Chapter
74
The three of us had been up since three a.m. eastern. The flight, the lack of sleep, and the twelve-mile hike in the rain was catching up to us, but we needed to eat so we went to the chophouse across the street from our motel.
The food was good, and we ate ravenously. Sampson had talked to Willow, who was playing games on Jannie’s phone and was up way past her bedtime. She was staying at our house, so I texted Bree and Jannie to make sure they got her to bed soon.
“Thanks,” Sampson said. “She gets a little addicted to the phone.”
“Story of their generation,” Mahoney said, yawning.
“Oh,” Sampson said, looking at his cell phone. He turned it to show me a photograph of a stunning mountain scene with granite peaks reaching toward a sapphire sky. “Taken two days ago in the Bob Marshall Wilderness by our packer. His wife wants to know if we’re coming. We’re running out of time for this year. It’s almost the end of August.”
“It is beautiful,” I said, looking at the picture.
“Good for the soul.” Sampson sighed and put his phone down. In the hurly-burly of the events of the past weeks, I’d forgotten how much he wanted to go on that trip, how much he needed to go on that trip to finally let go of Billie.
The thought must have crossed Mahoney’s mind too. He chewed on the inside of his cheek and then said, “You know, John, as much as I value your contribution to this investigation—and yours, Alex—for the next week to ten days, it’s going to be a whole lot of hurry-up-and-wait for the lab reports, DNA, and fingerprints to come back and for the computers to be analyzed.”
Sampson’s brow furrowed. “What are you saying, Ned?”
“I’m saying you’re in Wyoming, for Christ’s sake, which is a lot closer to Montana than the District of Columbia. You’ve got a window of opportunity. Why don’t you rent a car, call your packer, and tell him you’ll be ready to go the day after tomorrow or the day after that?”
“We don’t have our gear with us,” I said.
“But it’s organized, correct?”
“Over-organized,” Sampson said. “We’ve been packed for two months or more. It’s all at Alex’s house in dry bags.”
“Have Bree express-ship them first thing tomorrow morning,” Mahoney said. “You’ll meet the gear wherever you’re going.”
“Bigfork, Montana,” Sampson said, grinning at me. “What do you say? It’s not the way we planned it, but when opportunity knocks, you’ve got to answer, right?”
The obsessive part of me wanted to come up with reasons we should stay close to the day-to-day grind of the investigation. But Mahoney was right. Unless the sheriff’s dragnet picked up the four survivors of the massacre or something dramatic was found at the ranch in the morning, there really was no reason for us to stay and work this end of things.
“Let’s do it,” I said and clapped Sampson on the shoulder. “We leave in the morning. Montana-bound.”
Chapter
75
Matthew Butler and his men had raced daylight and the cover of the thunderstorms that entire afternoon, rotating as they moved, one man resting while the other two carried the crude litter and the wounded Alison Purdy. The burglar was in and out of consciousness when they finally reached the clear-cut where Butler had hidden the old Land Cruiser, covered in tree limbs left behind by loggers.
It was past sunset, but Butler waited until almost full darkness before leaving the woods and moving to the slash pile. They laid Purdy to one side and pulled the limbs and branches off the rig until they had it freed.
Butler got the key from under the rear bumper, opened the door, and retrieved the medical kit while Vincente lowered the tailgate and dropped one of the back seats. They slid Purdy on the litter in with Big DD sitting beside her.
“Wait until we hit the deep forest up ahead and we’ll turn on the lights enough to get an IV in her,” Butler said and started the truck.
He held the night-vision monocular to his eye with his left hand and put the rig in low gear with his right. For the next fifteen minutes, the truck clawed and bounced across branches, stumps, and mounds of dirt until they reached a section of uncut trees.
Butler stopped and turned on the interior lights. “Go to work on her. I’ve got to make a call.”
He reached under the front seat, retrieved a satellite phone, and got out. He walked into darkness while it warmed up and then made his call.
There was none of the normal, calm, calculated intellect when M answered. “Where the hell have you been? What in the hell happened down there? The chatter we picked up says—”