Fear No Evil

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.”