Dead Silver

55

The woman was Darcy, and the copter was able to land and get her on board. The immediate report was that she was cold, shaken, and scratched up, but otherwise unharmed.

The cops at the courthouse whooped and cheered and everybody exchanged high fives. Madbird got a big hug from Faith, and even Gary Varna and I gripped each other around the shoulders for a quick, awkward embrace.

They estimated that it would take another forty minutes or so to fly Darcy to the Helena airport and drive her here to the courthouse. Madbird called Hannah to tell her the news, then walked outside again. I went with him, assuming we were going to wait out front for Darcy to arrive, but he strode on to his parked van.

He went into the gear he carried in the back and got out a favorite Puma hunting knife and a whetstone. Then he sat inside the open rear doors and honed the knife, drawing the blade carefully across the stone in even, precisely angled strokes. He kept its edge like a straight razor anyway. After this attention, it would literally split hairs.

He paid no attention to me and didn't speak a word. I decided to leave him alone.

Madbird finished the task to his satisfaction, set the knife aside, and dug out a pair of insulated hunting boots. He laced those on and was rummaging around through his other stuff when the sheriff's cruiser carrying Darcy pulled into the parking lot.

She jumped out of the car, rushed to Madbird, and clung to him, sobbing, face buried in his chest.

"Okay, baby girl, okay," he muttered, patting her back gruffly. "Hannah's on her way here. She's bringing some burgers, you must be starving."

The deputies gently pried her loose from him, to take her inside and continue debriefing her. This time Madbird went with them. I stayed out of the way again and pieced together information as it was filtered to me.

The upshot was that while Lon Jessup had covered his bases with extraordinary cunning, he hadn't counted on the savvy and courage of a Blackfeet girl who'd grown up on the wild northern rez.

Early this morning, before dawn-Darcy remembered glimpsing her bedside clock reading 5:47-she had awakened to find a man beside her bed, holding a gun to her face.

When the police showed her a photo of Lon Jessup, she identified him positively, although he had shaved his beard and abandoned his tinted spectacles.

He had spoken to her soothingly, assuring her that he didn't intend harm, only wanted to have some fun. But he also warned her not to resist or cry out, and Darcy knew enough about weapons to realize that his pistol was small-caliber, probably a.22, with a sound suppressor on the muzzle; a shot would make less noise than the snap of a mousetrap. That, along with his chilling sense of authority, convinced her that he wouldn't hesitate to use it.

He ordered her to get dressed-and to go into her laundry hamper and give him the panties she had worn yesterday. Then they walked quietly out to his vehicle, where he had her crouch down on the floor of the passenger seat. She obeyed, assuming through her haze of fear and confusion that this would turn into a kinky sexual assault.

They went to a storage unit with a different vehicle parked inside it. He tied her up with an efficiency that made it clear he knew what he was doing, then zipped her into a mummy sleeping bag. Before he closed it over her face, he gripped several strands of her hair and yanked them from her head. He warned her again to stay quiet, and they took off on a longer drive.

This time, they paused along the way for several minutes-probably while Jessup broke into Seth Fraker's pickup truck to plant her hair and the nylon scrap from her panties.

After that they drove for most of an hour. She couldn't see anything, but the first and longest stretch was fast and relatively smooth-the highway to Basin. Then they turned off onto a slower, rougher road up into the mountains.

When they stopped for good, he pulled her out of the vehicle and freed her from the sleeping bag. They were deep in forest, far from any sign of humans. He untied her legs and they started walking.

By then, Darcy's mind had reached a state of frightening clarity. This man was not marching her out into the cold wet wilderness for sex. He made no more attempts to reassure her-didn't speak except for terse commands. And it had registered on her that he'd made no attempt to hide his face.

No doubt he was taking her to a remote hiding place, maybe one that he'd spotted on his fishing and hunting trips. The terrain was on the fringes of the Continental Divide-rugged, rarely traveled off-trail-and besides offering plenty of natural cover it was dotted with old mining excavations.

The odds that she ever would have been found were slim to nil.

She got her chance when they got to a deadfall-choked coulee and Jessup ordered her to stop; he climbed to the top of a small knoll, apparently trying to get his bearings. The distance between them still wasn't more than ten or fifteen yards, but as he scanned the surroundings, he half turned away from her. She sprinted the few steps to the ravine edge and threw herself over it, tumbling down the steep slope and digging her way frantically into its brush. He shouted at her to stop, and she thought she heard the popping sound of gunshots, but the cover was good and she wormed her way through it until she was shielded inside a jumble of rotting fallen timber.

Then began a desperate hide-and-seek, with her waiting, straining to listen for sounds of his pursuit-SEAL or not, he was a bulky fifty-year-old man, no match for lithe young Darcy in that kind of thick ground cover-and crawling farther each time she dared. He fired more shots that crashed through the brush around her, but she widened the distance between them steadily.

She guessed that the pursuit went on for an eternity of twenty or thirty minutes. Then, abruptly, the noise he made started to recede, and she wondered if he had given up and was heading back the way he'd come-or if that was what he wanted her to think.

She dug in, quietly covering herself with duff, and lay still for another hour, fearing that he'd found a vantage point and would see her if she moved. Eventually, she became aware of the drone of aircraft-and then, that the sound was more constant than just an occasional passing plane.

It finally dawned on her that that was probably what had scared Jessup into retreating. She dared to start moving again, at first still crawling and pausing to listen every few yards, then moving into thick forest and running. At least another hour passed before she heard a helicopter approaching close enough for her to flag down. By then she was on the edge of exhaustion.

Now all law enforcement resources were closing in on the area, looking for Lon Jessup. The immediate question was whether his vehicle was still where he'd left it when they started walking-whether he had gone back to it and gotten out, or was still on foot.

Darcy had only gotten a glimpse of the place, just enough to see that it was under the shelter of some decaying timbers. Now she couldn't describe the location with any accuracy; she'd never been in that country before, and she only had a rough idea of the distance and direction she'd traveled while running away. But authorities had identified a couple of possible sites and searchers were already on their way in to check them; the aircraft had narrowed their flyover zone and other personnel were ringing the overall area, hoping to spot and intercept Jessup.

It didn't take long for the experienced local men to get to those areas and relay back digital photos. Darcy quickly recognized the sagging, timbered overhang of an abandoned mine shaft in a cliffside; the tunnel was long since caved in, but the entrance formed a pocket big enough to shield a vehicle from casual view. Fresh tire tracks confirmed the find.

But the vehicle and Lon Jessup were gone.

Darcy hadn't gotten a good take on what he'd been driving, either; wrapped up in the sleeping bag, she'd barely seen it. She thought it was something like a Suburban or Expedition, off-white or gray, another of the generically common rides that Jessup seemed to favor, for reasons that were coming clear. It probably wouldn't have helped much, anyway. Interstate 15 was only a half hour's drive south, with highways branching off in all directions and places where he could rent or steal another car.

Madbird received the news with his usual stony face.

"Goddamn shame he ain't still in them woods," he said quietly.

Jessup had made a lucky decision to get the hell out of there. If he'd kept chasing Darcy long enough to get cut off from his vehicle, Madbird would have gone in after him, alone, and come back with his ears.