Dead Silver

51

Instead of heading downtown to the courthouse, I drove to Evvie Jessup's real estate office. Madbird and Gary wouldn't miss me for a while, if at all, and hanging around worrying about Darcy wasn't going to help her.

I pulled my truck into a parking lot across the busy strip of Eleventh Avenue, staying screened by other vehicles, and found a spot where I could see into the office plate glass windows without being noticed by anyone inside there. I didn't have a real plan-I just wanted another look at Lon Jessup, to watch him while I thought things over.

But Evvie was alone in the front room, sitting at her desk, talking on the phone, doing business or maybe gathering the gossip she was notorious for.

Another connection took place in my head. Through her, Lon had a direct pipeline into a lot of behind-the-scenes information in this town-maybe including police activity.

I'd never heard any mention of Lon as a suspect, including from Renee. I didn't know if he'd been looked at and vetted, or simply never considered. But I hadn't gone straight to Gary to ask because I didn't want to be the boy who cried wolf, especially when he was so busy with other concerns, and more especially when those were vital to Madbird. This notion of mine was nothing but a fancy, and probably a wildly unfounded one-I couldn't even call it speculation.

There was another reason I kept it to myself. The last time I'd been in a really serious situation I was overwhelmed, without a clue, scared shitless. Madbird had informed me solemnly that I'd stepped into a different world-one that had been there all along, coexisting and intertwining with the one I knew, but that I'd been oblivious to. Without his guidance I'd have been lost there for good, and very possibly would have died.

That hadn't turned around one hundred and eighty degrees by any means, but I no longer felt helpless. I'd become aware of an edge to it, an intensity, that brought me to life in an electric way. I couldn't truthfully say I enjoyed that like Madbird did, but it sure the hell was exciting.

Now I wanted to push it some-and this time I was the one hunting instead of the one on the run.

Over several minutes of watching Evvie's office, I didn't seen any sign of Lon. He might have been in the back, but I decided to move on and take a look at their home.

I remembered Renee describing the place as being off old Highway 282 near Montana City, a few miles south. Much of that area was former ranch land that had been carved up and developed fairly recently, and there was a maze of spur roads looping in and out.

But I didn't have to cruise long to find the Jesssups' mailbox; it was right on the highway, although they didn't sacrifice any privacy on that count. The property was pristine, meadowland in front that merged into timber, at least a couple dozen acres and maybe more. Their house was set so far back in the trees I could only see flashes of its blue sheet metal roof.

I wasn't about to go driving in there and risk Lon spotting me, but half a mile farther along, a gravel road turned off that side of the highway and led several miles into National Forest land. I'd driven it when I was a teenager, along with pretty much every other back road in this part of the state; I didn't remember it well, but it had to roughly skirt the Jessups' property.

I made my way along it, orienting myself by occasional glimpses of the blue roof, and found a suitable place to pull off into the woods. I rummaged through the assorted baggage I carried in the truck and dug out an old Bushnell rifle scope that I used for glassing game on hunting trips. If anybody came along and saw me, I'd shove the scope in my jacket and act like I'd stopped to take a leak. But that didn't seem likely, particularly in this dank weather; the landscape was deserted to the point of looking forlorn.

A short hike later, I came to a copse of aspen that offered a good view and I settled down with the scope. Now I could see that the house was a beauty, a big prow-fronted cedar home with a huge deck that included a covered hot tub. The interior was probably close to five thousand square feet. The going rate for something like that ran well over a hundred dollars per square foot. Depending on how much land there was, the overall property had to be worth a couple of million and maybe several. Evvie came from money and maybe Lon did, too. For sure, they weren't paying for this with a desultory real estate business.

There were no signs of Lon here, either, or any other life-no lights or flicker of a TV screen showing through the windows, no vehicles parked around, no dogs or cats. The rail fence that fronted the highway was built for looks more than function; there didn't appear to be any livestock to contain. The scene could have been the kind of sterile advertisement you saw in glossy magazines that sold the West.

Back from the highway, the rail fence gave way to older barbed wire, probably part of the original ranch. I got to my feet and followed it, maintaining a good distance and staying in the trees-curious as to how far the property extended and what else might be on it. There were no outbuildings or other structures that I could see. After about a mile, the fence ended in a little coulee.

Before I turned back, I stopped and spent a minute peering through the scope-and glimpsed what looked like fresh tire tracks across a patch of bare muddy earth.

They were hard to follow; most of the ground was thick with pine duff. But I picked up a couple more traces, running from the direction of the house toward the swale.

Well, there was nothing unusual about someone driving a vehicle on their property. Lon might have been cutting firewood, hunting varmints, or doing something else perfectly ordinary.

But I was far out of sight of their house by now and there still hadn't been a whisper of human presence anywhere around. I couldn't see any reason why it would hurt to take a closer look, so I kept on walking.

The coulee was only ten or fifteen feet deep, choked with brush and deadfall. There was no way to drive through it for as far as I could see, certainly not in the area that the tire tracks seemed to lead toward. But I noticed a big clump of debris in there, much thicker than the surroundings. Duff was piled on top of the brush in a way that didn't look like it had fallen there naturally.

Kind of like a giant pack rat nest.

I put the scope to my eye again. Inside the clump, I could just make out a few bits of metal, gleaming dully in the cold gray morning light.

I shoved the scope into my pocket and trotted the couple hundred yards to the spot.

Son of a bitch if the metal didn't belong to a dark blue, mid-'90s Ford Explorer, just like the SUV that had been watching Renee's house.

Madbird's attempts to educate me were bearing fruit. I'd started to learn that everybody had something to hide.