abused the dinosaurs at their government sponsored research sanctuary.

     Why are so many people influenced by misinformation and propaganda?

It was a question Bryan had grappled with for years, ever since he’d naively bought the patriotic line of bullshit the government had slung that resulted in him doing two tours of duty in Afghanistan.

     “Oh my god! What is this?”

     Bryan turned to see Loretta standing behind him. She gawked in disbelief, her face tense as her eyes scanned the gruesome display in the Styrofoam container.

     “It’s a housewarming gift from one of our deranged fans.”

     “Not funny, Bry,” she said, wrapping her arms around his waist from behind. “That is some serious shit, right there.”

     “Indeed it is,” he sighed, turning and pulling her close.

     Loretta took a step back and looked at him, worry tightening her face. “This is a police matter, hon. We've got to call this in right away.”

     “For sure,” he said, thinking. “But first I’m gonna give Mike Mathews a call. Mike’s more thorough than the police. He performed a miracle in finding Kanti last summer.”

     “He did, but you helped him a great deal.”

     “True. And I’ll do what I can to help him this time, Lor.” Bryan tilted his chin at the Styrofoam container with its bizarre cargo. “Mike and I will find whoever sent this. We make a great team.”

     Loretta stared at the impaled photos of their family. “There is a very implicit threat here, Bryan. I worry about you getting involved in this. I don’t want you playing detective again,” she said, referring to his assisting authorities with Kanti Lyttle’s abduction case last summer.

     Bryan kissed her on the cheek. “No worries, babe. Mathews will do the up-close work. I’ll just provide him the leads.”

     They stood there, arms around each other, eyes on the bloody spectacle sitting atop the dry ice. Long moments passed in silence.

     Finally Loretta said. “The kids can’t see this, dear.”

     He nodded. “I know. Help me lug this mess out to the barn.”

     “You don’t wanna pull the pictures and bury the head in the woods?”

     “No. It’s evidence. Like you said, it’s a police matter. And we shouldn’t touch the photos. There are probably fingerprints all over them.”

     “You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you, dear hubby of mine.”

     “It’s all elementary, my dear Watson.”

     Loretta gave him a weak smile, but it vanished quickly. “I’m scared, Bryan.”

     “Me, too, Lor. Me, too. But we'll get to the bottom of this.”