Wolf Season

by Wesley King

Genres: Horror; Traditional Mysteries; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

In the remote Montana wilderness, a prodigal son’s search for his missing father reunites him with the love of his life in a town marked by eerily unexplained murders, masterfully crafted by award-winning author Wesley King.

In the stark, remote beauty of rural Montana, Everett returns to his hometown after his father, the local sheriff, mysteriously disappears while investigating the murder of a teenage girl. Driven by duty and a deep-seated longing for Bernadine Armel, the girl’s older cousin and the woman he has loved since childhood, Everett plunges into untangling the twisted cases.

The Armel family is shrouded in mystery, the men long since killed in a horrific ‘accident,’ with rumors of more disappearing on their land. And as Everett delves deeper into the family’s past, he uncovers a sinister pattern of murders and hints of supernatural phenomena he can’t explain.

Torn between his quest for justice and his love for Bernadine, who may be implicated in the crimes, Everett faces moral dilemmas and danger at every turn. Wolf Season is a gripping debut that blends supernatural horror with detective fiction, exploring the search for truth in a world where nothing is as it seems.

Release date: October 20, 2026

Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Chapter One CHAPTER ONE
A CARCASS WELCOMED EVERETT Johnson home.

A jackrabbit, lying on the asphalt less than ten feet from the town sign. He could see the cotton-ball tail amid the blood.

Everett glanced at the sign itself as he passed, periwinkle blue, stippled with ochre rain shadows. Welcome to Killdeer. Population 3,371. He’d been gone for seven years, and the sign hadn’t changed. A neglectful works department, probably. Or maybe ten had died, and ten had been born, or maybe the place really hadn’t changed at all, and the chain-smoking Francis Lee Hayes was still alive next door with two packs of USA Golds and the morning’s admonition.

No. It had changed, of course: 3,370.

His father, Sheriff Dale Johnson, was missing.

Everett turned up the radio, and Merle Haggard played “The Bottle Let Me Down” to parallel streams of white pine and August oak and the first offshoots of birch from the Armels’ forest-crypt. Everett looked toward the blue-sky gap nestled between Bonne Hill and the Miner’s Barrow, two of the low-slung peaks that ringed the town of Killdeer and its golden wheatgrass plains.

Beyond those hills lay the region’s two sprawling, ancestral cattle ranches… the Armels with their vast 55,000 acres, and George Blackburn’s personal fiefdom with half that to its east.

She was there. Just over those hills.

Everett hadn’t been this close to Bernadine in a long time. He could almost smell the birch smoke and straw and earthy sweet sage. Taste the blackcurrant sweet Cassis Noir de Bourgogne.

He turned back to the road, pushing the thought away. He wasn’t home for that.

Where the hell was his father?

Nine days missing now. Five before Everett even heard the news—he’d been offshore in the Cook Inlet and got his mother’s texts only on the return to camp. Four more in a guilt-sweat daydream of a trip from helicopter to bus to plane to shiny Billings car rental, where a bleached blonde in a pantsuit had upgraded him to a truck because he “looked like a truck guy.”

Now here he was, in a fresh-off-the-line Tacoma, brewing in ammonia and lauryl sulfate and the sickly sweet lemon-shaped freshener swaying from the rearview mirror.

Everett caught a look at himself. Yeah. Truck guy. He should have shaved. Slept. His pale green eyes were hooded, his greasy chestnut hair falling in loose curls over his ears and the lace beadwork of scars where his forehead had once merged with a windshield in Prudhoe.

Thirty-five years old for another two months, but salt-wind eroded, lean and hard as a steel fence post, broken nose and broken fingers and a bunch of shitty tattoos. His mother would be horrified.

He was suddenly in Killdeer, the outer perimeter resembling that of most small towns in Montana: one-pump gas stations—Sam’s—and one-hoist mechanics—also Sam’s—bleeding into the deep-rooted bungalows of a Main Street with low roofs and long yards. Wheatgrass gave way to fescue lawns and plumes of claret ash. Listing burnt gray pavers sprung up beside the road.

Killdeer was organized, utilitarian, clean, but not the kind of town that hung flower baskets on the streetlights. In a region of mountains and crystalline lakes, it had no festivals, no markets, no cynical, quasi–Old West tourist aesthetic for Billings campers. They went to Whitefish for holidays. They came to Killdeer if they were lost.

It had once been a coal town, but the last mine had closed three decades ago, scraped to its limestone bones, its legacy still etched into soft pine siding and chimney mortar and the fingernails of old men. Everett had long ago realized that you could scratch any shiny surface in this town and find darkness.

He turned onto Coppice Lane and saw his childhood home: the louvered-shutter citadel where Sheriff Dale Johnson held court in the driveway between his Portuguese laurel and boxwood spheres. His blue F-250 was still parked there.

And why not? Nine days wasn’t that long. A million things could happen to a sheriff. Death was only one of them.

Everett parked in the shadow of his father’s truck. He knew at once that their neighbor, Francis Lee Hayes, was dead, her ash-peppered wicker loveseat gone from the porch next door. Population 3,370 after all.

There was movement across the road, and he saw Mrs. Phillips in her garden, smaller, sallower, the front lawn a hair less than meticulous, at least two full days over cutting. No sign of Mr. Phillips, who would never let the grass grow so long. Make that 3,369.

He scooped his duffel bag out of the backseat and started for the door. This was the last place he’d seen his father—standing on the porch seven years ago as Everett tore out of the driveway, hastily packed suitcase in the trunk, eyes burning. He’d paused, looked back one more time before he left. His father had been smiling.

Everett reached for the door even as it opened.

His mother froze on the threshold. She wore the years in crow’s feet and diluted collagen and recessed eyes, shoal-water blue like his baby brother’s, a new senior perm dyed copper red. She was clutching a green fabric grocery bag. Full. Clearly leaving, clearly unsure now.

“You came,” she said finally.

Everett enveloped her and felt seven long years in her frailty. In her sudden stiffening. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.”

She quickly drew away, studying him, regaining control. “You look like shit.”

“It was a long trip. I got here as soon as I could.”

Her reedy lips twitched—seven years, they said—as she looked past him. “He just said see you tonight,” she whispered. “What are we having for dinner?”

Everett hadn’t wanted to start there. But what else could they talk about? “Before work?”

“After lunch. He was going back into the station.” She blinked, raised the bag with a requisite all-cheek smile. “I’m sorry… it’s the CWL’s bake-a-thon. I’d skip it, of course, but we’re raising money for the search, and I should—”

“Go,” Everett said, stepping aside. “I should have called ahead.” The smell of home washed over him: pie crust, wood varnish from the buffet hutch, borax for the carpets, a chai vanilla candle making it all sickly sweet. “I’ll pop out for a bit.”

“Just make yourself comfortable—”

“No,” he said, louder than he’d intended. “I’ve got errands. When are you done?”

“A couple hours. I’ll have supper on for five thirty.”

“Sounds good.”

She stood there, unsure, then stepped past him, wider than necessary, seven years between them. His rental was blocking her car, and she just stood there, staring politely at this fresh inconvenience.

“I tried to get home sooner—” Everett said, climbing into his truck.

“I know.”

Everett just drove back down the road, one dreaded reunion over. It would be worse with Connor. Never mind Shannon. But he’d cross that bridge tomorrow—one indictment at a time.

He checked the dash. Two hours to burn in Killdeer. He knew what he wanted to do. Drive to that blue-sky gap, hop a fence, and run straight to her. Knew he couldn’t face that either.

Errands, he’d said. What was he going to do… buy fucking milk?

He went to get drunk.

The Pine Shack was as old as Killdeer itself, soot-steeped green clapboard, brown-brick skirt freckled with wads of gum, hand-painted sign over the door that hadn’t been legible since the ’80s. It was a good place to feel grim.

Everett parked on the street, wondering for a moment if he should go for a run instead. Maybe buy his mother some flowers, because, yeah, carnations should make up for everything.

He shuffled inside, feeling small-town stares burning a hole in his back. Probably Margaret Hynes in the Big Sky Boutique across the road, who had been trying to mentally firebomb the Pine Shack for as long as Everett could drink. He doubted she’d recognize him after all these years… not a lot of people would.

He’d always been tall, six-foot-two, but he’d grown broader in the shoulders and chest since he’d left. Combined with the unkempt beard and four-day-old attire, he looked like a large, surly vagrant. Which he supposed he was.

Squinting in the dim fluorescence, he picked his way to the closest barstool. He noticed an ancient woman at the sole slot machine, her pallid, wrinkled face pieced together like a drunkenly knit washcloth, hair just a wisp of cotton, and the blackest eyes he had ever seen.

It was like someone had propped a corpse up on the chair.

The woman was watching him intently, though he didn’t recognize her. Cold trickled down the back of his neck. There was something off about her. The way she was staring… it was like she’d been waiting for him. Everett forced a smile and sat down with his back to her.

He breathed in the familiar Marlboro air, Leather Paul’s brand, hard worn into the grain of the bar top. Everett hadn’t smoked in a few years now, but he’d started here, under Leather Paul’s tutelage.

He was about to shout for him when a new bartender wandered out. She was older than Everett, maybe late forties, her thick raven hair drawn back to reveal rough-cut, tawny cheekbones and a conspicuous waxy lighter burn below her right eye. Rugby-broad shoulders and thighs, with heavy breasts straining against her T-shirt. Everett pointedly met her eyes.

“Who are you?” she asked, all small-town, small-bar etiquette.

“A thirsty drifter.”

“You look familiar.”

“I lived here once,” he said. “Do my best to avoid it now.”

She grunted. “Fucked that up. Danny, by the way. What are you having?”

“Uh…”

Everett scanned the meager liquor shelf. He usually drank scotch these days, what little drinking he did, but there was only a long-empty bottle of Macallan that Leather Paul kept because he said it had been too expensive to throw away.

“You got any craft beer?”

Danny looked at him for a moment, then opened the mini fridge, pulled out a bottle of Miller Lite, and plunked it on the bar counter. “Someone crafted this one, I bet. Five bucks.”

“You guys take card yet?”

“Fuck no.”

Everett frowned and pawed through his wallet. “Let me check my truck—”

“You’re the sheriff’s son,” she said suddenly. “You were in some of the pictures.”

He forced a smile. “Yeah. I’ll go get—”

“That one’s on the house.” She looked at the door. “Tough year to be a cop. All that shit this summer. Now this.”

He took a deep swig. “What do you mean? The Blackburns causing trouble?”

“That’s a fucking given. What do you think? The murdered Armel girl.”

Every muscle in his body seized, squeezing the bottle so hard a knuckle popped. “Which Armel girl?”

“Orsie. The youngest one, I think. You know her?”

Everett felt the singe of bile in his throat. He remembered Orsie—just a little girl when he’d left. There had been seven women on that sprawling farmstead. The three sisters, Bonnie, Rosemarie, Ursula, all in their fifties and sixties. Bonnie’s two children: Nyana and Bernadine, both in their thirties now. And then Ursula’s surprise girls, the babies of the family: Mirult and Orsie. Years ago, a farming accident had killed both Bonnie’s and Rosemarie’s husbands, and Rosemarie’s young son. Now, to lose another child to a murder… the Armels had to be devastated.

And Bernadine. That was her beloved baby cousin. His heart ached for her.

“What happened?” he asked. “Did they find the killer?”

“They found her naked in the woods… shot in the back with her own rifle. End of June. And no. Everyone suspected the Hill Man, of course, but they couldn’t find any connection.”

The Hill Man was an infamous recluse who lived up on Bonne Hill and inevitably came under suspicion for half the crimes in Killdeer. As far as Everett knew, he’d never been charged for anything besides some off-season hunting.

“Fucking hell,” Everett whispered.

Why had no one told him about Orsie? His father going missing was one thing… but barely two months after a murder? No one had disappeared in Killdeer since that hiker, Dietrich Samuel, and that was seven years ago—a few weeks before Everett left. That case had eventually been cracked: some hunters had found pieces of Dietrich miles away from where he’d been last spotted—little gnawed pieces of flesh and bone. The police had blamed wolves.

Even if Everett’s father had met the same fate… who’d killed Orsie Armel?

“I’ll give you some space,” Danny said, eyeing him as she slipped into the back.

He needed to go see Bernadine after all. Offer condolences at least. Maybe offer to help. How though? He couldn’t bring back Orsie. The best he could do was bring back blood.

But Everett was here to find his father. What would Connor say if he brought up the Armel case? Probably Fuck off and Leave it to the station, if he knew his little brother.

He hadn’t spoken to Connor in seven years either.

He stewed for a while, drained his beer, then peeked into the back room, catching sight of Danny’s black boot on a coffee table.

“Can I get another beer, please?”

“What are you going to pay with, handies?” she called back. “One missing father gets you one beer.”

He sighed. “You’re a saint. I’ll go find an ATM.”

“Put him on my tab, Daniella, dear,” a voice rasped behind him.

Everett turned to find the old woman smiling at him from her slot machine, toothless, like a desiccated bullfrog. The abraded voice raised the hairs on his arms.

“You sure?” Danny asked as she came out.

“Absolutely. He’ll pay me back, right, lovie?”

Everett forced another smile. “With interest.”

“There must always be a cost,” the old woman agreed.

It was her eyes, he decided. Like two holes gouged into her head with a buck knife.

Danny set a beer down in front of him, lowering her voice. “Drink slow.”

He didn’t. He downed the beer until his lungs burned for air. Orsie Armel murdered. His father missing without a trace. A mother and little brother who despised him.

Yeah. Welcome home.