Killer Summer

82

Ten minutes after they had separated, Walt heard a horse coming up behind him and knew who it was without looking. The horses were lathered and exhaling steam by the time Walt picked up the rarely used trail. He climbed off his horse then and studied the condition of both the dry, dusty soil and the nearby vegetation. Jerry had passed the packhorse off to Brandon in order to catch up with his son.

Walt hadn’t yet told his father about the call about Sumner’s confession. He kept that in his back pocket.

Jerry had seen his son work his tracking magic before. For once, he withheld the usual cynical comments that perhaps really concealed his pride. Walt had few equals, if any, on the trail.

“It’s the same tire tracks we saw back at the creek,” Walt said.

“Okay…”

Jerry clearly hadn’t seen any tire tracks back at the creek.

“Three weeks, maybe four. The most recent tracks are headed for the river.” Walt, kneeling on one knee, looked that direction. “They don’t float in their supplies, it’s too much work. We should have thought of that.” Excitement in his voice, he added, “The dash on the map, it is man-made. It’s a cable crossing.”

As they reached the zip line a quarter of a mile later, Jerry failed to acknowledge Walt’s expertise.

“That’s Mitchum’s Ranch on the other side, isn’t it?” Jerry said it like he’d expected it. He consulted the map. “There’s two others south of here. Now, here’s what we’re going to do,” Jerry said, interrupting himself. “Tell Brandon to do an about-face and get his butt over here. He can leave the packhorse behind. We won’t be needing any of that river stuff, and if we need food, we’ll get it at the ranch. We’ll go across first and establish the perimeter, which means… What?”

Walt was back down on one knee again, shining a flashlight into the half inch of pale dust at the end of the zip line.

“The chair’s on this side,” Walt said.

“So?”

“Let me see the soles of your boots.”

Jerry obliged, balancing against a metal tower.

“Two people…” Walt said, training the flashlight toward the woods. “You see this pickling of the surface? A rain shower. These tracks are recent, the past day or so. One’s big, wearing combat boots. The other’s a kid, Dad, a running shoe, size eight, eight and a half. Any guesses who that might be?”

“If you’re trying to stop me from going over there, forget it.”

“The chair is on this side,” Walt repeated. He walked carefully to the nearby trees and studied the ground in the glare of the flashlight. “The bigger guy took off at a run.” He touched several spots. “These are fresh, incredibly fresh.”

“Why is it you don’t want to cross, don’t want to get this thing over with? Are you holding out some kind of hope that the Bureau takes this off your hands? Is that what’s going on here?”

“Yeah, that’s what’s going on here. That’s why I turned off my phone, abandoned my team. Why I’m looking at a recall vote if this all goes south.” He pointed to the tracks. “Size eight and a half, maybe nine. It’s Kevin. That’s why the chair is on this side of the river: Kevin crossed over with one of the hijackers. Not the girl. There’s only one set of running-shoe tracks. The combat boots took off at a run. Kevin’s at a walk. So maybe Kevin escaped, came across alone and was followed.”

“Let’s cross to the ranch, look around, find out what we can find out.”

“And we waste maybe an hour doing it,” Walt said. He pointed toward the woods. “Kevin went that way.”

“A hunch, that’s all it is.”

“No, an educated guess… Big difference.”

“We need to collect data, follow the most promising lead, and find the plane. We are this close!” He pinched his fingers to half an inch apart. “We’ll start at the crime scene.”

“Not me,” Walt said, coming to his feet. “You go if you want. We’re on comm. You can call to tell me how wrong I was. But wherever these two are headed-and I think it’s Morgan Creek Ranch-we can have them bookended. I can move Brandon back up that same trail we came in on. We’ll squeeze them.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“We know the girl called her father from the plane.”

“What?”

Walt nodded.

“We won a confession from the father. The idea was his, the insurance scam. He’d met Cantell while making a film. He cut a deal with him to steal the Learjet and ransom its location to the insurance company. If his daughter hadn’t been on the jet with your grandson, if the pilot hadn’t sucked in a couple geese over Baldy, it might have all worked out.”

“The girl’s father?”

“Correct.”

There was a long pause.

“Okay, so I’m impressed.”

Of all times not to have a tape recorder.

“According to her,” Walt said, “no one was injured in the landing. Including Kevin.”

“And you were going to tell me this when…?”

“Maybe they’re holding the girl at the ranch. Maybe only Kevin escaped. But this is Kevin,” he said, pointing down, “and I’m following him.”

His father’s face hardened and his fists clenched.

“Another way to look at it…” Walt proposed. “But you won’t like this.”

“You keep it to yourself.”

“Think about this for a second, Dad. They don’t need Kevin. What do they need him for? They’ve got the plane, they’ve got the girl. They let Kevin go. It’ll be a day or two before he reaches people. But it’s a lie, of course. They just want him far away from the ranch so no one ever finds his body.”

“Shut your face.”

“The combat boots are running because he has a job to do. Maybe he enjoys the hunt.”

“I said shut up.”

“We have a decision to make here.”

Jerry looked across the abyss of the river canyon, clearly seeing that the chair was on their side.

Then something occurred to Walt. He climbed up the tower far enough to reach out and grab hold of the chair’s pulley.

“It’s not exactly warm,” he said, “but it’s nowhere near as cold as the rest of this metal,” feeling the surrounding frame. “Thirty minutes, maybe less.”

“You’re talking yourself into this, do you see that? You’re making it work nice and tidy like and nothing’s ever nice and tidy. I can’t play it the way you say,” Jerry continued. “Ground rules are, you start at the scene-the ranch-and work your way out from there.”

Walt saw his father’s rigidity, his unwillingness to let the evidence dictate his next step, and he wondered how much of this resistance stemmed from thirty years ago. A river surrounded by forest, much like this one only bigger. By all estimates, D. B. Cooper had parachuted into the Columbia and drowned. There were never any tracks to follow. Jerry’s task force never had a chance to find Cooper yet Jerry still shouldered it as a failure, his failure.

“Surveillance only,” Walt said. “You report back to me. Don’t engage without some kind of backup-me or Brandon.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jerry said, already working with the suspended chair.

“I need you to agree to that. No engagement. We lost Bobby. I can’t lose you too.”

“Or Kevin.”

“Or Kevin,” Walt said.

“Okay, so I’ll wait for backup.”

“Keep your radio on. No excuses.”

“No excuses, agreed,” Jerry said. “You’re going to wish you’d come.”

Father and son stared at each other.

“Don’t go rogue on me,” Walt said.

“We’re burning daylight,” Jerry said.

He climbed into the chair and secured the chain across it.

“Shit,” he said, “I’ve never liked carnival rides.”