The Highway

25

Cody swung his pickup into the near empty parking lot of the First National Bar of Montana in Emigrant. His tires popped through the gravel and he pulled up so close to the entrance the front grille of his pickup nearly kissed the gray and sagging hitching post. There were only two other vehicles in the lot — an ancient Willy’s Jeep with a ragtop and a gleaming Montana State Patrol car. This was the place. Cody glanced at his wristwatch. He was on time.

When Trooper Rick Legerski had suggested the First National Bar as a place to meet and two thirty as the time, Cody had objected.

“Isn’t there anywhere else?”

“You have a problem with it?”

“I don’t drink,” Cody said.

“That’s not what I heard. Anyway, you don’t have to. It’s the only place open this time of night. Meeting there will give me time to patrol Yankee Jim Canyon into the park and back again and look for that missing car. If you keep your eye out on the way down to Emigrant, we’ll pretty much have seen the entire route you described and the First National is right in the middle.”

Cody grudgingly agreed.

He drove from Helena to Livingston via Highway 12 through Townsend, Three Forks, and Bozeman. The last time he’d taken the route was two years before on his way to Yellowstone to try and save Justin. He’d been held up in Townsend and nearly burned to death in Bozeman in the Gallatin Gateway Hotel, but he’d made it through. Mission accomplished.

This time, it was to try to find his son’s ex-girlfriend. There was a huge difference in degree and motivation, but he welcomed the diversion the situation presented — and the timing. Otherwise, he’d have been back in Helena, probably drunk and shooting out streetlights or shouting and waving his pistol on Sheriff Tubman’s front lawn. That’s the way things progressed when he went on a bender, which was the path he’d been on before Justin showed up at the bar. In a strange way, Danielle and Gracie Sullivan had probably prevented him from completely going off the rails.

But despite the ability to focus on something besides his own predicament, he couldn’t help but speculate about his future while he drove. What would he possibly do next? Where would he get a job that paid enough to maintain his house payments? Another job in law enforcement was probably out of the question because he had two strikes against him and a reputation the size of a truck. Private security jobs paid crap in and around Helena. As he passed through Townsend he recalled working on a ranch there as a teenager and knew he was too old and lazy and inept at physical labor to even consider it again.

Provided Jenny chose to stay with him, she might have to try and find something to help make ends meet. She worked part time at the hospital as an administrator, and her current salary allowed them a few extras. Now, though, she might have to look for a second or different job. That would be a fun conversation to have with her, he thought sourly.

He’d once kicked around the idea of becoming a private investigator after he’d been fired from the Denver Metro PD but he discarded it at the time. Now, though, he might actually have to look into it seriously, but he wondered if there was enough work out there to make it pay. The PIs he’d crossed paths with in Montana were all ex-LEOs, and lived hand-to-mouth because there wasn’t enough work to go around in a rural mountain state. And he knew that even if he could figure out a way to make a living — doubtful — the work would be unsatisfying. Cody’s primary motivation, the thing that made him stay sober up to now and get up in the morning, was to crush bad guys. It was the only reason he kept going. He had a special knack for it because he was bad himself and always had been, therefore he had special insight. He doubted he could transfer his blinding passion to photographing cheating spouses or tripping up insurance claimants. And deep within himself, he always knew that if he couldn’t smash bad guys the only career he could imagine that could provide the same rush and intensity was to become one of them. Rob banks, maybe. Kill for hire. Those were things he could do. The possibility was inside him like a sleeping viper. Deep down, he always knew he could out-bad any bad guy. And outthink any run-of-the-mill cop.

Criminals he put away were incredibly stupid — like B. G. He wouldn’t be like that. He knew not only how criminals thought, but how cops thought, too.

He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. Not now, he thought. He refused to take this train of thought any farther down the track. The viper would have to remain in its nest for now.

After cruising through Livingston on dark and silent streets, seeing no sign of a red Ford Focus downtown or in any of the motel lots, he took Highway 89 south toward Gardiner. He drove peering both ways for the Sullivan car. There were few houses or lights, and the moon was the only source of illumination.

He saw no cars on the side of the road matching the description, and none passed him coming from the south.

The highway was a lonely place after midnight in southern Montana.

Emigrant was one of those towns that was more a location on the map than a real town, since the only building was, in fact, the First National Bar, established in 1902, or so the hand-painted sign read outside. The bar sat just off Highway 89, thirty miles south to Gardiner and twenty-three miles from Livingston to the north. Across the highway, down a two-track asphalt road and out of sight from Emigrant, was Chico Hot Springs, an ancient sanitarium turned resort. It was a shambling, funky place with a big thermal hot pool, rooms, a restaurant, and a bar where Cody had once taken Jenny and gotten in a bar fight with two fake cowboys from Bozeman. He remembered it well. Jenny left him the first time after that.

It was known as Paradise Valley. The Gallatin Range was west, the Absarokas east. To the north behind him were the Crazy Mountains. And straight south on Highway 89 through Gardiner and the northern entrance to Yellowstone National Park. Hollywood stars and hedge fund managers played rancher on small spreads throughout the valley and the Yellowstone River flowed through it. This time of year, though, the hobby ranchers were usually decamped for the winter and the valley was dark, silent, and cold. Espresso stands were closed for the winter, and the upscale eateries stopped selling The New York Times. Meanwhile, herds of elk and buffalo drifted northward from Yellowstone Park to reclaim the grass, with wolves and grizzlies shadowing the flanks of the herds, looking for opportunities. Ranchers fed cattle hay from flatbed sleighs and snow machines replaced horses and four-wheelers. If one didn’t know better, a visitor might think every human being in the area during the winter was named “Carhartt” because of the label on most of their clothing. During the winter, the Paradise Valley became western again.

Cody checked his phone before opening his door. On the three-hour drive south from Helena, he’d checked in frequently with Justin, Jenny, and Cassie. Justin hadn’t heard a thing from the Sullivan girls, and he was starting to panic. Jenny had talked to Ted Sullivan and their mother, who was, as Jenny put it, “going back and forth from hysterical to murderous.” She wanted to kill Ted first, and Danielle second. Jenny said she talked her down and promised to stay in touch with any news.

Cassie had opened the e-mail sent to Cody and had done some additional research on her own from her home computer. As she came across more information she’d e-mail the link to his phone with her own comments. Because he’d been driving, Cody hadn’t had a chance to read anything yet. But she’d called with one particular item that piqued both their interest, and Cody planned to ask Legerski about it if the opportunity presented itself. But first he wanted to hear Legerski’s thoughts. Local cops — especially longtime locals in small communities — were generally in touch with the mores and culture of their constituents. Too often, Cody thought, investigators from outside the community didn’t pay enough attention to the theories of the locals. It was a lesson he’d like to pass along to Cassie Dewell.

Cody was impressed with Cassie since they had talked in the bar. Her guilt fueled her investigation, and he didn’t want to let her off the hook until the Sullivan girls were found. The situation — him in the field, Cassie working the phones and databases at home — reminded him of the successful arrangement he’d had with his former partner, Larry Olson. They’d been a great team. The two of them had the highest percentage of solved homicides in Montana.

When they were working, Larry punctured holes in Cody’s enthusiasms and filled the vacuum with research and evidence. Cody kept Larry operating at a high level by challenging him and threatening to go off on his own tangents. Every case, it seemed, was a race between Larry’s brains and desire to contain Cody and Cody’s kick-the-door-in fieldwork. Maybe Cassie could be his new Larry, he thought. At least for tonight, as long as he needed her. After that, he thought, he’d cut her loose for what she’d done to him.

He got out and took a deep breath of the cold night air. The moon was bright and lit up the snowcapped, eleven-thousand-foot Emigrant Peak. The Absarokas dominated the eastern night horizon like a buzz saw that was switched off. At the foot of the mountains the river serpentined through the valley floor flanked by twin columns by massive skeletal river cottonwoods, their leaves gone. The river reflected the moon on treeless stretches. It was always ten degrees colder near Yellowstone than in Helena, and Cody noticed the difference.

He slipped his phone into the breast pocket of his jacket and one of the .45s into the back waistband of his jeans. He tugged the hem of his jacket down to hide it.

Then he pulled on a L&C Sheriff’s Department baseball cap with an emblem on the front and turned toward the ancient bat wing doors that lead to the alcove of the First National Bar of Montana.

Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Rick Legerski sat alone drinking coffee at a small table in the middle of the bar. There were no other patrons. Cody stifled a smile when he saw him: Legerski looked exactly like he’d thought he would, although thicker through the chest and bigger through the belly. He looked up with warm blue eyes.

“Cody Hoyt?”

“Yup.”

“Welcome to Emigrant.”

“Thank you.”

The First National Bar was ancient and inviting, with pine paneling, low lights except over the pool table, and dozens of elk, moose, deer, and antelope trophy heads mounted on the walls. Local cattle brands were burned into the tabletops and plank wood floor. It smelled of sawdust, cigarette smoke, spilled beer, manure, and greasy food. Cody kind of fell in love with it.

“Got some coffee brewed in the back,” Legerski said, nodding toward the bar. Cody followed his eyes. A large-framed bald man wearing a Carhartt vest over a red plaid hunting shirt nodded his head slightly. Cody thought the man didn’t really want to be there spinning his wheels with two customers who drank coffee. He got the impression Legerski and the bartender were old friends by the way they communicated without words.

“Black,” Cody said to the bartender.

Cody sat down opposite Legerski. The trooper raised his eyebrows.

“See anything on your way down?”

Cody shook his head. “You?”

“Sorry. Nothing.”

“Shit.”

“Word is out everywhere,” Legerski said. “I heard the description of the vehicle and the girls over the radio. They’re looking for them in four states, but nobody’s found ’em yet. Edna really got the word out fast. She’s a good one, that Edna. Tomorrow the word will get out around here by breakfast and who knows?”

Cody nodded.

“They just opened I-90 again,” Legerski said. “I was up there helping out for a while. But before they opened it back up the patrol up there inventoried all the cars waiting in line. No red Ford Focus with Colorado plates.”

The bartender brought Cody a heavy mug and set a thermal carafe on the table for the both of them, then hovered. Cody read in Legerski’s expression he expected Cody to pay, which he did.

“Extra ten bucks in there,” Cody said to the bartender, “For keeping the place open.”

The bartender nodded in silence and clumped back over to the bar. By the way he started wiping down the counter and running water into a sink it was obvious he was closing down for the night. But his body language suggested he was listening in on them and trying not to be obvious about it.

Cody said, “I do appreciate you taking a run down to Gardiner and checking for that car. And getting out of bed to do it.”

“No problem.”

“Do you have any kids?” Cody asked.

Legerski shook his head. “Not technically,” he said. “My second wife had a couple of future wards of the state, but we’re divorced. But no, none of my own.”

Cody sipped the coffee. It was strong and bitter and hot and it burned the tip of his tongue. “Jesus,” he said.

“I should have warned you,” Legerski said. “Jimmy’s not known for his coffee.”

Legerski produced a detailed Montana Department of Transportation map, unfolded it, and spread it across the table. For the next few minutes he pointed out all the side roads and wrong turns the girls could have taken between where they last communicated as they entered the park to Livingston. Cody listened patiently but found the speculation to be of no value. He’d already gone over it all in his mind. Sure, they could be anywhere within the park or in Wyoming, Idaho, or Montana. But that wasn’t the point and it didn’t help explain why they’d stopped communicating or why their distinctive car hadn’t been located.

Cody put his cup in the saucer and lowered his voice. “When I talked to you earlier you said something about this not being the first time some girls came up missing around here. Care to expound on that topic a little?”

Legerski paused and looked into Cody with well-practiced, all-seeing cop eyes. Searching Cody for something. Cody just looked back, squinting through the smoke of his third cigarette since he’d walked in.

“First, some ground rules,” Legerski said. “Because I live here and I know everybody. Sometimes it’s a fine line between being in town and of town, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Cody said.

“I’m involved in civic organizations like Kiwanas and the Lions Club,” Legerski said. “I referee high school football and basketball. I see these folks from the valley every day. So I can’t let it get out there I’ve got a hate on for any of ’em.”

“Believe me,” Cody said, “I get it. Whatever you tell me stays with me. I’m good for my word.”

“I’ve heard that,” Legerski said. “But I’ve also heard some other things.”

“Those being?”

“That you can get out of control. That you’re a loose cannon at times. That you get drunk and shoot the county coroner at a crime scene.”

“All true,” Cody said, “but you knew that.”

“I also heard,” Legerski said, lowering his head while he lowered his voice, “you’re in a lot more shit than you let on when you told me you’d be back on the job within a week. Despite that sheriff’s department cap on your head. From what I heard, you’re out of the department. You might even face charges.”

Cody took a deep breath and sighed. “Yeah,” he said.

“So right now,” Legerski said, his eyes betraying embarrassment on Cody’s behalf, “You have no authority or jurisdiction here. This is just a conversation between an off-duty trooper and a regular citizen. We’re just two guys talking. Nothing more than that.”

Cody let it sink in. He nodded.

“Does anyone know you’re here?”

“Why do you ask?”

Legerski met his eyes straight on. “Just covering my ass. If you go off and do something stupid, I don’t want it coming back on me. I have a couple of years left until I retire with full benefits.”

“Spoken like a state employee.”

“That’s what I am.” Then he set his jaw. “I have no obligation to be here right now talking to you. I’m off shift.”

“I apologize,” Cody said. “I appreciate your help. And to answer your question, my wife and son know I’m here. The sheriff doesn’t know a thing.” He decided not to mention Cassie.

“No one else?”

“The Sullivan parents — one in Colorado and one in Nebraska. They’re worried. That’s why I asked if you had kids of your own. Then you’d understand the urgency. I know I’m not likely to find these girls tonight and you know it. We’ve got experience in these kinds of situations. But they’ve got to have some hope. My son does, too. At least if I’m down here, I’m doing something besides sitting on my butt waiting for a phone call.”

Legerski nodded and seemed to be thinking about it before proceeding. Then, with a what-the-hell grimace, he said, “How much do you know about the Church of Glory and Transcendence?”

Cody leaned in closer. “Some, I guess.”

“What? Tell me so I don’t have to cover familiar ground.”

Cody had been recalling what he knew on the drive down after being prompted by Legerski’s e-mail. He said, “The church was founded in the mid-1970s in California, I believe, by a woman named Stacy Smith. Smith claimed she’d been ordered to create the new movement from God himself. I don’t know a lot about what they believe, but I’ve heard it’s a mixture of New Age bullshit that includes Christianity, Buddhism, mysticism, and other stuff. Fairies, alchemy, all kinds of crap.”

Legerski chuckled but didn’t correct him.

Cody said, “Stacy Smith was a charismatic true believer, and her personal magnetism and fervor attracted hundreds of followers in a short time. Because one of the primary beliefs of the church was that the apocalypse was coming, she wanted to relocate the church and its crazy followers to someplace isolated and safe. Hence, Montana.”

“Why do they always think that?” Legerski asked rhetorically, and they both laughed.

“Anyway,” Cody said, “A big ranch resort was for sale just down the road on the other side of the Yellowstone River. It was perfect for the church so they bought it and moved everybody up here. When was that, 1980 or so?”

“Nineteen eight-one,” Legerski said. “Five thousand acres and twenty or so buildings. That was before they started big-time construction.”

“Okay, I was close. So hundreds of the true believers moved there, probably thinking it was a great location because they hadn’t lived through a winter yet. Lots of folks in the area were worried at first because a lot of people considered the church a cult. But the faithful turned out to be pretty nice neighbors overall, right?”

“Right, for the most part.”

Cody didn’t pursue the other part yet.

“They sold good pies and preserves,” Cody said. “I remember stopping at their outlet once. So even though people were suspicious, Stacy Smith kind of won everybody over. This is live and let live country, and even though more and more people showed up to move across the river on the church compound they pretty much stayed to themselves and didn’t bother anybody.”

Legerski nodded.

“But then some followers quit the church in the early nineties and they didn’t have much good to say about Stacy Smith and the practices of the church. Nothing horrible — no sex stuff or anything like that — but they did tell everyone that the church had been amassing quite a weapons cache in preparation for the apocalypse. That news got the feds worried, of course, and they raided the place. They found years worth of food stockpiles in underground shelters that was supposed to keep the members alive through a nuclear war, or whatever. And they did find a lot of guns. A whole shitload of them.”

“Right,” Legerski said.

“So as a result, the word got out that these peace and love religious folks were armed to the teeth. Stacy Smith started to be seen as a kook instead of a sweet inspirational leader. Then the feds started looking at their tax status and lowered the boom on ’em. Stacy Smith got old and sick and was forced to turn the reins over to other people in the church, and the new guys agreed to give up the weapons and sell some of the property to pay off tax bills. After that, I haven’t heard much about them for years. I’ve heard they don’t have many members anymore and that the place might come up for sale again.”

“Pretty good so far,” the trooper said.

Cody shook his head. “Why did the feds go after them the way they did? It isn’t illegal to own firearms. This is Montana. Most of the folks I know have plenty of guns in their own houses. Hell, I’ve got a whole room full of ’em, and I know it isn’t that unusual.”

“Remember the time,” Legerski said. “It was around Waco and Ruby Ridge. The feds were on a rampage. And even though the church had the right to store firearms, they knew they couldn’t fight the government and a P.R. war at the same time. Plus, the church was trying to hold on to a bunch of members who felt cheated because the world didn’t end like they were told it would.”

“But the church sort of got screwed,” Cody said.

Legerski said, “It depends on your point of view. The feds were pretty pleased they got the church to agree to give up all the weapons and no one got shot or killed. And when the apocalypse didn’t show up when it was supposed to, a lot of the members lost faith and moved on. Stacy Smith was moved to an assisted living facility in Bozeman and she passed away quietly a few years ago. The news didn’t even raise a ripple. But that church is still there and there are a couple hundred hard-core members.”

“So…” Cody said, lighting another cigarette off the end of his old one.

“Those things will kill you,” Legerski said.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Legerski said, “Have you ever heard the name Bill Edwards? Aka William J. Edwards?”

“No.”

“Not many have. But he’s the new leader of the church. He’s not like Stacy Smith. He keeps to himself and doesn’t give speeches or circulate around Livingston and Bozeman making friends. I’d guess there are very few people around here who’ve ever heard his name. But he’s a serious man, and his goal is to build the numbers of the church up again. He wants to make it bigger than it ever was, and he has a plan to do it.”

Cody saw where Legerski was going.

“The rumor I’ve heard is that Edwards thinks the key to building the membership back up is young attractive girls. If he can persuade them to join, men will follow. It isn’t exactly an original strategy — think ladies’ night — but it works better than anything else in the world.”

Cody sat back. “So you think it’s possible the church nabbed the Sullivan girls when they came through here?”

“Keep your voice down,” Legerski whispered, shooting a look toward the bartender. Then to Cody, “I can’t prove it. But it makes me think. There have been a few teenage runaways — I can think of three, one in Livingston, one in Bozeman, one in Big Timber — in the last year who just vanished. Three is a lot in this area. People are starting to talk, is what I’m saying. And that’s all I’m saying.”

With that, Legerski pushed away from the table. “Got to get rid of some coffee,” he said, and he turned for the men’s room which was designated by the sign, COWPOKES.

Cody mulled it over while he checked his phone. There was a single text from Justin five minutes before that read, “Nothing.” There were two more e-mails from Cassie with links to news stories about the church, and one about the funeral for Stacy Smith the previous year in Bozeman. Either she was thinking along the same lines as Legerski, or Legerski’s initial e-mail had put her squarely on the path.

He wasn’t good at texting, but he asked Cassie to check the FBI’s ViCap (The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program) databases for Missing Persons, Unidentified Persons, and Homicides and Sexual Assaults of young women in southern Montana. He wanted to confirm Legerski’s story about the three missing girls as well as to see what else was out there. He also asked her to check out one William J. Edwards.

She responded quickly, “Will do.”

While he waited for Legerski to return, another man entered the First National Bar. He was large, lumbering, fleshy, with light wavy red hair sprinkled with silver and a flat Slavic face. He wore grease-stained jeans, a pilled thick chamois guide shirt, and lace-up boots with heels like truckers wore. He seemed to make a point to approach the bar the most circuitous route possible from where Cody sat.

The big man sat heavily on a stool at the bar with his back to Cody and without acknowledging him. He ordered from Jimmy with no pleasantries, simply, “Coors Light.”

Cody looked him over. The man seemed determined not to look back at him, which to Cody seemed odd, given the empty bar and the late hour.

Legerski didn’t acknowledge the big man either when he returned from the bathroom. Cody’s antennae went up. In a small rural community, everybody knew everybody. He wondered why Legerski didn’t say hello.

The trooper sat down heavily with a serious look on his face, as if he were thinking hard about something.

Cody made sure the big man wasn’t looking at them in the mirror and nodded toward the newcomer and arched his eyebrows, as if to say, “Who is that guy?”

“Not now,” Legerski mouthed. He seemed to Cody to be a little nervous, or a little scared.

Cody changed the subject and leaned forward.

“Let’s go out there and look around for the car,” he whispered.

“The church compound?” Legerski whispered back.

“We should do it now. Before they get a chance to hide the car or change the plates.”

“Now? What about a warrant?”

“Don’t you know a friendly judge?”

“I do. But we need probable cause. We don’t have jack shit at this point.”

“Then let’s go anyway.”

“They’ve got a gate across the entrance on the other side of the bridge. If it’s locked, we have to ask them to come on their property. And it’s always locked.”

Cody sighed in frustration. “We don’t need a warrant. We just drive up and ask them if we can look around. They’re supposed to be good people. If they don’t have anything to hide they should let us on the property.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then we have probable cause, don’t we?” Cody asked.

Legerski leaned back and looked at Cody blankly.

“Can’t this wait until morning? We can see most of the compound from the highway. We could be there at dawn with field glasses and spotting scopes and see if we can locate the car. Then we’d have a reason to go get Judge Graff.”

“Too much time,” Cody said. “If they did what you suggest they did, that would give them time to hide the car and stash those girls. Every minute counts in something like this.”

“Man, I don’t know,” Legerski whispered.

“Think about it,” Cody said, leaning back himself. He thought if Legerski refused he’d go anyway. There was nothing illegal or unethical about asking for permission to look around the compound. If the church people said no, they said no. And he’d figure out a way to access it anyway.

Cody leaned forward again across the table, and Legerski reluctantly did the same.

“So who is the guy who just came in?”

The trooper lowered his voice so even Cody could barely hear him. “He’s a long-haul trucker who lives with his mother in a shack six miles away from here in the foothills. His name is Ronald C. Pergram.”

“Seems like an odd one,” Cody said, stealing a sidelong glance. Pergram didn’t look over. Jimmy had delivered his beer and stood hovering over him. Cody got the feeling Jimmy was letting Pergram know that Cody and Legerski were talking about him in whispers.

“This Jimmy,” Cody said, “is he a good guy?”

“The best,” Legerski said. “I’ve known him for years.”

“He seems to be pals with Pergram.”

Legerski snorted. “I doubt that. He’s just being Jimmy. Jimmy knows everybody in this valley.”

There was a quick vibration in Cody’s pocket.

“Excuse me,” he said, and withdrew his phone. Legerski watched him suspiciously.

CHECKING VICAP, Cassie had written in a text. FOUND SOME MISSING FEMALES WITHIN A 100 MILE RADIUS. LAST SEEN AT TRUCK STOPS. WILL KEEP DIGGING.

“You say he’s a long-haul trucker,” Cody said, closing the phone.

“Who was that?” Legerski asked, nodding toward the closed phone in Cody’s hand.

“My son Justin,” Cody lied. “He still hasn’t heard a word from the Sullivan girls.”

Legerski shook his head.

“Tell me,” Cody said, “Have there been any other reports of missing women here on Highway 89?”

Legerski looked back, puzzled. “What are you thinking?”

“Just a wild hair,” Cody said. “Something to look at if our first theory goes kablooey.”

Legerski nodded, but seemed to withdraw a little. Cody got the impression Legerski didn’t like the direction the conversation had taken, and found it telling. The trooper had a theory he wanted to sell to Cody, and Cody wasn’t entirely buying it, which seemed to unsettle the man.

“So,” Cody said, pushing away from the table, “let’s go to church.”

“Man…”

“You can come with me or stay or go home. Your choice. But since it’s your stomping grounds, I thought you might want to come along.”

Legerski sat at the table and finished the last of his coffee. Cody didn’t linger, but stood and pulled on his jacket and turned for the door. He didn’t hear the trooper follow.

When he stepped outside through the faux bat wing doors onto the old wooden portico, Cody noted that the condensation from his breath billowed around his head like a helmet. He paused for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. There were no lights in any direction, only the hard white stars that appeared like cream wash in the night sky. The moon reflected off the river in the distance and the windshield of his car. He zipped up his jacket against the cold.

Something had happened inside the bar but he couldn’t figure out what it was. The way the three men — Legerski, Jimmy, the truck driver — interacted without words around him was unsettling, but he couldn’t unpack it. Why did Legerski seem so different — jumpy, intense — when he returned from the toilet? Cody felt he’d missed something but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He wished the alcohol in his system had dispersed but it was still there, dulling his instincts and fogging his brain. He thought about turning on his heel and going back inside to order a drink. He knew from long experience that sometimes the hair of the dog resharpened his wits, at least temporarily.

“No,” he said aloud to himself. You’ve got to ride this out.

As he stepped down toward the hitching post and his truck he heard the door open behind him and the bat wing doors swing out. They moaned on rusted hinges.

He turned to find Legerski, fitting on his trooper hat.

“Changed your mind?” Cody said, smiling.

“Completely,” Legerski said.

“You want to come with me, or do you want me to ride along with you? Or take two cars and really impress the hell out of them?”

“Let’s take your pickup. In case this thing goes haywire, I’d rather not be in my cruiser. Let me get my camera and my sound equipment in case we have to document something.”

Cody grinned and climbed in. He was glad Legerski was with him. He started the motor and waited for the trooper to retrieve the items from his trunk. He watched him root around, find what he was looking for, and walk around the back of his pickup carrying a satchel. His taillights turned Legerski pink in the rearview mirrors.

The trooper climbed in and shut the door.

“Do you know how to get there?”

“I’ve seen the place,” Cody said. “It’s hard to miss.”

As Cody reached up for the shifter all of his senses suddenly came alive but things happened too quickly to process. Straight ahead, up the wooden porch steps and to the side of the door, two faces looked out from opposite sides of the neon Miller Lite beer sign in the window. At the same time, he heard the rustle of fabric from the satchel on Legerski’s lap as well as the sharp intake of breath from the trooper.

Instinctively, Cody glanced over but all he could see was the gaping silver-rimmed muzzle of a snub-nosed large caliber revolver an inch from his eye. The cylinder revolved, filled with dull lead bullets, as the trooper pulled the trigger.

There was a tremendous explosion of light and thunder.

He could no longer see out of his right eye, but it was more than that. There was no pain, only tremendous silence.

Then he was floating, light as air, as if his lungs had filled with helium. He passed through the sheet metal roof of his pickup into the night, which was no longer cold. As he rose his eyesight was restored but he no longer had feeling in his limbs and his arms hung loose at his sides.

He looked down. He could see the top of his pickup from above, the bed of his truck which was empty except for a crumpled fast-food wrapper in the corner, then the rusted metal roof of the First National Bar. The windows of his pickup strobed three more times but there was no sound and he felt nothing.

Cody’s life didn’t pass before his eyes, but he clearly saw the photo of Justin in his football uniform and a vision of Jenny sleeping in bed from years before they separated the first time and he rose until he could see the river and the ribbon of highway through the valley and Jimmy and the truck driver emerge from the bar and stand on the porch and he knew what happened to those poor girls and he felt both cheated and angry at the same time and he wished he could do it all over again, everything.

Especially the last five minutes.

Then nothing. No sound, smell, or sight.

Peace.

26

Cassie Dewell sat at her kitchen table in worn sweats and slippers with her laptop open in front of her. Although she’d switched to decaffeinated coffee two hours after she’d returned home from Cody Hoyt’s house, she was still wired. And unsettled. Her stomach growled and burbled and sounded loud in the sleeping house, and each time it happened she found herself placing her hand over her middle with the same reflexive instinct she’d once used when she was pregnant with Ben.

She’d tried to sleep but couldn’t, and thought she’d work herself into exhaustion. Instead, though, she found her mind racing.

She considered eating something but nothing sounded good except cake. There was some in the refrigerator — German chocolate — left there by her passive-aggressive mother for the sole reason, Cassie thought, to keep her fat. So instead of eating it, she drank decaf and her stomach growled as if she’d swallowed a wolverine.

Cassie sat back and tapped out another e-mail on her phone and sent it to Cody. This one, from the Bozeman Chronicle the previous winter, was entitled WITH DEATH OF CHARISMATIC LEADER THE FUTURE OF DOOMSDAY CULT IN DOUBT. She found it of interest because, at the time, the reporter stated there was no clear plan of succession for the church and several factions were stepping forward to claim it. According to the article, the leadership of the Church of Glory and Transcendence would likely fall to Stacy Smith’s son Wayne, but no one was sure he either wanted the role or was up for it. There was a brief mention of someone named William Edwards, who represented a competing effort. There was no other information about Edwards in the article, and Cassie failed to find any other published information about him in her searches. The only reference she found to him was on the Web site of the church itself, which referred to him as “Terrestrial Caretaker.” Wayne Smith wasn’t listed at all, which she took to mean that Stacy Smith’s son had either not stepped forward or had been defeated for leadership. As far as Edwards went, there was no photo, no biography. She pointed out that fact in a note accompanying the link she sent to Cody’s phone, and wrote, “He seems to be the guy you’ll want to interview.”

Not that Cody replied. In fact, he hadn’t acknowledged even receiving any of the texts or e-mails she’d sent in the past hour. She speculated that he was out of cell phone range, busy with something, or simply unresponsive and rude. All three were distinct possibilities. She began to understand why Larry Olson, Cody’s former partner, became so frustrated with him.

She wasn’t supposed to access the ViCAP database from anywhere other than an official departmental computer in the sheriff’s department, but she justified it to herself by noting the laptop actually belonged to Lewis and Clark County, so what did it matter? Cassie had no intention of claiming the overtime on her sheet because she wanted to avoid problems and questions from Sheriff Tubman. Questions like why she was assisting a suspended deputy in his investigation of two missing teenage girls in the middle of the night with no formal complaint or referral — and outside their jurisdiction.

She didn’t know how she would answer that question if it came up, other than it seemed like the right thing to do despite policy and protocol. That she felt unclean and guilty for being responsible for the suspension itself. That she didn’t want to be regarded by her colleagues around the office as the sheriff’s tool.

Cassie sat back in her chair and knuckled at her eyes with both hands. Her spine cracked and her stomach burbled again. The house was cold for sleeping — her mother insisted on turning the temperature down to sixty-two at night to “save energy”—and Cassie’s feet were cold. But she didn’t want to risk turning the thermostat up. The rumble of the furnace and the whoosh of forced air might awake her mother, who would ask what she was doing and why she was doing it so late. Cassie didn’t want to deal with the questions now. Although Cassie was in her midthirties and had a son, her mother had a way of phrasing things — with a certain tone — that always made Cassie act guilty, like she was still twelve and trying to get away with something.

Although she was grateful her mother lived with her and watched over Ben and cared for him while she was at work, the situation was difficult and becoming worse. While Cassie had aged and changed, her mother hadn’t. The quirks and passions her mother displayed when Cassie had lived at home seemed more pronounced, more set, more rigid. Cassie looked on helplessly, for example, when her mother patrolled the house turning off lights and unplugging electronics that weren’t being used at the time. Cassie was afraid Ben would take to heart her mother’s leftist rants and genuine hatred of business, all Republicans, the military, and the police. The police! Didn’t her mother know what she did every day? Didn’t she know or care that Ben’s father had been in the army?

She swallowed the last of her cup of decaf and leaned forward to her laptop and keyed in the passwords for ViCAP — one for the department, one for her personally — and followed the prompts and she was in.

It took five minutes to narrow down the search. There were actually twelve missing women from southern Montana, but only four in their teens at the time of their disappearance. Of the four, one case had been open for five years, so she discounted it with a pang of guilt and the recognition that missing Jessica Lowry, age seventeen, Bozeman, history of drug abuse and emotional problems — would for now remain shoved aside and forgotten. She didn’t even want to look beyond the area, or statewide. Even in a state with a low population like Montana, the sheer number of missing people was overwhelming and depressing. Instead, Cassie keyed on the three girls she presumed Cody had asked about, and read up on each of them. She opened a document window aside from the Web pages so she could cut and paste relevant information to share with Cody, provided there was anything of note.

Erin Hill, Livingston, eighteen, white, brown hair (although possibly colored red), green eyes, five foot two, 160 pounds, reported missing by stepmother in July two years prior. Disappeared after being arrested for possession of meth, presumed a runaway. Divorced parents, lived with mother. An unconfirmed sighting of her was reported by a convenience store cashier at a truck stop on I-90 west of Billings. The cashier reported that a girl matching Hill’s description had used the ATM in the store and lingered for an hour inside, but the cashier didn’t speak to her or see her depart the store. The internal ATM video malfunctioned during the transaction and didn’t get a shot of the user, but the subject had used Hill’s PIN number to withdraw the last $120 from her savings account in a Livingston bank.

Shanna Marone, Bozeman, seventeen, white, long dark hair, brown eyes, five foot six, 140 pounds, tattoo of red lips on neck and Harley-Davidson logo tattoo on mid-lower back, reported missing eighteen months before after not showing up for classes at the alternative high school. Mother distraught, father not in the picture. A passing motorist on State Highway 205 (between Belgrade and Manhatten) reported seeing a person hitchhiking who matched the description of the missing subject, including a yellow down coat she was known to wear. No other verified sightings had ever been confirmed.

Chelsey Lybeck, Big Timber, fifteen, white, short blond hair, blue eyes, four feet eleven, 110 pounds, was reported missing by the father, a ranch foreman on the Lazy Double-Ought Ranch …

But she was found, Cassie realized as she read on. Her body was discovered last summer on the bank of Sweet Grass Creek by fishermen. Cassie recalled reading something about it in the newspaper. The body was too decomposed to determine the cause of death, but the Sweet Grass County Sheriff’s Department speculated she’d died of blunt force trauma followed by exposure. To date, there had been no arrests, although the ranch foreman father had been questioned twice and the file remained open.

Cassie didn’t include Chelsey Lybeck on the document she was building, but concentrated on Erin Hill and Shanna Marone. Both runaways, apparently. Both last seen — possibly — at a truck stop along an interstate highway and on a state highway. Both never seen again, if the ViCAP records were correct.

She thought of the Sullivan girls. Similar age. On the highway. Missing. Cassie forced herself not to make a leap of speculation based on such a weak and isolated set of circumstances.

Then she saw the link on the bottom of the ViCAP Web page for HIGHWAY SERIAL KILLER INITIATIVE.

She hesitated, worried about spending too much time going down a wrong path when there were other things she could be doing.

But she floated the cursor down and clicked on it. As she read, Cassie felt the hairs rise on her forearms and on the back of her neck.

First, she scanned a map of the United States covered with red dots. The dots were placed along interstate and state highways, looking like a strings of red pearls from coast to coast. The highest concentration of dots were in the east, Midwest, and southeast. But there were plenty in Montana and throughout the rest of the country.

She took a deep breath and scrolled down to a specific incident report.

Cassie thought it remarkable and horrifying that there were so many missing women along the highways that a task force had been created in the first place. And her mouth went dry when she read that ViCAP and the task force had assisted local authorities to arrest no more than a dozen suspects — all long-haul truckers. There had been two convictions, but more than five hundred open cases were unsolved.

The fact there was an actual federal task force on highway serial killers disturbed her greatly. Cassie’s father had been a long-haul truck driver. The story of how her parents met was a sweet one — how her mother had been hitchhiking back in the days when people actually hitchhiked across the country en route to a Grateful Dead concert in Big Sur — when the ex-Marine with a buzz cut named Bill Scribner picked her up in his Kenworth. The unlikely pair disagreed on everything except their attraction for each other.

Scribner was based in Wyoming and he drove his truck for eleven months and hunted elk the other, and he could quote Shakespeare and Paul Harvey without missing a beat. He wanted to marry but Cassie’s mother refused to engage in the formality of a ceremony and a contract, so they had an understanding of sorts. He doted on Cassie during his rare overnight visits, and he’d taken her on several cross-country runs when she was ten and eleven. While he drove and the country went by, he told her that Americans had a restless gene and he must have been double-dosed with it. But he said he performed an important and honorable service, and he was proud of his profession. He told Cassie that professional long-haul truck drivers like himself were “Knights of the Road” and they had their own code of conduct and civility. She remembered him telling her he was “building America, one truckload at a time.” She was proud of him also, and noted how other truckers looked up to him with respect and admiration when he strode into truck stops or met foremen to pick up or drop off a load. There was even a time when she thought she’d like to follow in his footsteps. She wanted to be a Knight of the Road, too.

But Bill was struck down with inoperable brain cancer that took him down so quickly he was dead by her thirteenth birthday.

Still, though, she thought of her father and those glorious trips through a warm sentimental haze. And she was disgusted there were a few drivers out there who had penetrated the knighthood in an evil way.

From the darkened doorway, Ben said, “Momma, what are you doing? What are you looking at?” and she was jolted back to the present. She reflexively reached up and closed the laptop screen.

“Ben…”

“I miss Dad,” Ben said, and stepped into the light. He was five years old, wearing his flannel pajamas with the cowboy print. His feet were bare and looked cold. He was dark-headed and chubby, like his mother.

“Come here,” she said, sliding back in her chair and opening her arms.

He shuffled forward, arms to his sides, and thumped his head into her breasts.

“I miss him,” Ben said, his voice muffled by her clothing.

“I know you do, honey. So do I. But you need to get to bed and get some sleep.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Ah.”

“Maybe if I got a snack.”

“I’ll get you a glass of milk.”

“And maybe some cake…”

“No cake,” she said, extricating herself. “Milk and off to bed.”

As he settled into a chair she poured a glass of milk from the refrigerator after checking the expiration date. Her mother was loath to throw anything away until it was consumed. The milk was okay.

“What are you doing?” Ben asked when she sat back down.

“Working. Sometimes I have to work late.”

He nodded, not very empathetic, and gulped the milk down and shivered.

“Don’t drink so fast,” she said.

He shrugged.

Before he could settle in, she guided him out of the kitchen and down the dark hall. As they passed the bedroom occupied by her mother, she heard, “Cassie? Is everything all right?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“I heard talking.”

“Ben.”

“Is he sick again?”

“Just sleepwalking,” she said. She wasn’t sure why she fudged on the answer.

“I’m not sleepwalking,” Ben whispered over his shoulder. Cassie shushed him.

“There’s cake in the fridge,” her mother called out.

“I told you,” Ben said accusingly.

“Good night,” Cassie sang through the door to her mother.

Her mother said something else she didn’t hear, and Cassie ushered Ben to bed and tucked him in. She straightened up his blankets and quilts against the cold and kissed him good night on the cheek.

“Night, Ben.”

“Night, Mom. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

A shaft of moonlight from the window illuminated the framed photos on Ben’s dresser. Three photos of his father Jim Dewell, one in the dress uniform after basic, two in his desert fatigues. In the one Ben liked best, Jim leaned back against a wall of sandbags cradling a machine gun. He wore a pistol on his belt and a smirk on his face.

Ben didn’t actually miss his father because he’d never met him. But he knew if he said it, Cassie would always react with sympathy. Cassie knew it, too. She sometimes wondered if she’d done the right thing, raised Ben the right way. But she was new at this, and didn’t know better. She’d had no real road map from her own mother.

Ben was a boy through and through. He spent hours wordlessly disassembling his toys and putting them back together. He knew the makes and models of cars and trucks on the street, and he’d declared recently that as soon as he could he wanted to hunt deer and elk. There was a poster of Tim Tebow when he was the Bronco quarterback, on his wall despite her grandmother’s disdain for the man and his overt Christianity. Ben’s career path, he’d stated without doubt over breakfast cereal the week before, was to be an NFL quarterback, join the army, and drive tanks and later tractors. He wouldn’t get married and he’d eat elk meat for dinner. Cassie had stifled a smile when her mother reacted to the declaration with outright horror.

She closed his door and padded down the dark hallway, considered going to her own bedroom, and decided against it for now. She was still too wired. She thought of the missing Sullivan girls, Cody out there somewhere not responding, the way the sheriff had played her, and raising a boy in a home with a mother who worked too many hours and a grandmother who was crazy as a tick. She tried not to resent Jim for getting killed and abandoning her. It always bothered her that she’d never seen that gleeful smirk he showed in the photo in real life. Like he was really enjoying what he was doing and Afghanistan in general, and certainly much more than working back at the state highway shop to pay the mortgage with a fat wife and a crying baby at home.

He’d died in the Battle of Wanat in 2008 in Afghanistan. She was eight months pregnant at the time. The official letter from the Department of Defense said Jim Dewell had been killed when two hundred Taliban guerillas attacked the village in the province of Nuristan. Eight other Americans had been killed and twenty-seven wounded. An investigation launched by the government concluded that no negligence was involved and that “by their valor and their skill, they successfully defended their positions and defeated a determined, skillful, and adaptable enemy.” Words from a different era, she thought when she read them, about a battle no one had heard of in a war no one cared about.

Except Ben, of course, who idolized his father with Cassie’s encouragement. To Ben, his father was a hero and a god. No man — or Cassie — could compare with poor dead Jim. She was proud of her husband, that he’d given his life for the country. They knew she was pregnant when he shipped out. They’d married the week after she told him. And if he hadn’t been killed, he was due back for the birth. She wondered if he thought of her in his last seconds. She wondered if he thought they’d had a happy marriage. And she wondered if she did. It seemed so long ago.

Then bam! — five years. Five years with Ben as the only man in her life. Five years where she didn’t dare bring a man home who would pale in comparison with the mythic Jim Ben believed in. Not that there hadn’t been a few opportunities. Unmarried — and a few married — men at both the academy and the sheriff’s department had tried. A couple were even, maybe, okay. Not drug addicts or rednecks or total losers. Maybe there would be a right time, and a right man. When Ben could handle it, and maybe even encourage it. But Cassie couldn’t imagine when that would be.

Cassie stopped and closed her eyes and tried to picture Jim in her mind. It frightened her she couldn’t see his face anymore. And it bothered her that when she thought of him she recalled the photo on Ben’s dresser instead.

She checked her cell phone on the table for messages. There were none. Then, keeping the laptop closed, she hesitated for a moment and called Jenny Hoyt’s phone. Cassie didn’t want to get immersed again in the contents of her laptop, or speculate without evidence.

Jenny answered after one ring.

“I’m sorry to call you so late. Were you sleeping?”

“I wish I could. But it’s okay. I was just sitting here waiting and when the phone rang I thought it might be Cody.”

Cassie paused. “So he hasn’t been in touch?”

“Not for a while. Two hours, to be exact. He texted Justin and asked if he’d heard anything from those girls, and he sent me a text saying he was meeting with a highway patrolman in Emigrant. I haven’t heard anything since.”

Cassie imagined Cody drinking, spewing his philosophy and buying rounds for the local alcoholics. Forgetting to check his phone or not caring enough to do so.

“My mind just keeps conjuring up things,” Jenny said as much to herself as to Cassie, Cassie thought. “Like maybe he got into some kind of trouble. Or if he’s on another goddamned toot. I want to think that isn’t the case. I know there are dead spots down there without cell service. But…” she trailed off.

Cassie wasn’t sure what to say. “I haven’t heard from him, either.”

“I’m his wife,” Jenny said sharply. “He knows the rules. He’s supposed to check in.”

Silence.

Cassie tried to make her voice professional, to jolt Jenny out of her pique. “I’m working on the case with him. I was corresponding with him back and forth. He needs me to do background. When was the last time you called his phone?”

“Fifteen minutes ago,” Jenny said, her voice cracking. “Even though he made me promise years ago not to call him when he was on an investigation. He was always afraid he’d forget to mute his phone and the ring would create a problem. But this is an emergency, so I called. But it rang a few times and went straight to his stupid message.”

“I see,” Cassie said.

“I’m getting scared. And Justin is”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“wrung out. He’s not sure to be mad at his father or worried about him. And this Ted Sullivan has called twice wanting to talk directly to Cody. He’s getting hysterical, like he blames us for this. He acts like I’m keeping Cody from talking to him or something. I want to tell him to piss up a rope, but I understand how he feels. I can’t even imagine what he’s going through. Or the girls’ mother.”

“Let me know if Cody calls or texts,” Cassie said.

After a beat, Jenny said, “I will.”

“I’ll do the same.”

“Okay.” Then, “Now I’m really getting worried.”

Cassie didn’t respond.

“If he’s on a toot,” Jenny said, “I’ll personally kill him. I will, I swear.”

Cassie nodded. She understood. “I’m getting off the phone in case he calls.”

“Good idea. Me, too.”

Cassie sat back down at the table and glanced at the clock. Too long, she thought. Even if Cody had lost control of himself he would have at least lied to them by now.

On impulse, Cassie keyed Cody’s cell phone number and pressed SEND. It rang twice and she was surprised by the soft electronic click on the other end. Cody had answered.

“Cody, Cassie Dewell. I haven’t heard back from you—”

The call terminated. She looked at her phone to verify what happened. Cody had answered, but immediately dropped the call. Or was the cell signal on the other send so poor it couldn’t maintain the connection?

She tried again. When it went directly to voice mail, she repeated herself and said, “and neither has Jenny. Obviously, we’re getting concerned. Contact us as soon as possible, even if you don’t have anything to report. If I don’t hear from you in fifteen minutes, I’m going to blow the cover off this. I assume you don’t want that to happen.”

She hesitated, wondering if she should say more, then killed the call.

Then she glanced at the digital clock on the stove and noted the time.

27

Ronald C. Pergram, The Lizard King, nosed the Case tractor onto the trailer for the second time that night. The cold night air within the cab smelled of diesel fumes and upturned soil. Hard white stars undulated through the spires of exhaust from the engine.

When the tracks and tires were firmly on the platform, he killed the engine and climbed out. His back ached and his neck was stiff from tension and concentrating on the work and he could barely turn it. Because of the harsh white light thrown by the headlamps of the tractor as he dug the second large hole in the floor of the mountain valley, his eyes weren’t yet acclimated to the dark. His ears rang from the percussive rattle of the engine that was now ticking furiously as it cooled. So furiously, he almost didn’t hear the burr of the cell phone in the dark behind him.

So instead of chaining the tractor to the trailer and tightening the turnbuckles, he stepped off the platform onto the soft dirt and cocked his head toward the sound. He saw the phone light up in the gloom about twenty feet away at belt level. Then it rose and illuminated Legerski’s wide face in the light. Pergram saw Legerski press the phone to his ear for a second or two, then lower it and kill the call.

He waited. Legerski just stood there in the dark, saying nothing. Then: “Shit.”

“Who was that?”

“Some woman,” Legerski said. “Trouble, maybe.”

“Meaning what?”

The trooper held the phone out. “She might be the one who’s been sending him stuff all night.”

Pergram was confused for a moment, but the confusion was overtaken by sudden anger. “You kept that deputy’s phone? Why didn’t you throw it in the hole with the truck? What the hell are you thinking?”

Pergram’s last glimpse of Cody Hoyt’s pickup was as he pushed it into the huge hole with the blade on the front of the tractor. From the height of the cab, he could look down over the bed of the vehicle and see Hoyt’s body doubled over on the passenger seat floorboard. The side and back windows of the vehicle were spattered from the inside with blood and hair and brain matter. Legerski had stood off to the side as if supervising the work, which the Lizard King resented the hell out of. As far as he was concerned, someone who’d never operated heavy equipment had no right waving his arms around or shouting, “Can’t you make the hole deeper?” Nevertheless, he’d dug out a fifteen-foot-deep casket-shaped hole, pushed the truck into it, and carefully backfilled the excavation and run his treads over the top to tamp down the soil. When he was through it looked similar to the excavation he’d done earlier in the night and multiple times before: like a grave for a giant. When the hole was filled, he raked over the mound with the teeth of the backhoe to make it look more natural to the naked eye. After a winter of heavy snow and the spring runoff, they’d seed it with prairie grass seed pinched from the highway department shop that would sprout on the top and reclaim the bare ground. Within a year, it would be difficult to tell the topsoil had ever been disturbed. While he worked, he ignored Legerski in the dark but was aware the trooper was standing there, head down, looking at his phone.

But it turned out it wasn’t his phone. It was Cody Hoyt’s phone. And Legerski still had it.

“We might have a problem,” Legerski said.

“Hell yes we do. I’m working my ass off to erase all the evidence and you’re carrying around the phone of a cop you murdered. Why didn’t you get rid of it? Throw it in there? Wasn’t the hole big enough for you?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Legerski said. His voice was flat.

Pergram shut his mouth.

“Do what you need to do to get that tractor secure,” the trooper said. “We need to talk inside.”

He gestured toward the cab of the one-ton truck they’d used to bring the tractor out. Pergram had driven, keeping tight to the bumper of Hoyt’s pickup, which was driven by Legerski, now in civilian clothes. The trooper had left his uniform in his cruiser and hidden the cruiser behind the First National Bar.

As Pergram secured the chains from the trailer to the tractor and tightened the turnbuckles, he seethed with resentment. He didn’t like the way Legerski had spoken to him, in that tone, the way he put him off and said he’d wait inside. The way he’d been talking to him all night, ordering him around, giving him commands since the shooting. And the whole time he was holding Hoyt’s phone — a piece of equipment that could tie them directly to the dead cop.

The Lizard King didn’t like to be told what to do. Still, though, he’d done what Legerski had ordered. They really hadn’t talked since the shooting; it had all been one-way.

Pergram paused for a moment before climbing up into the cab of the one-ton. He hadn’t quite processed what had happened or how they’d deal with it. The girls he’d brought in seemed like a vague and distant memory because so much had transpired since. He needed sleep, rest, food, and time to gather his thoughts. The handful of white crosses — known as “trucker speed”—he’d taken earlier would soon wear off. Then he needed the kind of release he dreamed about.

He climbed up into the cab and shut the door. Legerski sat there, staring out the dirty windshield.

“Start it up, will you? I’m freezing to death.”

Pergram started the motor and goosed the heater fan.

“It’ll take a few minutes.”

“Yeah.”

“You shot a fucking cop,” Pergram said. “That isn’t what I signed up for.”

“And you buried him.”

“But what now? We’re fucked. You know what they do when you shoot one of their own, you of all people.”

Legerski shrugged. “He used to be a cop. Not anymore. He was suspended. And he wasn’t well liked. He had a reputation for going off the reservation.”

“Still…”

“I know,” Legerski said. “I can tell you’re pissed at me. But what did you want me to do? Let him dig until he figured everything out? Is that what you would have done?”

Pergram shook his head, uncertain what the trooper was talking about.

“That’s right,” Legerski said. “The guy was a fucking bulldog. I tried to steer him toward the church but he wanted to start kicking doors down tonight. And he wanted me to go along with him. We wouldn’t have had time for any kind of damage control before the shit hit the fan.”

The trooper held out the phone he’d taken from Cody’s body. “He’s got someone working the back end, some broad. I think I know who it might be. She’s been sending him texts and e-mails all night. That was her who called — someone named Cassie. Most of the stuff she sent is just things she pulled off the Internet and forwarded. But I saw where he asked her to pull the cases on those missing girls.”

Pergram just stared. He didn’t get what Legerski was saying.

“You’re the one who pointed him toward the church,” Pergram said. “He was going where you pointed him.”

Legerski sighed impatiently and his eyes flashed in the moonlight. For the first time, Pergram wondered if the trooper would pull the gun he’d used on Hoyt and kill him now that the dead cop and his pickup were buried. After all, he could pin everything on the Lizard King.…

“Try to keep up with me here,” Legerski said patiently. “I thought he’d work through the sheriff’s department in Livingston or through the state. That means me, where I could direct traffic and make sure the investigation got stymied whenever it got too close. I had no idea he’d be crazy enough to show up tonight, or show up at all himself. Normal cops don’t do things like that. He’s not even in his county, so even if he wasn’t suspended he’d need permission and cooperation down here. But by coming here himself … it screwed up everything. I had no choice.”

“But did you have to kill him? I didn’t like the asshole either, but—”

“He was starting to ask about you,” Legerski said. “Tonight. We hadn’t even gone out to the compound yet and he was already asking about you.”

Pergram felt his mouth go dry, and it wasn’t just a symptom of the white crosses.

“He was going to put things together pretty fast,” Legerski said. “When the church thing didn’t go the way he wanted — and you know the situation there — he was going to shift his attention to you. With his helper up in Helena checking missing persons and with access to all the law enforcement databases, it would be a matter of time before he came after you.”

Pergram said, “Which means you might be exposed.”

“Which means I’d be exposed.”

“For a minute there, I thought you were trying to help me,” Pergram said. “I feel better now when I know you’re only looking out for yourself.”

Legerski snorted. “We’ve got this thing. But we aren’t exactly blood brothers.”

Pergram acknowledged the truth of that with a nod. He wished he wasn’t so addled from exhaustion right now so he could think more clearly. He had the suspicion Legerski was setting something up but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

Why wouldn’t Legerski simply pull the untraceable throwdown piece he’d used on Hoyt and pop him? Then set up some kind of semiplausible narrative where the Lizard King went down for his acts?

Then it came to him. And he relaxed. He hoped his face didn’t portray what he’d just realized — that Legerski could never harm Pergram as long as Pergram knew where evidence was that could incriminate him.

“So what do we do next?” Pergram asked, thinking of the steps he’d need to take to make sure the trooper didn’t get ahead of him and figure out how to eliminate him from the picture.

“I know what we don’t do. We don’t spend any time with those girls except to dump off some food and water.”

“Fuck that,” Pergram said. “I didn’t deliver them so we could keep them holed up. I need what I need.”

“You’ll get it,” Legerski said, his tone once again fused with the firm arrogance he’d used earlier. “But you’ll have to wait until we’re clear. Once we’re clear, we do the whole thing just like we talked about. But not until I say we’re clear. Got that?

“It’ll get hot for a couple of days,” Legerski said. “I’ve got to be nimble. This broad”—he shook the phone as if she were inside—“knows he met with me. I’ll be the first stop when they look into it, so I’ve just got to cooperate and not throw off any suspicion. I can do that — I’ve done it all my life. And it won’t take long before things go cold. They always do when there aren’t any solid leads.”

Pergram stared hard at the trooper. Not for the first time, he considered what his world would be like without him. He thought about the .308 in the pocket of his jumpsuit, and ran through a scenario where he drew it, worked the slide, and put a bullet into Legerski’s face. He’d practiced the move enough so he knew he could do it quickly.

But then what? The next steps flummoxed him, although he savored the thought of having those girls to himself. At least until they came for him, the cops.

And he recalled why they’d gone into business together in the first place. Legerski needed a delivery mechanism for victims. And Pergram needed local protection.

“We still need each other,” Legerski said, as if reading his mind.

“Yeah.”

“So we stay away from them except to dump off the food. We do this together or not at all.”

“Yeah, okay. But how long are we talking about? I’ve got another run in two days.”

“That should be enough time,” Legerski said.

“So what are you going to do?”

Legerski turned from him and fixed on something in the dark outside the windshield. “I’m going to work it from the inside,” he said softly. “I’m going to stay on top of everything that’s going on by making sure I’m in the middle of it. I’m going to take control, because that’s what I do and that’s what I’m good at. I can take this thing to dead-end after dead-end until there’s no place else to go. The case will probably stay open for years, but there’s no way they’ll ever close it. I’ll make sure it gets tied up into knots.”

“You can do that?”

“Hell, yes. I’ve already gotten rid of the only real threat. If someone follows up they won’t have that crazy look in their eyes. We’re dealing with the typical nine-to-fivers here and they don’t have anything to go on.”

Pergram tried to think like a cop, now that he was more relaxed. “But instead of two missing girls we’ve now got a missing cop, too.”

“Ex-cop,” the trooper said. “And no one can ever determine where the girls went missing unless you fucked something up somewhere. They could have disappeared in Yellowstone, or Wyoming, or Idaho. No one knows where they ended up, right? You didn’t fuck anything up?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, his mind spinning, recalling everything that had transpired.

“Then all they’ve got is a suspended alcoholic who drove down here in the middle of the night and never came back. No one saw him except you, me, and Jimmy. They sure as hell won’t find his vehicle. How are they going to figure that one out? Especially if the lead investigator on the highway — me — gently steers them to where there’s nothing to go on?”

Pergram nodded. He got it. Legerski was way out ahead of him already. So far ahead, Pergram thought, that he’d probably already figured out how to throw him under the bus. Except …

“What about Jimmy?”

“We can trust Jimmy.”

“Can we?”

“Yeah,” Legerski said softly, “I’ll make sure Jimmy is no problem.”

He said it in a way that gave Pergram confidence.

“What about the gimp?” he said. “She’s probably running her mouth and scaring the shit out of those new girls. She’ll have them wanting to die before we get to them.”

Legerski nodded, agreeing. “You take care of her.”

“When? Tonight?”

“How long do you want her to keep talking?”

Pergram saw the logic in it. “I’ll never get to sleep,” he said, moaning.

“Neither will I,” the trooper said, gesturing to the phone.

“I need to get all the texts and e-mails off of it so I know what she knows and who I’m dealing with. Then I’ll flush the SIM card and trash the phone. There won’t be a trace of Cody Hoyt to be found. Believe me, I know how to do this.”

The Lizard King nodded. Then, softening his voice, “We could go to the basement now and see how those girls are doing. Before the sun comes up and things start happening.”

Legerski started to object, but caught himself. He seemed to be considering the idea. Pergram felt buoyed.

At that second, the phone in Legerski’s hand lit up and a text message chimed. He looked at it and spat a curse, then turned it toward Pergram.

It read, CASSIE: I’M ON MY WAY.

28

“Do you know what time it is? What day, even?” Gracie asked Danielle.

“I’m not sure,” Danielle said in a soft, slurred voice.

“He took our phones.”

“Yeah.”

Danielle had awakened an hour before and had been sick to her stomach, like Gracie had been. Gracie had cradled her sister, supporting her, while she threw up in the far corner of the room. There was nothing to clean up the mess, though, and the stagnant air was sour.

There was no light and no seepage in the walls to indicate whether it was morning or night. Gracie had become used to the gloom. The single space heater hummed and glowed orange, creating long dark shadows. It didn’t throw out enough light to illuminate the corners of the room but, like an open fire, it had become the center of their world and she found herself staring at it; thin red coils stretching from left to right, the warm air pushed out by a tiny humming fan. Gracie and Danielle sat cross-legged a few feet from the heater, which was positioned next to the ragged woman. She didn’t give any indication that she planned to move from her spot. The concrete beneath them never really warmed up. They shared a thin blanket. Gracie found herself constantly shifting her position as her buttocks and legs got cold. The blanket was too short to double over so both of them could sit on it, and cold seeped through the fabric.

Danielle slumped forward with her arms wrapped around her knees and stared straight ahead. Her face was slack and her mouth was parted. When Gracie reached over and turned her sister’s face toward her, Danielle’s eyes looked frightening — as if there was nothing behind them. And her sister didn’t resist Gracie’s gesture, or blink.

“Danielle?”

No response.

“Danielle.”

Danielle leaned back and pulled away. Her sister had always been annoying, but in a superconfident, bubbly way. She’d never seen her like this, even in Yellowstone.

Gracie closed her eyes. The situation they were in seemed like a horrible dream. Her head was foggy and she didn’t feel fully conscious. She wondered if she were in shock, and she preferred the sense of cushion of unreality to what it must really be like to be half-naked and imprisoned in a dark cold room with a frightening one-legged woman.

“I feel sick,” Danielle said, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand. “I feel like I could throw up again.” She shot a glance over her shoulder toward the dark corner.

“Try to hold it,” the woman said. “It reeks enough in here as it is.”

The woman’s voice was grating; scratchy and louder than necessary in the small room, as if she could only speak at one level: annoying. It was the kind of harsh voice that penetrated walls.

“Do you know what time it is?” Gracie asked her.

The woman snorted. “You lose track after a while when it’s dark all the time. I don’t have a fucking clue.”

“I’m worried about my sister,” Gracie confessed.

“She’s sick because of the roofies,” the woman said to Gracie. “They usually inject you with roofies. You’ll both be feeling it for a while. My advice is to enjoy it while you can.”

When the woman spoke, her face seemed to collapse in on itself because of her missing teeth.

Gracie nodded, remembering the driver leaning into the car with the needle. Feeling the sharp pain of the needle prick.

“You know,” the woman said, “the date rape drug.”

Gracie nodded, unsure. She feared with Danielle it was something much worse.

Gracie said, “They?”

“What?” the woman asked.

Danielle looked over, confused.

“You said they. We only saw one guy, the truck driver. Are you saying there’s more than him?” The idea terrified her. Not just that there was more than one, but that what the woman suggested was that they were organized. That this wasn’t a first-time thing. That Danielle and her and the woman weren’t the first victims. This room, this terrible place, was a victim factory.

No, Gracie almost yelled out. She couldn’t let it happen to her and her sister. She’d step up and figure out a way to fight back. First, though, she needed more information in order to help form a plan.

“What’s your name?” Gracie asked the woman, taking her off guard.

“What’s your’n?” the woman asked back, cocking her head suspiciously.

“I’m Gracie Sullivan. This is my sister, Danielle.”

“She don’t say much.”

“That isn’t normal, believe me.”

“Danielle and Gracie,” the woman repeated, trying the names out as if they were a foreign language. “I’m Krystyl. That’s spelled K-R-Y-S-T-Y-L. It’s the second y that fucks people up. Krystyl Meecham. I go by my given name, not the name of the asshole I used to be married to.”

Gracie nodded. She’d never met a real person named Krystyl, and thought if she ever did she would probably look like the skeletal one-legged woman a few feet away. But she didn’t say anything, and wanted to get the conversation back to where she’d left it.

“I’m from Salt Lake,” Krystyl said. “Originally. That’s where my family is from. My dad used to say we’re just a tribe of wild-ass redneck jack-Mormons who wouldn’t come to no good. I guess you could look at me and say he was right.”

“You said they,” Gracie prompted.

“Yeah,” Krystyl said, screwing up her face in obvious revulsion. “There’s two of them most of the time, but sometimes there’s three. All of ’em are repulsive fuckers.”

Gracie felt a chill run up her back and it wasn’t from the cold room.

“What … what do they do?” Gracie asked in a whisper.

She couldn’t tell if Krystyl was smiling or grimacing when she said, “What don’t they do? Whatever they can think of. Whatever they want to. You’re just a piece of meat and they do whatever.”

Krystyl sighed and readjusted herself and leaned forward. When she did her body blocked half of the grille panel of the space heater and Gracie felt the absence of heat immediately. “They ream you everywhere. They make you bleed and then they yell at you for bleeding. They put things into you they brought along with them. They’ll laugh and make you feel like a piece of trash until you beg them to just kill you. And they got a camera. They play to the camera.”

Gracie thought Krystyl sounded almost perversely pleased to tell them, and she was physically repelled. Krystyl seemed to have accepted her fate. Gracie couldn’t conceive of giving in.

“I got to admit,” Krystyl said, “I just shut myself off now. I don’t think about what they’re doing to me and I try to think of something nice. I let my mind go far away. Dad used to take us fishing for catfish. I didn’t like it much but that’s what I think about while they’re goin’ at it. Another time and place.”

“Jesus,” Gracie gasped, tears welling in her eyes. She turned to Danielle, horrified. Her sister would likely get the worst of it. But Danielle didn’t seem to understand the conversation.

“Danielle,” Gracie said, “Please talk to me?”

Her sister didn’t respond.

Krystyl said, “Maybe they’ll be nicer to you girls. You’re all young and tight and I guess they’d like that. Me, I’m a hag. I wasn’t always this bad but they made me worse. When you get treated like an animal you turn into one, and I’m no better than a fucking animal to them. Or to me.” Strangely, she cackled at that.

“How long have you been here?” Gracie asked.

“Fuck if I know,” Krystyl said, “Couple weeks, I guess. Longer, maybe.”

“Were there others?”

Krystyl cackled again. “Look at the walls, see the scratch marks? See the blood all over the walls and the floors? There have been plenty of others. I met one of ’em when I first got here. Her name was Bonnie. She was from Oregon somewhere, and she was a bitch on wheels. A real nutcase, but maybe she was because of what they done to her.”

Krystyl shook her head and coughed. “I think she was sort of getting used to them, kind of looking forward to them coming to get her. She acted kind of possessive toward me, like I was the other woman or something. Like I was here to break them up. They put us together once and it was a disaster, so they got rid of her.”

“What do you mean?” Gracie asked.

“One of ’em just took a gun and popped her in the back of the head. Right there in front of me. I ain’t never seen something like that before.

“Now I’ve been thinking they’re getting tired of me. They’d rather use me as a fuckin’ punching bag than anything else anymore. But I figured they might keep me around until they could get some fresh meat. And it looks like they did.”

Gracie found it hard to breathe, and she closed her eyes.

“The driver?” Gracie asked.

“Yeah, he’s one of ’em. He likes to be called the Lizard King. I don’t know his real name and I don’t want to know. And don’t ask me who the other two are, I don’t know. All I know is one is big and fat and the other ain’t. You better do whatever they say or they’ll fuck you up.”

“Where are we?” Gracie asked her. She knew the answer would include the word “fuck” since everything else did.

“Fuck if I know.”

“Are we in Montana?”

“It don’t matter, does it? We’re in fucking hell. That could be Montana.”

Gracie scooted herself toward Danielle on the blanket, as much to be closer to her sister as to feel more of the heat from the space heater Krystyl was blocking with her body.

“Where did they grab you?” Gracie asked. “The truck driver, I mean.”

“Outside Gillette, Wyoming,” Krystyl said. “I was workin’ the truck stop servicing drivers…”

And she suddenly stopped speaking and sucked in her breath. Her cheeks went hollow and her eyes bulged.

“What?” Danielle said in sudden terror, but Gracie shushed her. She’d heard it, too. Or felt it. A footfall or thump of some kind outside the room that vibrated through the concrete.

The three of them sat frozen for a moment. A rectangular metal panel slid back on the door revealing a dim wedge of yellow light. Then a pair of eyes filled the wedge for a moment. The man was looking in at them. The slider slammed shut and they heard a jangle of keys outside the solid wood door.

Danielle gasped Gracie by her arm and they scooted back along the floor, legs pumping. They didn’t stop until their backs were flat against the right corner of the room, the corner where Danielle hadn’t gotten sick.

Gracie watched as if in a dream. She was almost beyond terror at this point. The more sounds there were — jangling keys, the thunk of a bolt being thrown back, the aggressive squeak of rusted hinges — the more her mind seemed to check out. It was as if she’d stepped aside into another room to watch herself, like she wasn’t actually there.

The door swung open and someone filled it. Someone large and blocky, like the driver had been, but she was blinded by an intense flashlight beam in her eyes. Because there had been no real light in the room, the beam blinded her fully. She felt Danielle cower next to her, felt her sister pull up her legs and bury her head behind them, sitting in a tight fetal position.

Although she couldn’t see past the light, the man said, “And how are my two sweethearts doing?”

Gracie couldn’t speak and didn’t want to.

“You’ll get used to it,” the man said. Then Gracie could hear him sniffing.

“If you’re going to throw up, use that chemical toilet over against the wall. Don’t foul your own nest. I’ll bring you a mop and a bucket later to clean this place up.”

Gracie had seen the white plastic box but didn’t know what it was. The flashlight burned her face and she shut her eyes against it.

“Don’t act so damned scared,” the man said.

“Who are you?” Gracie asked.

“Your new best friend,” he said, and prodded the flashlight beam toward Danielle. “What — don’t she know how to talk?”

“She’s scared. We’re both scared.”

Then, turning and whipping his flashlight away from them toward Krystyl, “What kind of shit has she been feeding you girls, anyway?”

Neither answered. Gracie heard the scuffle of heavy shoes on the concrete floor, the voice no longer directed at them. She opened her eyes to see the beam of light still on Krystyl, who refused to look at it. The powerful light made hollows out of her eyes as it hit the side of her face.

“What have you been telling them, anyway? You been lying to them? Filling them with your shit?”

“No.” Krystyl’s voice was resigned, as if the lie was perfunctory.

“Come with me, gimp.”

Gracie couldn’t tell if there was more than one man at the door. She didn’t think so but there was no way of knowing it.

The man clicked off his flashlight and it was totally dark.

“I said”—and there was a heavy blow and a grunt of expelled air from Krystyl—“come with me, gimp.”

“I ain’t movin.”

“The hell you ain’t.”

And with that Gracie heard two more solid blows, the slap of flesh, and a pathetic scream that faded into a low moan.

“Here,” the man said to them, “Here’s something to eat.” She heard the sound of a paper bag hitting the floor and a second later something cold and cylindrical bumped against her foot. The sensation of it made her jump.

“See you girls later,” the man said, and Gracie blinked and looked up.

Through and around green spangles in her eyes from being blinded, she saw Krystyl’s body being dragged across the floor by her hair. The man was strong and pulled Krystyl through the door quickly. Then the door shut and the keys jangled and they were alone.

She looked down, still not quite there, and saw that the object that had rolled into her foot was a bottle of water. There were several other bottles on the floor as well, scattered when the bag broke open. It looked like convenience store food: packages of burritos and sandwiches and candy and nuts and a tin of Altoid mints.

Although it was impossible to determine if it came from outside the structure or simply from the other side of the door, she heard a scream, then a pop.

“Oh Jesus, we’ve got to get out of here,” Gracie said with urgency.

Danielle didn’t respond.

Gracie thought, We will escape. We will survive.

She would find a way. And it was up to her, and her alone.

29

Cassie Dewell was wired and tired. She sat fuming in the predawn in the county Ford Expedition last used by Cody Hoyt to plant evidence at the Tokely crime scene. It had been a bad morning so far and she couldn’t anticipate the day getting better. She’d parked in an alcove of skeletal aspen trees on the shoulder of the county road as the sky turned a rose color over the western mountains. An icy breeze rattled the dried leaves and sent them skittering down on the hood of the Ford and the asphalt of the road. Through her windshield, she surveyed the vast immensity of Sheriff Tubman’s frosted lawn and the magnificent home at the top of the hill flanked by tall Austrian pines.

Wired and tired, she thought.

Inside, it was as if Cody were sitting next to her. It smelled of stale cigarette smoke, fast food, and Cody’s lingering musky male odor. On the way there on the winding mountain road, she’d spilled half the go cup of coffee from McDonald’s on herself, and she’d cursed the girl who hadn’t fitted the plastic lid on tightly before passing it through the drive-through window. The sting of the hot liquid on the skin of her inner thighs had ceased, but her slacks were stained and she sat in a soggy puddle. Cody was very particular about keeping the Ford neat and free of detritus that was a given in a vehicle used for long drives and stakeouts. He’d glare at her if she didn’t properly dispose of a wrapper and he’d bark if she forgot to clear the cup holders of empty cans or bottles whenever they stopped to get out. They’d spent hours together inside the Ford and this was the first time she’d been alone in it or spilled anything inside. She didn’t like it, either.

The empty Ford only reminded her she was on her own. Although she’d found the strength to raise a child and pursue her career without a husband around, this was something new. It was so much easier to second-guess Cody than it was to take the lead and Cody was right: she didn’t have the experience to confidently make the right moves. Lacking experience, she had to draw on a well of strength that, she hoped, wasn’t running dry.

Steam from the spilled coffee fogged inside of the windshield, and she reached forward and cleaned a loopy circle of it with the few dry McDonald’s napkins she had left. Through the circle, she could see the long circular driveway that cut through the lawn to the Tubman house and exited fifty yards farther on the county road. The house was three stories and built of varnished logs. It had a steep roof, gables, and knotty pine columns out front hung with arts-and-crafts-style iron lanterns. On the side of the house was a trailer topped with four four-wheelers and another trailer with snow machines. A gigantic fifth-wheel recreational trailer nosed out from the trees from behind the structure.

The whole scene reminded her of a description she’d heard Cody Hoyt use more than once: “That’s a pile of Montana money.” Meaning the place was ostentatious in a laid-back, rural mountain way. But there was no doubt it cost a bundle.

She’d kept the Ford running but placed it in park to keep warm. Far up on the driveway, near the porch of the sheriff’s home, was a small orange cylinder-shaped object. That morning’s copy of the Helena Independent, delivered while it was still dark. She knew how important the newspaper was to Tubman, how he pored over every item and article that might mention the department, the county, his rivals, or him in particular. She assumed he’d come out soon to retrieve it.

When he did, he’d be in the open. And, she hoped, surprised by her presence and subsequent request.

A light came on in one of the upstairs windows. No one looked out. She waited, and another light lit the windows on the bottom floor on the right side of the house. She assumed it was the kitchen. Tubman was probably making coffee. Retrieving the paper would be next.

She reached up and grasped the shifter and engaged the transmission and rolled slowly forward. If this didn’t go as she envisioned it, she thought, she might be doomed within the department and out on the street looking for work. Her stomach burbled and she set her mouth.

Wired and tired …

Earlier, Cassie was at home at the kitchen table in front of her laptop at four forty-five in the morning when her mother had flowed into the room. She’d spent the last three and a half hours digging deeply into Google and ViCAP and RIMN, both law-enforcement databases, finding what she could on the principals from the Church of Glory and Transcendence.

Cassie found it notable how information about the church, its membership, and its leadership had stopped abruptly following the death of founder and leader Stacy Smith three years before. Prior to her death, communication from the church was everywhere. Smith was quoted in local newspapers, national newsmagazines, and radio and television interviews. She seemed warm, kindly, and charismatic. Citizens in the area around the church seemed to tolerate and even like her and her membership in a “live-and-let-live” manner. But when Smith died, it was as if a clamp had been placed on the outflow of information. As if the new leadership wanted to operate in secrecy, or at least keep their heads down so they wouldn’t be noticed. There was also a dearth of statements from ex-members as there had been before Smith’s death.

She wondered if the membership, once burned, was quietly stocking up and rearming again for the apocalypse. Only this time, they wouldn’t let their neighbors in on the date? Arming up, Cassie knew, wasn’t an unusual phenomenon at all in the state and throughout the Rockies. With the poor economy and national financial crisis, sales of guns and ammunition were at record levels. She’d read departmental memos about it. More and more people were dropping out, arming up, and stockpiling food and gear.

Cassie speculated that the remaining membership was literally bunkered in. All indications were that the membership had foresworn interaction with the locals, and they’d made a conscious decision not to engage in any outreach. Since the membership had been built in the first place through aggressive proselytizing, this new tact seemed to go against the grain. How would the church survive and pay the mortgage on the property, Cassie wondered, if they didn’t grow?

Maybe, she thought, they were adding to their ranks by abducting young, lost people found along the nation’s highways?

She felt sorry for the parents of the Sullivan girls who were no doubt entertaining terrible scenarios of their own. She tried to put herself in their place. What if Ben was missing?

It was too horrible to contemplate.

She’d also delved deeply into the information provided by the FBI’s Highway Serial Killer Task Force. She’d been reading about a trucker named Bruce Meersham who’d been arrested and convicted of killing and dismembering a truck stop prostitute the previous year. Meersham had been caught by happenstance by a highway patrol officer at Interstate 24 near Nashville. The trooper had been hidden in a speed trap and couldn’t be seen from the highway, and the truck hadn’t been speeding. But as a tractor trailer passed by, the highway patrolman observed a plastic bag thrown from the window that landed twenty yards away.

The trooper noted the license plate of the semi, then checked out the bag of refuse and found a pair of severed female hands. He called it in, and Meersham was arrested fifty miles away at a weigh station. Inside the cab of his Mack, law enforcement found three more tightly wrapped plastic bags of body parts all belonging to the same woman. Meersham was arrested and later convicted of murder, and he refused to cooperate further although it was highly suspected he’d been involved in multiple similar crimes across the country. He entered prison at age fifty-seven. Cassie shook her head. There was no way a man started doing that at age fifty-seven. She wondered how long he’d been at it, how many women he’d kidnapped, raped, mutilated, and scattered across the country over the years, and how many others like him were out there. She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t tear herself away from that line of inquiry in regard to the missing Sullivan girls. But the more she read, the more agitated and angry she became.

When this was over, she vowed, when the girls were located and Cody was found, she wanted to learn more about the phenomenon because it chilled her. She knew from the academy and her limited experience that when someone was missing or a body found, the investigation became intensely local. Who knew the victim? Who might want to harm the victim? Who might know the history of the victim and their interaction with others in the area? That’s where they started. In fact, that’s exactly the methodology Cody used to target B. G. Myers.

But if the killer wasn’t local, if he was simply passing through the state and would be gone again in hours, how could law enforcement track him down? And if a serial killer was strategic and diabolical, what better profession to take up than becoming a long-haul trucker?

She shivered and felt the hairs on her arm rise.

And Cody hadn’t checked in with her. She’d expected a reply of some sort to her text telling him she was on the way. Either warning her off or telling her where to meet him. But there had been nothing.

Her mother walked heavily across the linoleum in the kitchen in her bare feet, her robe billowing around her.

“Your constant clacking is keeping me awake and giving me a headache,” her mother said dramatically. “I hope I haven’t used up all the Tylenol.”

“My clacking?”

“What you do on your computer,” her mother said, mimicking Cassie by holding her hands up and waggling her fingers as if typing manically on a keyboard.

“I’ve tried to be as quiet as I could.”

“Plus, I can hear you moan. And sometimes you snort.”

Cassie sighed and sat back, her concentration broken. She stared at her mother. She was wearing the robe Cassie disliked, the one with the huge batik face of Che Guevara wearing his beret across the front. “I know,” her mother said, gesturing at her robe. “I know you hate it.”

“He was a totalitarian and a cold-blooded murderer.”

“You have your opinion,” her mother said, sniffing.

“It’s not my opinion. He was a brute. Do some research, Mom. He’s nobody to celebrate. Around Ben, especially.”

“It’s just a sentimental thing to me,” her mother said. She’d once claimed she bought the robe from a vendor on the way to Woodstock in 1969. Around the time she’d changed her name from Margie to Isabel because Isabel sounded more exotic and revolutionary. Cassie knew Isabel’s participation at Woodstock never happened, although she had no doubt her mother had come to believe it over the years. If all the people of her mother’s generation who claimed to have been at Woodstock had actually been there, Cassie knew, the concert would have hosted millions more kids than were actually there. But there was no point in getting into that argument again.

Isabel looked down at her robe and said, “Besides, he’s very handsome.”

“For a killer.”

“How did I raise a girl to be so judgmental?” her mother said, distracted by the difficulty of the childproof cap on the bottle of Tylenol.

Cassie bit her lip. She wanted to say, You never raised me at all. You dumped me with Grandma and Grandpa while you chased around the country for your causes. Sometimes I saw more of Bill than I saw of you. But it was a fight she couldn’t have, because she needed her mother there for Ben. Isabel had spent the first half of her life neglecting her and the second half engaging in unspoken extortion.

“Let me open it,” Cassie said, and her mother handed over the bottle.

Cassie unscrewed the cap and gave it back.

“What’s so important that you need to keep me awake all night with your clacking?” her mother asked, shaking three tablets into the palm of her hand.

“I’ve got a pair of missing teenage girls and now a missing partner,” Cassie said flatly.

Her mother paused and looked at her with discomfort. She was sixty-two years old, wide-faced and blousy, with once-red hair that was so infused with gray it looked pink. She didn’t like uncomfortable subjects, like missing people.

“Here in town?” her mother asked.

“No. Somewhere out on the highway.

“Why is it your concern?”

“I’m a cop.”

“I know,” her mother said, turning to fill a glass of water, “I just like to pretend you aren’t.”

“What would you rather have me do?” Cassie asked, feeling the heat rise in her neck. And immediately regretting she’d asked.

“I don’t know,” her mother said with a sigh, and Cassie was grateful she’d diffused the question. Anything to avoid an argument with her strong-willed daughter. After all, nasty little asides and innuendos worked better for her over the long run and always had.

“Mom,” Cassie said, “I’ll probably have to go out of town for the day.”

Her mother swallowed the pills one by one before saying, “When will you get home?”

“I don’t know for sure.”

“I have my book club at six. You know that. We’re doing a Wally Lamb book and you know I have some things to say.”

“I know,” Cassie said. “I don’t ask you to do this very often. But I might not be able to get back by five.”

“This is happening with more frequency,” her mother said. The words weren’t said in anger, but in a kind of martyred resignation.

“This is important, Mom. I really appreciate you being able to take care of Ben, and I know it’s tough on you. But we’re talking about the lives of two girls, and who knows what with my former partner.”

Isabel screwed up her face at the mention of Cody Hoyt. They’d not hit it off when they met for the first time the previous summer. Cody and Cassie had been headed toward the Justice Center to clock out for the evening when they saw half a dozen people chanting on the courthouse steps. Cody pulled to the curb to ogle them, and Cassie pointed out her mother, who had brought Ben along to the Occupy Helena demonstration. When Isabel walked over with Ben in tow, Cody had sized her up from head to foot, from stocking cap to Keen sandals, with a sneer on his face. He waited until Ben was out of earshot and told Isabel, “Only lazy slackers on food stamps have the leisure time to chant slogans. The rest of us have to work.”

Isabel said, “He’s the awful misogynist redneck you work with?”

Cassie nodded, surprised by the half-smile pulling at her mouth. “He’s not a misogynist, necessarily,” she said. “He hates everyone equally.”

“Well, if I were you—”

“You aren’t,” Cassie said, cutting Isabel off. She closed her laptop harder than necessary.

Cassie had dressed and driven her Honda to the Justice Center and exchanged her car for the Ford at the transportation desk. The officer behind the counter was surprised she was in so early and wanted to talk, but Cassie signed out the vehicle, took the keys, waved him off, and walked down the silent halls of the sheriff’s department. She hoped she could find somebody interested in going with her to find Cody, even though the prospects were slim.

As she passed forensics, she saw a bar of light under the door and knocked. Alexa Manning, the young crime scene tech, let her in. They were both surprised to see each other. Alexa was tall and slim with bone-white skin and short-cropped black hair and small brown eyes. Cassie didn’t know Alexa well, but the two had a bond because they were both single women in the department and had each heard grumbling and whispered asides about their unavailability because “one was fat and stuck up and the other one’s a dyke.”

Alexa was working late on the Tokely case, she said, because her vacation started that day and she wanted to get as much work done as possible before she and her partner went to Moab for the holiday weekend. Cassie sighed, resigned to the fact that Alexa wouldn’t be able to go with her either, and asked Alexa what she’d found out. Alexa beamed.

“We’ve got B. G. Myers at the scene,” she said.

Cassie sighed. “I know about the wrappers you found in the trash can.”

“We’ve got more.”

“Really? What?” Cassie was genuinely surprised.

“On the south side of the house there was a set of tire tracks and boot prints frozen into the mud. Do you remember seeing them?”

“No.”

“Cody pointed them out to us and we made plaster casts. And guess what? The tire treads match up with the tires on Myers’s pickup. And the boot prints are the same size and sole as Myers’s work boots.”

Cassie took that in. “So that means…”

“We’ve got that guy dead to rights that he was absolutely there at Roger Tokely’s house.”

“So the wrappers and the stuff we found in the trash?”

“That’s good, too, but we can’t use them because Cody put them there. Luckily, they steered us in the right direction and we found more to corroborate the theory. The more evidence, the better, right? That’s what you guys always tell us.”

Cassie looked at the plaster casts on the workbench and the photos Alexa had taken of the tires and B. G.’s boots. They matched up.

“Good work,” Cassie said.

“You don’t sound that excited. Shouldn’t you be more excited? I am. This is the first murder investigation I’ve been on and we cracked it, man.”

“I am excited.”

Alexa laughed uncomfortably, as if she couldn’t figure out what she’d done wrong.

“Really,” Cassie said. “This should do it. Thanks for working late to nail it down.”

Alexa nodded, still perplexed.

“One question,” Cassie said.

“Shoot.”

“If you and Tex didn’t have that receipt and the wrappers, would you ever have thought to go up to B. G.’s place and photograph his tires? Or his boots?”

Alexa looked at Cassie as if she were crazy.

“Of course not,” Alexa said. “What — do you think we’d drive around the whole friggin’ county trying to match up this plaster cast to a hundred thousand random tread patterns? Do you realize how many old trucks there are in Lewis and Clark County?”

Sheriff Tubman padded down his driveway in a blue bathrobe cinched tight and fat moccasin slippers. His hair was mussed and his ankles were skinny and mottled and so white they almost looked blue in the dawn. As he bent over to retrieve his newspaper he heard the sound of the motor and looked up, puzzled.

Cassie watched him closely as he registered who was in the county Ford. As she pulled up in front of him and stopped, he rose to full height and squinted at her through the windshield, holding the newspaper down at his side. His studied arrogance hadn’t kicked in yet, which is what she counted on.

She shoved the big Ford into park and climbed out. The front bumper of the vehicle was just a few feet away from him. She got out and shut the door but kept the engine running. The purr of the motor was the only sound.

“Nice place,” she said, walking up alongside the vehicle. She took a side step at the front and leaned back against the grille and crossed her arms under her breasts. It was a posture she’d seen Cody Hoyt assume many times; passive but judgmental at the same time. She’d been surprised how many times perps started yapping and volunteering information they never would otherwise because they assumed Cody had the goods on them.

“Why are you here so early, Officer Dewell?” Tubman asked. “I haven’t even had my coffee yet. Did something happen during the night and you couldn’t get ahold of me?”

“I never tried,” Cassie said. A burst of dawn wind came up hard and cold and she saw leaves flee from trees in her peripheral vision.

“So what brings you up here to my home?” he asked, trying to smile. But it looked like a grimace.

“I’ve got a request.”

He seemed to recover from the surprise for a moment and he stood tall and relaxed his shoulders. “What kind of request?” he asked, assuming command.

“No,” she said, “It isn’t a request. It’s a demand.”

He snorted, and looked over his shoulder at his house, as if expecting reinforcements.

She said, “You took advantage of me. You set me up to bring down my partner because you never liked him. I resent what you put me through and I don’t like the results. You put a good man out on the street.”

As if he couldn’t help it, he lifted the small rolled-up newspaper, like there was something in it she must be angry about. She hadn’t seen the paper that morning but realized there must be a story about Cody being fired. Tubman had likely called it in himself to make sure he was portrayed as a man who wouldn’t tolerate dirty cops.

“Look,” he said, “I haven’t seen the story yet. I do know I praised your work to high heaven, the way you exposed a dishonest officer. You’re probably going to come out of this as a big hero, so I don’t know what your problem is.”

“My problem,” she said, “has nothing to do with your story. It’s about two missing teenagers you’ve never heard of. Even though you screwed him, Cody drove down to Livingston last night to try and find them. He did it because he wanted to do the right thing.”

“Livingston?” Tubman said, shaking his head and appealing to the shaft of sunlight that had flashed over the mountain and sequined the frost on his yard, “That’s out of our jurisdiction. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Dewell, and I think you need to consider what you’re saying to me. And think about the fact that you’re at my house in a county vehicle giving me a ration of shit for no reason I can think of.”

She noticed that his face was flushed and if he had a chin it would be thrust at her. For a moment, she was taken aback. Then she remembered why she was there.

“Those girls I mentioned are missing,” she said. “Teenagers from Colorado, aged sixteen and eighteen. They vanished last night off the highway between Yellowstone and Helena and they haven’t been seen since. Cody’s son knew them, so Cody drove down there to try and find them and as of a few hours ago he hasn’t communicated back to me or to his family. We’ve got three missing people in Montana in the last thirteen hours. You know that every minute that goes by something bad could happen. I know how you feel about Cody, but this is bigger than that. I want the time to go down there myself and help him if I can to figure out what happened. And I want you to approve it.”

Tubman again glanced over his shoulder at his home, as if to verify where he was. Then he turned his head and locked her eyes in.

“Cody Hoyt is drunk in some county jail or passed out on the side of some low-rent bar,” he said. “This thing about missing girls is news to me and we’ll deal with it through the proper channels if we’re requested to even get involved. I’ve not heard a damned thing about it. So if you’re asking to take leave right now, in the middle of a murder investigation and after I’ve praised you up one side and down the other to the media for your good work, you need to think long and hard about this.”

He paused, and glared at her. “Because if you run away right now for your own stupid reasons, I can’t defend you and I won’t even try. You’re needed here. We’ve got a murder investigation. You’re the primary on it. And everybody’s watching.”

She said, “You’re not hearing me. This isn’t a debate. I’m taking the county vehicle down south and I’m going to find out what happened to Cody and those girls. Roger Tokely was murdered by B. G. Myers. We’ve got the proof. If you don’t believe me, talk to Alexa Manning. Your renter, B. G., killed your other renter, Roger Tokely, over drugs.”

At the word “renter,” Tubman flinched. He simply stared at her with contempt she’d never seen from him.

“I know the deal,” Cassie said. “Cody told me. I know what’s going on with you and your payments. And when I look at this place,” she said, gesturing toward the house and the recreational vehicles and the fifth-wheel trailer, “I know he was right. You let that feud go on in the Big Belts because you didn’t want your rent checks to bounce. And you put me out front with the press because you’d get credit for bringing me into the department. And you sent me up there to shadow Cody to get rid of the one guy who could take you on. So don’t patronize me now. I won’t stand for it.

“I’m taking this Ford,” she said, and patted the bumper of the vehicle without looking down, “and the authority of the department down to Park County. You need to notify the sheriff down there I’m coming, and request they cooperate with me as if this is the highest priority item on your list. And you’re going to organize the whole department and impress upon them that they’re to do everything they can to find these girls and Cody.”

She stopped talking and was as appalled at her words as Tubman was. The seconds mounted up in silence except for the burbling of the exhaust pipe of the Ford.

Finally, he said, “You know that as of this moment everything has changed between us.”

“I do.”

“And you know if you go down there like you’re talking about you’re just going to find that miserable drunk in some bar or whorehouse?”

“Maybe.”

Tubman broke his gaze and looked past her, as if there was something fascinating over her shoulder. She almost turned to look, but she didn’t.

“Go,” he said.

“Thank you, sir.”

He glared at her. “Don’t think this doesn’t change everything, Dewell. You’re on my list now, just like Cody Hoyt was. And you know what happened to him.”

As he said it, he lifted his nonexistent chin.

“Try it,” she said. “But remember you aren’t the only person who can talk to the press.”

He started to smile, but suddenly cut it off when he realized what she was saying.

“You made me the hero because I’m a fat single mother you hired personally to add diversity to the department,” she said. “They ate it up. Now, if you try to destroy me, you’re the one who loses. Think about it.”

Tubman inadvertently dropped the newspaper near his slipper. He feinted to pick it back up, but rethought it and stood up to face her. But he looked whipped, she thought.

“I’ll check in,” she said. “But you need to call out the cavalry.”

“Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving,” Tubman said. “A whole lot of folks are going out of town for four days.”

“I know it. That’s why we need to find them today.”

He nodded, but didn’t speak. No doubt, she thought, he was thinking of the next election. So far, he was unopposed except for the lunatic county coroner, Skeeter Kerley. But if one of his own ran, a female who looked and acted like a normal female, who would attract the housewives and liberals and voters who already didn’t like him for one reason or other, a female who had been praised as a tough investigator by the sheriff himself …

“Keep me posted,” Tubman said. “I’ll do all I can to help find those girls.”

“And Cody,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said sourly. “Him, too.”

30

Ronald Pergram drove his mother’s white 1986 Buick Riviera past the unmanned National Park Service window at the north entrance to Yellowstone and goosed it on the straightaway before beginning the switchback climb to Mammoth Hot Springs. The car, like his mother, was repulsive. It was low-slung and underpowered and its 3,300 lbs of steel rocked atop a mushy suspension that gave him the feeling of driving a car with four flat tires. The top of the coupe was peeling tonguelike strips of faux leather and the paint job looked sandblasted. The windows were cloudy with grime. The backseat was filled with garbage bags and newspapers and he’d had to clear the front seat of empty Big Gulp containers just to squeeze inside. The trunk contained two dead bodies wrapped in plastic, one on top of the other.

Although there was a CCTV camera mounted on the side of the entrance station, he knew there was no reason to worry about being identified. The NPS operated on banker’s hours during the off-season, and they rarely had a ranger on duty to collect entrance fees before eight in the morning, much less someone viewing the monitor at park headquarters. As long as he entered the park before eight or after five, America’s first national park belonged to the Lizard King.

He kept a wary eye out, though, in front and behind him. There was always the chance — although remote — that an overeager park ranger would pull him over for speeding or simply note his presence in the park if questioned later. But like the entrance booth personnel, traffic rangers seemed to vanish from existence once the hotels and visitor amenities inside the park closed for the season.

That was one of the reasons he liked to use his mother’s old car. If the camera caught the license plate and some ranger had the gumption to check out the owner, Pergram couldn’t imagine them going after a sixty-eight-year-old local widow who didn’t look like she even had the money for a day pass. Plus, he simply liked the idea of driving that old bat’s car with the bodies of two women in the trunk.

The body of the gimp was wrapped in plastic and wedged around the spare tire. It weighed next to nothing and wouldn’t even provide ballast on icy roads.

He’d made this trek more times than he could recall.

Pergram deliberately drove right by the small battered sign on the side of the road that read POISON SPRING TRAILHEAD. The sign was so low to the ground it was partially obscured by tall grass, and the area itself was dark with nearly constant shadows because of the tall and close walls of lodgepole pine on both sides of the road. There was no pullout at the trailhead to park but a quarter of a mile farther was a single concrete picnic table virtually hidden from passing cars. He slowed and turned into the campsite and drove as far into the small clearing as he could. Pergram turned off the motor and got out. He could hear the tinkle of a tiny creek through the trees in front of him, and there was a low rush of cold wind in the crowns of the lodgepole pines, enough to rock the trees back and forth slightly.

He stood still and listened. There was no road traffic. He wanted to make sure no one was coming and could catch a glimpse of what he was doing as they passed by.

When he was sure he was alone, Pergram unlocked the trunk and slung the body of the gimp over his shoulder and took it fifteen feet into the timber and let it drop with a thud.

The dead lot lizard underneath was stiff as a board. Out of curiosity, he’d unwrapped the plastic around her head to see what she looked like. Her face was wan and emaciated and frozen into a leering grimace. Her eyes were open but filmy, and they seemed to stare right into his heart. So he wiped that leer off her face with a jack handle, then wrapped the plastic back over what was left and put the body into the backseat. It was like carrying a bundle of branches, it was so stiff and bony.

Then he returned to the Riviera and inspected the plastic-lined interior of the trunk for spots of blood. It was clean. He stripped the plastic out and balled it tight and shoved it inside his coat. Then he closed the trunk lid and went back for the bodies.

Even though the gimp weighed no more than a hundred and ten pounds, he was sweating by the time he reached Poison Springs because he’d already carried the body of the lot lizard. As always, he eschewed the old trail to get there that began at the road and wound through the timber, instead cutting directly through the trees from the picnic table to approach it from the side.

Someday, he thought, he would surprise a bear. Or the bear would surprise him. And that would be that. The park service would have a hell of a time figuring it out, he thought.

He smelled it before he saw it. Poison Spring had a particular sulfur and steam odor that could tear his eyes if the wind was just right.

As always, he stopped and paused and got his breath back. He’d never seen hikers at Poison Spring, even during tourist season, but he couldn’t let himself get complacent. But it was silent all around.

The spring looked deceptively enticing. The opening in the ground was twelve feet by twenty feet and it was filled with clear water that appeared sapphire blue and lapped gently at the crusty edge of the opening. Steam and fumes wafted from the surface and always reminded him of hot bathwater. When the light was right, as it was now, he could see deeply into the cavern. The sides were uneven and coral-like, with shelves of built-up mineral deposits jutting out here and there. On one of the shelves, through the steam and undulating water, he could clearly see a femur bone. That bone had been there on that ledge for two years. He wished there was a way to reach down and knock it off. Luckily, he thought, it looked enough like a bone from a deer or elk that anyone else glimpsing it wouldn’t be alarmed.

It was called Poison Spring because it was. The pure water contained large amounts of natural sulfuric acid.

Pergram was no chemist. He didn’t know how long it took for the sulfuric acid in Poison Spring to dissolve a human body, or two in this situation. He didn’t know what was left after a month or two deep in the depths of the spring. All he knew was that it suited his needs and it had worked so far.

After he’d unwrapped the gimp’s body and weighted it down with heavy rocks, he rolled it toward Poison Spring until it was balanced on the crust of the edge. This next part always scared him a little, because he had no idea how thick and strong the crust was and if it might break under his own weight and burn his own skin. Once he had the body poised near the opening, he found a stout pole in the timber and used it to lever the body in.

There was no splash and it sunk out of sight so quickly he didn’t get a good last look. There was no foaming or agitation in the spring from the arrival of the new carcass. He went through the same procedure with the lot lizard.

He stood there, watching and listening, then balled the plastic he’d wrapped it in with the plastic from the trunk around another rock and tossed it in.

The entrance gate had a ranger in it as he drove out of the park, but he simply waved. The ranger, a decent-looking young woman with red hair, green eyes, and a pug nose and freckles, waved back. He felt a stir when he looked at her, and noted her for a future possibility. Seasonable rangers and temporary workers in the park often hitchhiked to and from work along the highway. He’d not yet given any of them a ride. But it was something to consider …

Pergram slowed down as he approached Emigrant en route to his house. There were two vehicles parked in front of the First National — Legerski’s cruiser and a black Ford Expedition with Lewis and Clark County plates. The realization hit him that at that moment, inside the building, Legerski was having breakfast with the cop who’d texted: I’M ON MY WAY.

He was momentarily torn. Should he stop and go inside and see what they were talking about? Sit at the bar and order some eggs and bacon and eavesdrop on the conversation as he had the night before?

He didn’t trust Legerski not to give him up. The man was a sociopath and would do anything to save himself. Sure, he’d said he’d take care of everything. But what if the lady cop was smart? What if she saw through Legerski’s lies?

If that happened, Pergram had no doubt the trooper would turn on him. Jimmy was harder to figure out, but because he was friends with Legerski — Legerski had brought him in — he guessed the bartender would sell him out as well.

Pergram cursed and drove on. It was his fault he’d let them in. He regretted it, although at the time it seemed his only choice.

As he drove on, he recalled how the scheme had taken shape, when it had changed from his own personal secret world into something he was forced to share.

Two and a half years earlier, he’d been returning to Livingston from delivering a load in the Pacific Northwest. It was dusk and less than ten miles out of town when he saw the light bar of wigwag lights in his side mirrors. He checked his speed — he was two miles under the limit — and wondered why the trooper was behind him. Why the cop wanted to pull him over in the first place. Pergram felt absolute terror for the first time in years, and thought his life would be over.

He’d eased his Freightliner to the side — it was before he bought his Peterbilt — and waited. The trooper probably wanted to check his papers, he thought. Sometimes they did that; random harassment checks of truckers to make sure they’d done the proper paperwork at the last weigh station. Later, he recalled that he should have noted that the trooper didn’t sit in his cruiser and run his plates before exiting his car. That should have been a clue. But at the time, all he could think of was that he was caught. And what he might have to do to get out of it.

The lot lizard was bound and gagged in the bunk of his sleeper, just a few feet away from him. She was still under the influence of the roofies he’d injected into her, but her breathing was ragged. He’d planned to take her to that shack by the river where he always took them. Then, when he was done, to Poison Springs.

He had no excuse if the trooper saw or heard her. And no explanation.

Pergram watched as the Montana State Highway Patrolman walked up alongside his trailer. The man moved slowly and deliberately, his right hand resting on the butt of his sidearm. Pergram reached down and opened the console between the seats and touched the butt of his .357 Magnum revolver. He knew that he might have to kill a cop, right there on the side of Interstate 90. Cars and trucks sizzled by in the eastbound lane. A couple of the drivers slowed to rubberneck before continuing.

The trooper approached the driver’s side door and knocked on it. Pergram took a deep breath, tried to act inconvenienced, and opened his door.

Legerski’s face stared up at him, probing with his hard cop eyes.

“Something wrong?” Pergram asked. “I know I wasn’t speeding. Do I have a light out or something?”

“Operator’s license, registration, and bill of lading, sir,” Legerski said with false courtesy.

Pergram wanted it over as fast as he could so he didn’t argue. He handed the documents down and sighed. “Everything’s there,” he said.

“Are you deadheading it back?” the trooper asked, checking the papers.

“This time. I always try to bring back a load but the dispatcher was an idiot and didn’t hook me up. So yeah, I’m deadheading it back.”

The trooper nodded, then handed the papers back. For a brief moment, Pergram thought he was in the clear.

Then Legerski said, “You’ve been around here for a long time but you spend most of the time on the road. So tell me, do you have a girl in there now with you?”

Pergram was too shocked to answer. His right hand twitched on his lap. Eighteen inches to the right was the butt of the Ruger .357. It was double-action, he wouldn’t even need to cock it, just aim and pull the trigger.

Pergram tried to swallow but couldn’t. “What?” he asked, and his voice cracked.

“I asked you if you had a girl in there.”

Pergram couldn’t speak.

“Are you all right?” Legerski asked. “You act like something’s wrong.”

“I’m coming down with something,” Pergram said in a croak. “Something I ate, I guess.”

“That damned trucker food,” Legerski said, shaking his head.

“What was it you asked me about a girl?” Pergram said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Lame.

Legerski tipped his trooper hat back on his head. His hand was still on his pistol but he hadn’t pulled it. His voice became conversational.

“I picked your mom up a week back for missing a headlight,” Legerski said. “She cussed me out but good. She said she was a good driver, just like her son, the long-haul trucker. She said you live with her when you aren’t on a run, and since I’d just spent a week looking for a missing girl on that stretch of highway I gave it some thought. I asked around a little, because we really kind of live in the same neighborhood. I pulled your log and determined that there were more than a few missing prostitutes and runaways in this part of the state in the last couple years. And each time there was an incident report you were on the road on your way back here. I think that’s more than a coincidence.”

Pergram simply stared back. To this day, he wondered what it was that stopped him from killing Legerski right there. Was it something in the trooper’s eyes, or the tone of his voice? Or simply because the thing was playing all wrong?

Then Legerski said, “I think you might be a man after my own heart, is what I’m saying.”

It took a moment to understand.

“I bought some property down south of here. You know the old Schweitzer place?”

Pergram found himself nodding. He was familiar with it because it was less than four miles from his mother’s house. Eighty or ninety acres in a steep mountain valley surrounded by walls of mountains on each side. There was a beat-up old house with the windows smashed out on it, but that wasn’t what was unique about the property. Schweitzer, it was said, was a crazy old coot. He’d built a bunker somewhere on his land. A concrete underground bunker that would withstand a nuclear or chemical war. But he’d died before he ever had to use it. The property had been on the market for years because it was remote, without good water, and didn’t have enough grass for a profitable herd of cows.

“I know it,” Pergram said.

“How about you meet me out there? When I get off duty, say six thirty tonight?”

“I can do that.”

“Bring your friend.”

That’s how it started.

He parked the Buick on the side of the house and got out. The wind had picked up and was shaking the Russian olive bushes, vibrating them with angry urgency.

Pergram rubbed his face with his hands before entering the house. The white crosses had worn off and he was dead tired and hungry. But he was also excited. Seeing those two girls in their underwear when he grabbed the gimp, knowing they were there, stirred him. The gimp had done nothing for him. There was some relief, sure, but it was temporary. It was like eating a dish of dry dog food when steaks were a few feet away behind a closed door.

As silently as he could, he entered the house. He couldn’t see or hear her. He hoped she’d gone back to bed and was still sleeping. But as he navigated through the passageway toward the kitchen he smelled coffee and there she was, at the table where she’d been the night before, glaring at him.

“I seen you out there,” she said. “You took my car again without asking.”

He flushed.

“Where do you go when you take my car? Why don’t you take your own truck and use your own gas? I’m on a fixed income. I can’t afford to keep putting gas in that car when I’m not even using it.”

“I’ll fill it up later today,” he said, shinnying around her and kicking a stack of newspapers aside so he could open the door of the ancient pantry.

“When you going back out on the road?”

He ignored her. The pantry was crammed full with canned goods. Some of the labels were so old they were yellow and peeling off the tin.

“What are you looking for, Ronald?”

“Something to eat that isn’t shitty or expired.”

“There’s nothing wrong with those cans,” she said, disgusted with him.

He reached in and pulled out a Campbell’s soup can of split pea soup and shook it at her. “This has been in here as long as I can remember. I remember looking at this when I was ten years old and wondering what kind of people wanted to eat it. And here it is today.”

She scowled and looked away.

He fixed his eyes on the back of her head. Her hair was white and wispy. He could see her scalp through it. For a second, he considered how hard he’d have to hit her with the can to break her skull.

“I can cook you something,” she said. “There’s some Dinty Moore stew in the refrigerator.”

“I told you I hate that.”

He snatched a fairly contemporary can of pork and beans from the pantry, slammed the door, and left her there.

He closed and locked the door of his room and stood there for a few minutes to make sure she wasn’t on the other side. Sometimes she did that, he knew. Just stood there on the other side of the door to listen to what he was doing. He should have brained her with the can of soup, he thought.

Pergram opened the beans with his Swiss army knife and wolfed it down. He put the empty can in the garbage. He hated clutter, unlike her.

He lay on his bed in the dark and closed his eyes but visions of those two girls started showing up on the inside of his eyelids. The way they cowered in the corner, those firm long legs on the nice-looking one.

He opened his eyes because he knew what he had to do next or he’d never get any sleep.

His collection of videotapes was hidden beneath the floor under his bed. Dozens of tapes and DVDs he’d made of his conquests. Along with the girls, Legerski was in many of them. Jimmy was in a few. He’d made a set for the trooper, in fact, but refused to hand over the originals when Legerski asked for them.

The tape collection was now what kept him alive, he thought. Legerski wouldn’t dare turn on him if there was a risk the tapes and disks could be found that would implicate him. Pergram had insinuated more than once there was.

“You’re fucking lying,” Legerski had said, “there is no way I can be identified.” But there was a hint of panic in his voice.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Pergram had said back.

The tapes were Pergram’s life insurance policy.

On his hands and knees, he reached under his bed until his fingers closed around a ring bolt. He opened the lid and set it to the side, then reached into the hole.

Under the floorboards were two green army surplus ammunition cans fitted with tight swing-back covers that kept the contents safe and dry and could be opened by prying up on a side panel. The stencils on the sides revealed them to have once stored .50 caliber machine gun rounds. He didn’t disturb the can he thought of as his “Oh Shit” Box. It contained carefully thought-out and collected items he’d need if his world went completely upside down and he had to run for it.

The other box was the collection of tapes and DVDs that was the history and culmination of his secret world; old VHS tapes and newer digital DVDs. He brought it out and opened it and fished through the collection, trying to find one that matched his mood. He selected one from three years before, the time he’d defied Legerski and dragged two girls into the room for himself. He didn’t want to see Legerski, to be reminded of him right now.

Legerski had retaliated for him breaking their agreement that they both be present with the girls at the bunker. He’d disguised himself and made his own tape and did depraved things to the two lot lizards there at the time and killed them both afterwards. Then he left the tape to be discovered and viewed by Pergram who would instantly understand the message sent. Without telling Legerski, Pergram had made an additional copy.

Later, over breakfast at the First National Bar, Legerski looked up and said, “This is what happens when you fuck with me, Ronald. Now you’ve got to go get another one.”

He did. And he never defied Legerski since. He’d viewed the disk only once, and now he set it aside and chose another.

Pergram sat on his bed and inserted the disk into his laptop computer and put on his headphones. It started with him looking into the camera, grinning. The two girls were in the background, bound and gagged.

Again, he wondered what Legerski and the lady cop from Helena were talking about.

And how long he had.

31

Cassie Dewell’s egg-white and mushroom omelette arrived at the center table in the First National Bar of Montana, delivered by the cook-slash-owner named Jimmy. Jimmy placed a set of silverware wrapped tight in a paper napkin by her plate and said, “You said without the bacon or sausage that comes with it, right? I hope you like it. I don’t make too many of those around here.”

“Thank you,” she said. She could feel Jimmy’s eyes on her as well as the eyes of Montana State Highway Patrol officer Rick Legerski, who sat across from her. She knew they were poking fun at her a little, checking her out. She was used to it.

Legerski had ordered “the Rancher”: three eggs over easy, chicken-fried steak with gravy, hash-brown potatoes, and toast.

“You know what a Montana vegetarian is?” Jimmy asked, hovering just behind her. By the way he asked it she knew it was a well-worn joke and often told.

“What?” she asked, looking over her shoulder.

“Someone who only eats meat once a day,” Jimmy said, and grinned. His top teeth were long and yellow like horse teeth and he was missing most of his bottom teeth.

She smiled politely and said, “I’m from Montana.”

“You’re from Helena,” Jimmy said, “that ain’t Montana.”

“Jimmy,” Legerski said, cutting in, “I could use some more coffee.”

Jimmy looked at Legerski and Cassie could see something exchanged between them, but she couldn’t discern what it was.

“Coming up,” Jimmy said, and turned on his heel.

“Thank you,” Cassie said to the trooper in a low mumble.

“He doesn’t have very impressive people skills for a bar owner, does he?” Legerski said after Jimmy was out of earshot, “But he makes a hell of a breakfast. And he’s kind of famous for his big cinnamon rolls.”

She tried her omelette. It was passable, but she envied Legerski, who dug into his massive plate of food. She was always embarrassed to eat in front of men she didn’t know because it called attention to her weight. So she ordered food she wasn’t crazy about. Even if they didn’t say anything — and they rarely did — she knew what they were thinking.

She’d found the place easily enough. It was the only bar and grill in Emigrant, after all, and trooper Legerski’s cruiser was parked in front. She’d called him en route since he was the last person she was aware of to see Cody Hoyt, and he suggested they meet there. He said he didn’t work out of an office — most highway patrolmen didn’t and took their patrol cars home every night — and the small conference room at the Department of Transportation shop outside Livingston was being used that morning. Since she hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch yesterday, she realized she was starved and agreed to meet him at the First National.

After ordering, they’d sniffed around at each other at first, talking about the weather and state politics until their food arrived. She didn’t know what she thought of him yet. He was polite enough, more formal than she was used to, and had stood up when she came in. His big mustache hid his mouth and he had the dead-eyed cop look down cold. His hands were huge and reminded her of bear paws when he grasped them together on the table. Legerski seemed serious, if somehow forced, as if he were playacting at being vigilant and extremely sincere. He had a gruff low voice and a drawn-out, western way of speaking. Legerski chose his words carefully and seemed to want to use as few of them as possible. He didn’t wear a wedding ring.

She’d said, “I understand you were married to the sister of our dispatcher, Edna.”

He’d nodded, and said, “Love is grand, but divorce is a hundred grand.”

It was the kind of thing men said to each other and generally didn’t say to women, she thought. But she gave him the benefit of the doubt and hoped he thought of her as serious, as well as a colleague. Since he was a state trooper and she was an investigator for an out-of-county sheriff’s department, the hierarchy was clear. But he didn’t act superior.

“Thanks for meeting me this morning,” she said.

“You bet,” he said, between mouthfuls of food. “But it’s kind of a busy time.”

She looked around: there was no one else in the place except Jimmy.

“Not here,” he said, reading her movement. “But it’s the day before the holiday. Hell of a lot of traffic on the roads, and we’re expected to be out there in the middle of it.”

She nodded. For the second time that morning, she’d been reminded it was Thanksgiving tomorrow. Thanksgiving, and her halfhearted intention of planning a dinner and cooking a turkey at home for Ben and her mother had been set aside.

“When do you go on shift?” she asked.

“Couple of hours.”

“So we have a little time.”

He shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “A little but not much.”

“You know why I’m here,” she said, recapping the night before. She left out the extraneous information about Cody’s suspension, her role in it, their meeting at the bar, and started with Justin Hoyt’s announcement that the Sullivan girls were missing. She said her last communication with Cody had been at two forty-seven that morning.

Legerski sopped up the last of the gravy with a piece of toast. He seemed to be listening patiently, but he asked no questions.

“So last night you met with Cody Hoyt?” she asked.

He pushed his plate aside, sat back, and raised his eyebrows. “You get right to it,” he said.

“I don’t think I have much time,” she said. “If those girls are lost or have been abducted, well, you know. Every minute is important.”

“I think I know that,” the trooper said softly with a dollop of defensiveness. “I’ve been in law enforcement for over twenty years.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m tired this morning.”

“And a little tightly wrapped,” he said, but finished it with a smile.

Then, “You’re wondering if I was the last person to see him.”

She nodded her head.

“That I can’t tell you for sure. I don’t know who he ran into after he left here. But yeah, I met him last night. Right here, in fact. We’d been in touch for a few hours and he swept the highway from Livingston south and I covered Yellowstone north to here. Neither one of us found that Ford Focus.”

She thought he answered her question but without an ounce of elaboration. Obviously, he’d testified many times in court and had learned to keep things short and to the point.

She listed to the side and reached down to her handbag near the chair. “Do you mind if I take some notes?”

Legerski said, “Is this an official interview?” He seemed put out by the prospect.

“Nothing like that. I’m just trying to establish a time line for my own benefit.”

She opened her notebook to the page she’d begun back at her house. Times were noted from when Justin Hoyt entered the bar to when Cody left Helena. Since there had been no contact or incidents from that point on, the time line ended at Cody’s last text.

“It takes two and a half hours to drive from Helena to here,” she said. “So what time did you meet with him?”

Legerski looked toward the ceiling for a second, and said, “He got here at two thirty. Yeah, that’s right. That’s a half hour after Jimmy usually closes, so I’m sure of the time.”

She scribbled it down.

“So you asked Jimmy to stay open late?”

“Yes. He owes me a few favors.”

“How long did you and Cody talk?”

He hesitated, again being very deliberate. Then he turned in his chair. “Jimmy, do you remember what time it was when that Hoyt fellow left here?”

Jimmy looked up sharply, and she found his reaction surprising. He seemed alarmed.

“What, like twenty minutes?” Legerski asked Jimmy.

“Something like that,” Jimmy said after a beat.

Cassie wrote down that Cody left the bar at approximately two fifty.

“That’s not very long,” she said.

Legerski shrugged again. “There wasn’t that much to discuss. I told him I hadn’t found the car or the girls, and he told me the same thing. I knew there was a statewide and regional alert out by then, so we weren’t the only ones looking.”

She gestured toward Jimmy with a nod of her head toward the owner. “I’m surprised he can’t remember how long you two were here. It seems to me that if he was waiting to close he might pay more attention to the exact time than usual.”

“That’s Jimmy,” Legerski said, as if it explained everything.

“Did you discuss any other possibilities of what might have happened to them during your twenty-minute talk?”

“Like what?”

She looked up and met his eyes, trying to figure out if he was playing games with her. He held her gaze.

“Like maybe people at the Church of Glory and Transcendence might have something to do with the disappearance?”

“Yeah,” Legerski said quickly, and leaned forward on the table and clasped his big hands together and lowered his voice. “I threw that one out there. The reason being we’ve had a few missing girls in a hundred-mile radius over the past few years and those folks out there on that compound keep to themselves. I probably shouldn’t have said anything to him because I’ve got no evidence at all to back this up, just like I shouldn’t be repeating it to you. But yeah, I speculated some—” he cut himself off in midsentence.

“What were you going to say?”

“Nothing. I’ve said too much already, probably.”

For reasons she couldn’t quite explain, she didn’t tell Legerski she’d spent hours researching the church and had speculated the same thing.

“Are you the one he was texting?” Legerski asked.

It took her by surprise and she didn’t respond.

“When he was sitting here last night, every time I turned my back he’d be tapping away on his phone,” he said. “Was that you?”

“Yes,” she said. “He’s my partner. But if he was texting anyone else? I don’t know that.”

Legerski opened a packet of white sugar from a bowl on the table and poured it out on the surface. Then he took his big forefinger and drew a line through the spill, severing it in half. She determined there was no point to his actions, other than impatience with her and her questions.

“Deputy,” he said, almost sadly, “I don’t know you at all but I’m getting tired of you because you’re asking a lot of pointed questions and you aren’t being up-front with me. I don’t really have time for this.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, and felt her face flush.

“He wasn’t your partner anymore. He was suspended yesterday. He told me himself he was on his own, investigating as a private citizen. Even though that was the case, I not only met with him on my own time but I cased the highway looking for those girls. And this morning when you called, I dragged my sorry ass out of bed after not enough sleep to meet with you before I went on shift. And the whole time you’ve been here you’ve been interrogating me like I’m a suspect or something. I don’t know how you do things in the state capital, but that’s not how we do things around here.”

With that, he sat back, dug a wad of bills out of his front uniform pants pocket, and tossed them on the table between them.

“I’ve got to get to work,” he said.

She was stunned, and felt both guilty and incompetent. Everything he said, she thought, was true.

As he started to push away from the table, she reached out and touched his hand. He glared at her, but didn’t push back further.

“Look,” she said, “I’m sorry. I’m new at this and I feel like the world is crashing down on me. I’m under pressure and I’m probably in over my head. I came on too strong. I don’t mean to offend you, I really don’t.”

“Am I a suspect?” he asked indignantly.

“Of course not,” she said. “I don’t know anyone around here and you do. There are two missing girls and a missing cop. I really need your help if you’ll give it to me.”

He didn’t respond, but she thought she saw something soften in his eyes.

“So as far as you know,” she said, “after Cody left here last night he was going to drive to the compound?”

Legerski nodded. “That’s what he said, anyway. I can’t vouch for where he actually went.”

She thought that through for a few seconds, but before she could ask he said, “He wanted me to go with him because I’ve got a live badge and he didn’t. But I told him I wouldn’t go down there without probable cause. So as far as I know, he went there alone.”

“It doesn’t surprise me he’d go there without a search warrant,” she said with a weak smile.

“We discussed that. He said he’d go to the gate and ask for entry. If they didn’t give it, he somehow thought that might convince a judge to write up a warrant.”

That sounded right to her.

“Do you know a friendly judge?” she asked.

“You mean now?”

“Yes.”

He seemed slightly flustered. “Well, yeah, there’s Judge Graff in Livingston. I’ve worked with him a lot over the years and he’s a good guy.”

“It seems to me,” she said, “if you go to him and tell him about the missing girls and the fact that Cody vanished last night after he said he’d go there we’ve got probable cause to search the compound.”

The trooper looked pained. “There’s no telling if Judge Graff is around or if I’d find him. Hell, he might have left the state already for the holidays.”

“But you’ll try?” she asked.

It took him a moment to agree. “Yeah, I can stop by the courthouse on my way through town. But, lady, I’ve got to get to work.”

“Thank you,” she said. “And one more thing.”

“What?” he asked, looking away.

“If you can see the judge and get the process going, please brief the Park County sheriff about what’s going on. I’ll call my boss and remind him that he agreed to ask the local sheriff for cooperation. Maybe we can get four or five deputies down here to help with the search.”

Legerski seemed reluctant. She noticed his neck seemed flushed where it wasn’t earlier, even when he was angry and ready to leave.

“If we do what we can to apply pressure around here and let everyone know we’re serious, someone might tell us something we don’t know,” she said. “Will you do it?”

Legerski showed his teeth — not really a smile, but a facsimile of a smile, she thought — and said, “Yeah. I’ll do it. But I can’t guarantee anything.”

“I realize that,” she said. “We don’t have much to go on. But we also don’t have time to waste.”

He took a deep breath and held it in and stared hard at something over her head. She got the feeling she should be bracing herself for some kind of “experienced cop tells the newbie how it really is” speech. She was right.

“Deputy,” he said.

“My title is Investigator,” she said sharply.

“Okay, Investigator,” he said with a tiny smirk, “I’ll break it to you. These girls have supposedly been missing for less than fourteen hours, right?”

She nodded.

“Officially, this isn’t even a missing persons case yet. And your friend Cody — who knows? You haven’t talked to him in seven hours, that’s all. From what I know about him, he’s probably curled up with a bottle in his pickup somewhere sleeping it off.

“What I’m saying is that what’s urgent to you right now won’t seem urgent to anybody else until more time has passed or until we get some kind of new information. You seem to think that everyone in Park County should drop everything they’re doing and rush here and start kicking down doors. But how do we even know the two things are connected? We don’t even know that.”

Legerski stood and clamped his trooper hat on his head. To Cassie, he said, “Not enough time has passed for the kind of reaction you want, is what I’m saying.”

To Jimmy, who was hovering behind the bar looking ashen, Legerski said, “Money’s on the table.”

Jimmy nodded.

She wondered again what the relationship was between them because it seemed both intimate and disquieting.

As the trooper went out the door, she felt immense relief. Something was happening. She’d set things in motion, and that’s all she could hope for at this point. Cody called it “flooding the zone.”

She snatched up the wad of cash Legerski had tossed on the table and matched it with bills from her purse. Clutching the bills, she followed the trooper out the door and caught him before he slid into his cruiser. When he looked up and saw her pursuing she thought she caught a quick reaction of startling contempt. But it was gone as quickly as it had been there and she hoped she was mistaken.

“Here,” she said, handing him the cash. “The least I can do is buy you breakfast.”

He shook his head and made no move to retrieve it. “Not necessary,” he said.

“I know it’s not necessary, but let me do it. I’m grateful.”

“You’re pushy,” he said, then caught himself. It was as if it had slipped out.

“A little,” she agreed. “Hey, I’ve got one more question.”

He didn’t turn toward her, but looked straight out the windshield. But he didn’t slide his window up.

“Cody asked me last night to check on those missing girls you mentioned. I did some research and didn’t find anything to work with, but I was reading up on the FBI Highway Serial Killer task force. It got me to thinking.”

“Thinking what?” the trooper asked with a flat voice.

“That if we don’t find anything on that church compound, we might want to do some interviews around here of long-haul truckers. You probably know them if they exist. What do you think?”

“I think I’m going to be late for my shift.”

“You’ve got my cell number, right? You’ll call when you know about the warrant and the assistance?”

“Got it,” he said. He seemed to be in a hurry to get away from her.

“Thank you again,” she said.

He nodded, backed out, and paused at the asphalt of the highway before turning left toward Livingston.

Cassie was buoyed with herself and watched him go. Before he wheeled out onto the pavement their eyes met in his rearview mirror and he mouthed something that she couldn’t hear but that pierced her like a knife in the heart.

Stupid cunt.

She tried to hold herself together and not react, and she turned sharply on her heel and walked away. Of course, she’d heard the word before. Of course, she’d been called it, especially from criminals she and Cody had apprehended. By the time she reached the end of the small gravel parking lot she was breathing again and she lifted her head.

It was cooling down outside. The wall of mountains on the other side of the valley had simply disappeared as if they were never there. In their place were roiling white clouds and spoors of snow falling toward the river. She hugged herself rather than go back to the Expedition for her coat, and walked aimlessly around the side of the First National toward the back. Her stomach hurt from tension, lack of sleep, the egg-white omelet, and what Legerski had called her. She doubted he knew she could see his mouth in the mirror. Maybe, she thought, he simply didn’t like the idea of a woman in charge of the investigation. Or maybe she had come on too strong, too pointed, too suspicious.

But a man didn’t use a word like that except to demean. And he no doubt meant what he said. It hurt.

As she meandered behind the bar she dug out her cell phone and called Sheriff Tubman.

Tubman was cool and dry, and grunted in affirmation as she updated him. He said he’d already contacted Sheriff Bryan Pedersen of Park County and Pedersen agreed to try and spare a couple of uniformed officers to drive down into Paradise Valley to help serve the warrant at the compound, “If there is one,” Tubman cautioned.

“Is that the best he can do?” Cassie asked sharply.

“It’s his county,” Tubman answered wearily. “He’s got spare guys going off shift early this afternoon for the holidays. He’s got to keep his essential personnel close in case they need to respond to something.”

“Christ,” Cassie said, “what could be more important than two missing girls and a missing cop?”

“Ex-cop,” Tubman said acidly. “And we don’t know where the girls went missing, Cassie. If we knew it was Park County it would be higher priority with him, but it’s all speculation at this point. We don’t know where the hell they were last seen.”

After she terminated the call, she called Jenny Hoyt. Jenny was weary and seemed resigned to very bad news. No, she’d not heard a word from Cody, and Justin had heard nothing from the Sullivan girls. No, Cody wasn’t sleeping it off in any town or county jails anywhere in southwestern Montana. No, the Sullivan parents hadn’t received a call or text from their daughters, either. Ted Sullivan, Jenny said, was flying to Helena that morning and had asked her about the investigation thus far.

“Don’t send him down here,” Cassie said. “He’d only get in the way.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Jenny said. “He sounds frantic on the phone. I’m not sure I can keep him here.”

“I’ll call you as soon as the warrant arrives,” Cassie said, leaning against a battered open Dumpster behind the bar, “and I’ll keep you posted after we go to the compound.”

“Thank you.” After a beat, Jenny said, “So are you thinking he might have gone there last night and someone did something to him? Maybe those church people?”

“I don’t know.”

“I remember reading about them a few years ago,” Jenny said, “They seem like a strange bunch of people. But why would they hurt a cop? That doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Cassie said.

She closed the phone and dropped it in her bag. A light wave of pinprick snow washed through the air. The storm was sudden but didn’t seem long-lasting, she thought. All she needed was to get socked in before the nascent investigation even got going, she thought with gloom.

Whether it was the name Legerski mouthed about her or the questions he’d raised at the table, the simple weight of doubt seemed suddenly very heavy. All along, she’d assumed the disappearance of the Sullivan girls and Cody’s disappearance were of course related. But what if they weren’t? What if the girls had taken a wrong turn and hooked up with some boys their age, and Cody had simply kept driving? There hadn’t been enough time yet to conclude they were officially missing.

What if an all-out effort by Legerski and the Park County sheriff’s department turned out to confirm only that Investigator Cassie Dewell had overreacted for no good reason? She could guess what her colleagues would say about her, and knew what Sheriff Tubman would instigate.

She felt very alone. So alone, she wished Cody were there with her.

There was nothing to do but wait until she heard from Legerski about the warrant. She hoped it wouldn’t take long.

If nothing else, she thought, she could use the interim time getting a better feel for the highway and the valley. Figure out where the compound was and look it over from a distance. Drive the road south toward Yellowstone to see if she could find anything about the Sullivan girls or Cody the trooper had missed.

As she turned away from the blowing snow she found herself facing the open trash container. Cody always had a thing about garbage cans, she knew. He explained it by saying that when people threw things in the garbage it was almost like ridding the items from their lives. Out of sight, out of mind, he’d said. More than half the valuable evidence he’d retrieved in felony crimes came from rooting through garbage cans, he said.

So she raised up on her toes and looked in. It was obvious Jimmy didn’t have his trash hauled away very frequently. Hundreds of empty bottles, food containers, and open packages were inside almost to the top. She thought that the entire social history of the bar for the past month could be determined by the layers inside; what customers drank, what they ate, what they’d tracked in.

On the very top was a fairly clean empty box that had probably held the cinnamon rolls that were on the breakfast menu, she thought. She smiled, remembering what Legerski had said about Jimmy’s famous rolls. But obviously, Jimmy didn’t bake them: they were delivered.

She reached in and opened the box. The bottom was scored with caramel-colored swirls from where the rolls had been, but that wasn’t what caught her attention. Because in the corner of the box was a small heap of ashes and cigarette butts. Jimmy had obviously used the empty box as a dustpan when he cleaned up that morning. She recognized the Marlboro Red butts as the kind Cody left everywhere.

Cassie removed the box and carefully poured the contents into a clean paper bag she found next to it.

She looked inside and counted: eight. Eight cigarettes. She could have them tested for DNA but she had no doubt who’d smoked them. Even Cody wasn’t capable of smoking eight in twenty minutes. Which meant he’d been there much longer than twenty minutes the night before.

She wondered why Legerski had lied to her. And why Jimmy had gone along with it.

She decided to question Jimmy herself to find out, but as she walked around from the back of the building she heard a motor start up and a hiss of thrown gravel.

Jimmy’s old Jeep Wagoneer was sizzling down the highway to the north. He’d hastily hung up a SORRY FOLKS, WE’RE CLOSED sign in the front window.

32

Ronald Pergram was awakened by the burr of his cell phone on his pillow. He grunted and reached to turn it off, assuming it was the dispatcher calling to tell him about his next load, but the number displayed on the screen jolted him awake. It was a temporary number of a prepaid cell phone Legerski used only for emergencies.

As Pergram rolled to his side in bed the laptop that had been perched on his white belly slid off onto the mattress. He’d fallen asleep watching the DVD he’d selected, even before he got satisfaction from it. He was still bone tired and he’d not come close to having enough sleep.

“Yeah.”

“Meet me at the place,” Legerski said. He sounded agitated. Pergram could hear road sounds in the background. Legerski was calling from a moving vehicle.

“Now?”

“Fuck yes, now,” Legerski said. “We’ve got problems.”

Pergram closed his eyes. Pure red anger gathered in his chest and pushed up his throat. But he was wide-awake.

“Isn’t that your department?” Pergram said. “I do the hunting and run the heavy equipment, and you solve the problems. That was the deal.”

“Jesus, this isn’t the time. Just get your ass to the place as soon as you can. I called Jimmy and he’s on his way.”

Pergram’s heart leapt. “Are you talking about a session?”

“Don’t be a moron. We don’t have time for that until we’re in the clear. I’m talking about a stupid cunt cop snooping around. She doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing but she’s got me worried.”

His hopes dashed, Pergram slid his feet out of bed and placed them on the cold floor.

“Okay, I’ve got to get dressed.”

“Bring the tapes,” Legerski said. “All of them.”

Pergram glanced down at the collection in the ammo box near the side of the bed.

“The DVDs too?”

“Of course the DVDs, too. You know what I meant.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Pergram said, killing the call.

Yeah, Pergram thought, I know exactly what you mean.

Before leaving his room, Pergram checked the loads in the magazine of his Taurus .380 ACP and shoved it into his waistband at the small of his back. A blunt two-shot Bond Arms .45 Derringer went into the front right pocket of his Carhartt parka. His sheathed bone-handled skinning knife fitted nicely into the shaft of his right work boot, and a razor-sharp throwing knife went into the left.

He got back down on his knees and retrieved the “Oh Shit” box and bolted the floorboard hatch.

Locking his room behind him, he carried an ammo can in each hand and went as quietly as he could through the tunnel of refuse toward the front door. Although he couldn’t hear her, he felt her presence and turned his head sharply. She glared at him from an ancient overstuffed chair in an alcove of boxes and translucent containers packed with items that still had the price tags fixed to them. Her wide feet were up on a stool made of milk crates and the fat from her sides pooled over the armrests. She’d been just sitting here, in the shadows, waiting.

“Where you going?”

“Out.”

“What you got there in your hands?”

The ammo cans. He didn’t look down at either when she asked, but the handles felt like they were burning his flesh.

“Might go to the range,” he said.

“Go ahead and lie to me,” she said. “You’re up to no good. I can see it on your face. I’ve always been able to tell when you’re out causing trouble.”

The rage hadn’t receded far, and it climbed into the base of his throat again. Three steps and he’d be on her. Three steps swinging two heavy steel containers. He wondered how long it would take them to find her in all the garbage.

“Not like JoBeth,” she said. “JoBeth never caused no trouble. She was the opposite of you. I still don’t know how the two of you grew up in the same house. It just don’t seem possible.”

He said, “I’m taking your car again.”

Her mouth dropped open. The reaction was worth it, he thought.

“What if I need to use it?”

“It’ll wait.”

“I’m going to have to hide the keys from you, Ronald. I swear, I’ll hide the keys.”

“I’ve got a spare set,” he said, turning for the front door.

The last thing he heard was, “Put some damned gas in it this time!”

There was a winter storm blowing in from the north and Pergram drove into the teeth of it. The sky was dark and close, the bumpers of the individual clouds tainted slightly green, the clouds themselves blocking out the omnipresent mountains. Thin smokelike waves of snow twisted across the highway, rolling like sidewinder snakes he’d seen firsthand in Texas. The heater in the Riviera wasn’t working worth a damn and the air the vents expelled smelled like radiator fluid. The ammo box filled with tapes and DVDs was on the passenger seat next to him.

She always brought up JoBeth, he thought. She used JoBeth like a blunt object to beat him with. Thin, lovely, athletic JoBeth, his little sister. Two-sport all-state athlete, honor roll, Future Farmers of America award winner. Somewhere in all that shit back home were her clippings from the Livingston Enterprise, each one of them painstakingly scissored out an eighth inch from the text and pressed into a three-binder scrapbook that used to sit prominently on the front coffee table when it could still be found. JoBeth’s official U.S. Marines induction photo was on the wall, her clear blue eyes gazing out with a sense of purpose as straight as her jawline. When the word had come that the Humvee she was riding in in Iraq was destroyed by an IED, Pergram had mixed emotions. His mother didn’t. She went off the deep end and found some kind of solace in “collecting.” Collecting, Pergram thought, and acting the martyr. Her perfect child had been taken away, leaving her with … him.

Not for long, he thought.

Out of habit, Pergram checked traffic ahead and behind him on the highway — there was none — before slowing and taking an unmarked two-track that wound through high sagebrush toward the mountains. Tiny pellets of snow rattled across the hood of the car and against his driver’s side window. Twisted fingers of forsaken lone sage scraped the undercarriage of the Riviera as he drove.

The old road took him through a narrow stand of old mountain ash trees and down a switchback slope. He crossed an ancient bridge constructed of railroad ties that sagged over a creek. Every time he drove the tractor over it he expected it to cave in, but it never did.

The trees cleared and he topped a rise and the old Schweitzer place was laid out in front of him. It wasn’t really a ranch because it had too few acres — maybe a thousand acres — to feed enough cows to make a go of it, he’d heard. But when crazy old man Schweitzer bought it in the early 1950s, ranching wasn’t his main priority. His thought then was to find a location that would withstand a nuclear war with the Soviet Union or Red China. That’s why he chose acreage with high mountains on all four sides far away from any population center that might be a target. That’s why he built the bunker beneath his house with three-foot reinforced concrete walls and ceiling. It wouldn’t withstand a direct hit, but humans inside could conceivably live through just about anything else. The air-filtration system was on its last legs but it still worked. They’d know when it failed when they found asphyxiated dead bodies inside. So far, though …

Just get your ass to the place as soon as you can.… Don’t be a moron.… Bring the tapes.

Pergram reran those words through his mind over and over again. Each time he did he got angrier. He wondered what that woman cop had said to Legerski to cause his reaction.

He remembered a time a few years before when his secret world was his and his alone. Before Legerski bullied his way into it. Before Jimmy joined them. Things weren’t perfect back then because he was always afraid he’d get caught. But he learned as he went along, got better and more cautious all the time. He’d never been arrested or even questioned. The only person who seemed to suspect him — and blab about it — sat in a ratty old easy chair with her fat feet up back at home. She didn’t know the extent of his secret life and would be shocked to find out. She just knew he was inherently rotten and she didn’t mind sharing that opinion with anyone who asked. Rick Legerski had asked, apparently.

Things were so much better before, he now realized. At least no one ever called him while he was sleeping and told him to get his ass anywhere. Or called him a moron.

No one, Pergram thought, had the right of status to say that. No one had the right to treat him like a simpleton, an idiot, a mouth-breather who would do what he was told and not question the reason why. Not unless they’d been through what he’d been through and done what he’d done on the highways. He was the one who had started this, he thought. He was the one who made it happen. He was the one who delivered the goods to people who not only didn’t appreciate it but started to think they were better and smarter than he was.

Pergram knew there were others out there on the highway, but it wasn’t like they were in some kind of club or association. They didn’t have a Web site where they could share videos or stories or tips. He wasn’t sure he’d even like meeting another one.

Once, at a bank of urinals in a truck stop out of Valentine, Nebraska, he’d stood next to another trucker who seemed to emanate a certain aura of familiarity. The other driver was pudgy and dark and had dead, ravenlike eyes. As he zipped up, Pergram looked over to find the man staring at him in an unexplainable knowing way. Pergram nodded and the man smiled slightly, then turned away and zipped up himself. They’d exchanged something, a common thread, but didn’t mouth a word to each other. Pergram just knew. He’d waited outside in the hall for the driver to come out. He wanted to ask him about methodology, tactics, disposal. But in the end, he chickened out. He was on the road south toward North Platte before the other driver came out of the truck stop and mounted up.

There was a small white house on the valley floor. Next to it was Legerski’s cruiser and Jimmy’s Jeep Wagoneer.

He parked next to Jimmy’s Jeep and climbed out of the Buick with the ammo cans from the seat. But instead of walking toward the sagging front door of the house he went to the side where there was a thick concrete abutment emerging from the ground.

He leaned over and grasped the steel handle of the door and pulled. It was unlocked.

As he went down the wide stairs, his rage suddenly morphed into absolute calm and he became the Lizard King without even willing it to happen.

33

Danielle sat with her back against the wall near the space heater hugging her bare knees close. Her eyes were wide open but she was in a world of her own. Gracie observed her closely but Danielle didn’t seem to know it or care. Danielle was silently chanting something, her lips moving in a kind of rhythm.

Gracie tried to figure out what her sister was chanting while she sipped on one of the bottles of water the man had tossed in earlier. Neither had eaten anything that was in the bag except for sharing a package of beef jerky.

Gracie said, “Danielle?”

Danielle didn’t look up, didn’t stop her mantra.

“Danielle, goddamn you!” Gracie shouted.

Her sister stopped murmuring and slowly looked over. Gracie had never cursed at her sister before that way, and it seemed to have penetrated.

“What?”

“What are you saying to yourself?”

Danielle’s voice was soft and hoarse. “I’ll never fall in love again. I’ll never trust a boy. I’ll never fall in love again. I’ll never trust a boy.”

“Got it,” Gracie said, alarmed. Then, “What does that have to do with anything?”

Danielle gestured to their surroundings, as if it answered the question.

“That’s not the problem,” Gracie said. “The problem is you won’t take any real responsibility, that’s what. We aren’t here because you care so much, Danielle. You blame this whole thing on the fact that you were trying to get to Justin and convince him to come back.”

“That’s what happened.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Gracie said. “We aren’t here in this place because you wanted Justin and you trusted him.”

“Please don’t blame me,” Danielle said softly. “I can’t take it if you blame me.”

“I’m not blaming you,” Gracie said, wrapping the thin blanket over her shoulders. “But you’re not getting it. How about ‘I’ll never lie to my parents.’ Or, ‘I’ll always get my car checked out at the mechanic shop so it won’t die in the middle of nowhere.’ That’s what I mean.”

The vacant look returned to Danielle’s face.

Gracie said, “Or maybe, ‘I won’t put my little sister in danger ever again by being stupid.’”

“We’re going to die here,” Danielle said softly.

Gracie had no response. The situation they were in was too immense and horrible to think through. Twice in the last twenty minutes they thought they heard sounds from beyond the heavy door. Each time, they stopped talking and stared at it, terrified of it opening. Each time, nothing happened.

“It’s not like we have any weapons or what we could use as weapons,” Gracie said, looking around. The only objects in the room were the cheap space heater and the plastic chemical toilet Danielle refused to use. She wondered how long her sister could hold out before she slipped into madness. Danielle seemed perilously close to just … going away. Gracie thought that if she could somehow engage her sister, create a task — something to keep Danielle in the present — they might have a chance.

“We can fight them,” Gracie said.

Danielle arched an eyebrow of doubt.

“We can kick him in the balls and scratch his eyes out. We bash him on the head with the space heater. We can surprise him.”

Danielle shrugged.

Gracie held up a corner of the thin blanket. “We do have this.”

Danielle said, “A blanket?”

“It’s really dark in here, especially if you’re coming in from outside. It has to be hard to see at first. Maybe if we were ready for him when he comes back we could hide in the dark and throw the blanket over his head the second he comes in.”

Danielle simply looked at her.

Gracie continued, “We knock him down and kick him in the face and balls, then we run out the door. We don’t stay around because he could kill us. We just run. We’re not like Krystyl — we have two good legs.”

Danielle narrowed her eyes and seemed to think about it. Gracie thought, I’m getting through.

“If we’re quick,” Gracie said, warming to the idea. “I throw the blanket over his head and you shove him down as hard as you can because you’re stronger. Then we kick the shit out of him and run. That’s how it would have to work, I think.”

“Where do we run?”

Gracie shrugged. “We just run and don’t stop. I think we could outlast him if he chased us.”

“What if he manages to grab one of us?”

“The other one keeps running until they can find somebody and call the police. That’s all I can think of. If we stop to help each other, he might get both of us.”

Danielle nodded. Gracie couldn’t tell if Danielle was still with her or was simply reacting to react. She feared she’d lost her sister again.

Gracie sat in silence, fuming and fighting tears, then suddenly bolted up and grabbed the tin of Altoid mints. She picked it up, squinted at it, saw how it fit in her palm. The brushed metal on the bottom of the tin reflected the orange bars of the space heater.

“We’ll use this,” she said.

Danielle looked up again. “Mints?”

“No — the tin. Look at it,” she said, holding it up. “It’s the size and shape of a cell phone. It fits in my hand like a phone.”

Gracie turned it upside down and mimicked tapping out a text on the surface of the tin with her thumbs. “See…”

Daniella shook her head, puzzled. She was not getting it.

“It looks like a cell phone from a distance if it’s partially covered by my fingers. What if that driver looks in here and sees you sitting there acting like you’re sending a text? Maybe he’ll panic and think somehow he missed one of our phones when he threw us in here? He’ll think he didn’t miss anything but he may not be absolutely sure. He’ll panic and come rushing in. I’ll be on the other side of that door,” she said, gesturing. “That’s when I throw the blanket over his head and we kick him and bash him with the space heater and run.”

Gracie paused, her eyes wide and expectant.

But Danielle shook her head. “That won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“He’ll know it’s not a phone.”

Gracie stamped her foot. “How will he know that if you really act like you’re texting? If you sell it.”

Before Danielle could object again, Gracie blew up and threw the tin of mints at her sister as hard as she could. The tin smacked the wall with an explosion of little round white candies.

Gracie screamed, “Listen to me! We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to try. Look at this room. Those men are going to rape us and kill us no matter what. They can’t let us go. Don’t you want to try and get out of here?”

Danielle looked away but after a beat, she said, “Yes.”

“Then work with me here.”

“You didn’t have to throw that at me.”

“I’ll knock some sense into you if I have to,” Gracie said, feeling their roles reverse from big and little sister. “Now take that tin and pretend you’re texting.”

Danielle slowly found the tin, shut it with a snap, and listlessly bounced her thumbs off the metal.

“Sell it to me.”

Danielle texted furiously.

“That’s better.”

As she watched, Danielle slowed her movements until they stopped and the tin slipped to the hard concrete floor.

“Danielle?” Gracie yelled, but it was like screaming at an empty shell. She’d lost her again, and maybe forever.

Gracie began to weep.

After a WHILE, Gracie said, “Maybe we should pray.”

They were seated together again side by side. If nothing else, Gracie wanted to offer some comfort to her sister. And she needed some herself.

Danielle didn’t respond.

“To God,” Gracie said. She reached over and grasped her sister’s hand. It was clammy and barely responded to her touch.

“Please God,” Gracie said, “help us out of here. We know we haven’t paid much attention to you but we’re asking you now to help us.”

When she looked over, Danielle had tears in her eyes that glistened in the orange glow of the heater.

“Maybe we could pray for Mom and Dad?” Gracie said. “Can you imagine how they must be just freaking out?”

Gracie grasped both of her sister’s hands in hers.

“Look at me, Danielle.”

After a long moment, Danielle’s eyes met hers. Gracie leaned close enough that their faces were inches apart. She didn’t know how to pray formally. She didn’t know the words and the religious phrases she could think of seemed stuffy and false.

“Please, God,” she whispered, “if you’re up there please help us find a way out of here. And please help my sister.”

Gracie steeled herself. If she made the choice to believe she couldn’t back out of it later. She wasn’t sure how that would change her life or improve their situation, if at all, but she thought she was willing to do it. She needed something to believe in, something greater than herself to help her through this. God had always been out there in her peripheral vision, she thought, but she’d refused to turn her head and look at Him directly. Now was the time if there ever was a time. She liked the idea of handing herself over to a greater power.

But she wondered how many girls in the same room had prayed to be let out? All of them, she guessed. And did it work for any of them?

While Gracie and Danielle touched hands, there was a slight vibration in the floor. Their eyes met. It was the third time there had been some kind of movement from the other side of the door. This time, though, it was followed by a distant and faint deep male voice. Gracie couldn’t make out any individual words, but she got the feeling more than one man was speaking.

“They’re outside,” Danielle whispered. She was terrified.

Instinctively, Gracie and Danielle scrambled across the cold cement floor to the far corner. Gracie noticed that Danielle had left the tin on the floor when she pushed back.

When Gracie looked over at her sister she saw the glimmer of lucidity was gone again. Danielle had slipped back into darkness with her eyes wide open.

34

Ronald Pergram paused on the bottom of the dark stairwell before opening the door. He stepped back to give himself some room, then practiced reaching back through his open coat for the .380 from his waistband and brandishing it. He was quick. He made sure there was a cartridge in the chamber so he wouldn’t have to rack the slide. He thumbed the safety off and fitted it back into his jeans. Then he reached down into his coat pocket and repositioned the .45 Derringer so it pointed forward. He cocked the hammer and left it there. He knew he could reach down and fire it through the fabric of his coat, if necessary. As long as he was close, the firepower was tremendous.

Then he opened the heavy door and stepped inside the room without a word. He took a step to his right with his back against the wall and his right hand in his pocket, gripping the Derringer. His senses were tingling almost as if he’d summoned more white crosses into his system. The door wheezed shut behind him.

Jimmy and Legerski were already there. They didn’t leap up to confront him and didn’t seem surprised by his sudden entrance. Legerski sat in a plastic lawn chair, leaning back so the front two legs were suspended a few inches above the concrete floor. He was in full uniform and his arms were crossed over his big belly. Although he was mostly still, his jaw worked furiously on a piece of chewing gum. He eyed Pergram with calculation. Pergram noted Legerski’s holstered service weapon on his belt, safety strap buttoned. Because of the trooper’s crossed arms and relaxed posture, drawing the weapon would be a production.

Jimmy paced. He had a jerky, disconnected way of moving, especially when he was nervous or excited. He kept bringing the palms of his hands together in front of his chest, then dropping them to his sides as he walked. His head bobbed to an interior monolog Pergram had no interest in hearing. Although he might have a weapon hidden somewhere in his clothing, he appeared to be unarmed. Jimmy liked to dress old-fashioned western, in tight jeans and form-fitting faux-pearl snap-button shirts, so it would be difficult to conceal a pistol unless he had one in the shaft of his cowboy boots. He wouldn’t be able to draw fast, either. But Pergram wasn’t concerned with Jimmy.

Really, this was between him and Legerski, Pergram thought. Jimmy was a sideshow and always had been.

Pergram raised the ammo box so Legerski could see it.

“Are they all in there?” Legerski asked. This was the big question.

Pergram said, “Mostly.”

“I need them all. I need to be positive I can’t be identified in any of them. I’ve been so careful.…”

“Not careful enough maybe,” Pergram said. “But you just keep believing that.”

The chewing stopped. Pergram could see Legerski’s face harden into a mask.

“What are you guys talking about?” Jimmy asked, obviously aware of the tension between them.

Schweitzer had built the underground concrete bunker in the shape and dimensions of an unbalanced barbell. The room they were in was by far the largest, and it had once been crammed with stacks of metal shelving containing crates of freeze-dried food, water barrels, weapons, and survival gear necessary to live for years after the nuclear apocalypse. The shelving had been cleared out but some of the original items remained. An old gasoline-powered generator also remained, but they’d never started it. The power for the bunker and the air-filtration system came from outside, from the power grid. Switching over from outside power to the inside in an emergency was a matter of flipping a switch and firing up the generator.

Schweitzer was a prepper — preparing for the end — long before the description was common. In those days, Pergram knew, the threat was perceived to be external. These days, with preppers, the threat was thought to come from within. Those church idiots, he thought, were ahead of their time.

To the right was the makeshift studio. That’s where the bed was located. What made it different from a normal basement bedroom, aside from the lighting and camera tripod, were the ringbolts in the concrete walls, the wooden box of sex toys and leather restraints, and the curled-up garden hose just out of camera view that was used to wash off the walls and floor after they’d used it. Under the bed was a large grated drain. The fitted sheet over the mattress was heavy duty plastic, so blood wouldn’t soak through.

There was a dark hallway leading off the studio area that led to another room. That room was unfinished and had never been used by Schweitzer. It’s where they kept the girls Pergram brought back, on the other side of a heavy steel door with a single one-inch-by-three-inch viewing slot closed by a steel slider.

“Mostly,” Legerski echoed, shaking his head and glaring at Pergram. Pergram shrugged.

“What are you talking about?” Jimmy asked again.

“Shut up, Jimmy,” Legerski said sharply. Jimmy shut up. For a moment he stopped pacing and nodding. He seemed to finally sense a confrontation brewing in his feral way, Pergram thought.

“What do you mean when you say mostly?” Legerski asked.

“I think you know,” Pergram said. “Why should I cash in my insurance policy just now?”

“You aren’t fucking thinking clear,” Legerski said. “You’re leaving loose ends around. You’re leaving evidence.”

“They aren’t loose. They just aren’t with me here.”

Again, Jimmy said, “What are you two talking about?” His voice went up an octave as he asked.

They ignored him.

Pergram said, “Maybe you shouldn’t have killed that Hoyt guy. You acted alone in that. Maybe you should have thought about what that could bring down on our heads.”

Legerski flushed. He was angry, but he didn’t want to show it. He said, “If I didn’t we’d already be fucked. It was something that had to happen, given the circumstances. I already explained this to you. And if you really think about it, you’ll see I made the right decision at the right time.”

Pergram hesitated, then said, “Maybe. But you also said you could handle whatever came afterwards.”

Legerski held out his hands, palms up. “This lady cop from Helena. I could never have predicted her showing up this morning. I figured if anything they might send a cruiser down from Livingston to check out the roads and check in with me. I know all those guys up there and I get along with all of them. No way did I think someone from Helena would just show up like that. She could really screw everything up.”

“I thought you said you could handle it.”

“This is different,” he said, looking down at his boots. Pergram felt his stomach roil.

“What’s so special about her?”

“Nothing,” Legerski said. “She’s got no real experience. I checked on her and she’s new to the department. She’s a diversity hire and shouldn’t even be there. Her husband was in the military and got whacked in Afghanistan so she’s a single mother and if she was smart she’d just ride things out and do her time and build her pension.”

“So what’s the problem?” Pergram asked, starting to get annoyed with Legerski. “You’re supposed to sweet-talk people like that.”

“Normally, I could,” Legerski said. “But she’s taking everything personally. She knew this Cody Hoyt — he was her partner. She wants to find out what happened to him and she thinks it’s connected to those girls back there.” When he said it he jerked his head toward the dark hallway. “She’s getting the Park County Sheriff’s office involved and she asked me to go to Judge Graff and get a warrant to search the compound.”

Pergram was confused. “Isn’t that what you wanted? For them to suspect the church?”

“Yeah,” he said without conviction, “I wanted them to go out there and hit a dead end. You know, cast some suspicion on the members and interview a few of them even. Then the investigation would just sort of fade away because she wouldn’t find anything to implicate them. But she’s not your average cop. Like I said, she’s taking this personally and asking a lot of questions I never thought would come up.

“Look,” Legerski said, “I know cops. I am one. I know the difference between mailing it in and getting in your hours and really going after something. I mean, she’s down here on her own time. I can’t see her just filing a report and going away. She talked to me like I was a suspect. She fucking interrogated me. But she just kept hammering away with one more thing, one more thing. Then she asked me if I knew any long-haul truckers who lived around here.”

Legerski let that sink in.

“Ask Jimmy if you don’t believe me.”

Pergram looked to Jimmy. Jimmy said, “Yeah, it was at my place an hour ago. She’s a bitch. She’s got no sense of humor. One of those types, you know?”

Pergram felt a stab of red rage rush up his throat. “You didn’t…”

“No, I didn’t tell her anything she could go on,” Legerski said, waving Pergram’s question away with a big paw. “Like I said, she got me to agree to see the judge this morning and get the warrant. I don’t have a choice. It was that or come off like I was impeding her investigation. So that’s where I’m headed as soon as we’re done.”

“What did you tell her?” Pergram asked.

“Nothing. But she’s not going to let go of it once she clears the folks on the compound. If she starts to ask around it’s no secret you and me know each other. Locals will tell her that. I can’t deny it if she asks.” Legerski leaned forward and the two front legs of his chair lowered to the concrete.

“So what if you know me?” Pergram said.

Legerski flushed. “It’s the same thing Hoyt asked, is what I’m saying. You’re a kind of logical conclusion given the circumstances. I can see it plain as day. They’ve got a bead on you even though they don’t know who you are. It’s just a matter of time before she puts two and two together.”

“What?”

“You’re a type, Ronald,” Legerski said. “You fit the profile. I always knew it.”

Pergram felt suddenly angry. “What profile?”

The way he said it made Jimmy’s eyes go big. He stared at Pergram gap-mouthed, as if this was all new to him.

“Jesus,” Legerski said, glancing again at his boots, “I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. But it’s the same way I found you in the first place. I looked back at the cold case files and found that friend of your sister’s. What was her name, Melody? Yeah, Melody Anderson. Seventeen, high school athlete in Livingston. Tall, a little crazy. She vanished, as you know.”

Pergram stepped back involuntarily. He had no inclination Legerski knew about Melody. His first. And his first mistake, in a way. He’d learned things since, he wanted to shout. No more locals. Obviously, they’d look close when it came to locals. So to ensure a steady supply and avoid area gossip and suspicion, he’d learned to cast his net much wider. And concentrate on targets with no support system, no anxious friends, family, or relatives. So that when they were gone no one would really miss them. It took a while to get it figured out, but he’d mastered the system. But Melody, the first, would always sit back there calling at him. Like she was now. Since then, he’d always been so careful.…

“You’re a fucking poster child for the profile,” Legerski said. “Think about it. Late forties. Single. Gone for long periods of time. A determined cop could start to match up known disappearances with your long-haul trucking logs if they did the research. Hell, I did it. They’d start to see a pattern of missing women that corresponded with your routes. So when Hoyt asked I looked into his eyes and I saw he was one of those rare bulldogs. He was going to grab this thing with his teeth and run this out. What I did to him saved your miserable life, Pergram.”

With that, Legerski grabbed the cheap plastic armrests of his chair and pushed himself up until he was standing. His right hand hovered over his weapon.

“And for saving your life, you give me this shit,” Legerski said to him.

Pergram looked around the room, trying not to meet Legerski’s or Jimmy’s eyes. He had to think for himself and not be influenced by them.

He said to Legerski, “You’re making this out like you were saving me. But you were really saving yourself because you didn’t know where the videos were hidden, or how many copies I made.”

The trooper’s mask cracked. Pergram knew he hit home. The illusion was shattered. Until Legerski had all of the videos in his possession, he wouldn’t be in complete control of Pergram, and they both knew it.

Pergram said, “You did what you did to save your hide. You never gave a shit about me. I’m the one who made all this possible. I never needed you, or this bunker, or anything else. I started this and you and Jimmy weaseled your way in. So don’t get high and mighty and say you killed a cop to save me.

“You don’t care about me,” Pergram said.

Legerski filled his huge chest with a deep intake of air, as if it was a response. His eyes and face betrayed his defiance and acceptance, Pergram thought.

No words were spoken for a minute. Pergram and Legerski glared at each other. Pergram thought about dropping his right hand into his pocket and grasping the .45 and pulling the trigger.

Jimmy suddenly said, “I want to see them girls. I want to do them now.”

Legerski said, “You’re out of your fucking mind, Jimmy. This is not the time.”

Jimmy rolled his eyes theatrically and put his hands on his hips. “You two have seen them. I haven’t even seen them yet.”

“Later,” Legerski said.

“Bull-shee-it,” Jimmy moaned. Making the word stretch over three syllables. “We got girls back there I’ve never even seen. Young meat, from what you told me. But you two assholes are standing around struttin’ like peacocks. I say we go back there and see what the Lizard King brung us.”

“I said,” Legerski whispered, “not now, Jimmy. You know the rules. We all participate or none of us do.”

“We’re all here,” Jimmy said, sweeping his hands toward Legerski and then Pergram. “I been up all night with your bullshit. Now it’s time to meet the new chickens.”

Pergram stared hard at Legerski. The only reason Jimmy was involved was because the trooper had brought him in. Pergram never wanted additional participants. It made things too complicated.

“Fuck you two,” Jimmy said, turning on his heel toward the dark hallway. “I’m gonna go get them and bring them out here and we’re gonna have a good time. Why the hell else would I even agree to come here?”

“Jimmy,” Legerski cautioned.

“From what you said, we might all get busted,” Jimmy said over his shoulder, “so I want what I want in the meantime. Ya’ll can come along with me or stay around here arguing about who done what first.”

Pergram hated the fact that things were chaotic. The idea of Jimmy getting to those girls first was an unspeakable affront.

“This was my thing a long time before you two came into it,” he said. “You two shouldn’t even be here.”

Legerski ignored him, and filed in behind Jimmy as he went down the hallway.

Pergram closed his eyes for a moment and despised Legerski for being involved. And despised Jimmy for what he was doing. Then he followed them both down the hallway.

Why not? he asked himself. He thought of those long bare legs on the dark-haired one. Those spindly freckled legs on the other. Still, though, the timing and desire needed to be right.…

Jimmy got to the door first. Legerski was behind him and to his right. Despite the poor illumination, Pergram thought he saw Legerski reach down on his right side and unsnap his sidearm.

Then Jimmy whooped and reached for the door.

35

Gracie felt more than heard footfalls coming toward the door. The talking, the low rumbling, had stopped.

“Oh, Jesus, they’re coming,” Gracie whispered to Danielle.

On the other side of the door, a man yelled out with a high-pitched cry. Like he was cheering something.

She felt her sister’s hand squeeze hard.

The vertical viewing slot in the door was thrown back, and a pair of eyes filled it for a moment before it was closed again.

There was the sharp report of a bolt being thrown, metal on metal. Then the door opened inward and there was a flood of light silhouetting two figures. Not two, she thought. Three of them. One after the other. Their bodies melded together into a single wide mass but three heads stuck out at the top. The first one wore a cowboy hat with the side brims bent up sharply. The middle one wore a peaked cap of some kind.

The last man to enter was hatless but the blocky shape of his head was familiar. He was the trucker who’d brought them here and the man who’d pulled Krystyl out of the room by her hair. Gracie saw the glint of a badge on the second man, and for a brief electric moment her heart soared. The police had come to rescue them. Then she realized the man with the badge was in the middle of the three, not in back where he should be. He wasn’t prodding the men into the room — he was one of them.

A voice she’d not heard before, high and twangy, said, “Hello, girls.” Then: “Gimme that flashlight.”

A few seconds later Gracie was blinded by a beam. He’d shined it directly into her eyes. She raised her hands up and covered her face. Even through her closed eyelids she knew the bright light was still on her.

“That skinny little one looks like a damned boy,” the first one with the flashlight said. He was describing her. The beam left Gracie and swept to the left.

“Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about,” the man said, his voice rising again until he sounded giddy. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Ha!”

The light, of course, was on Danielle.

“I was getting bored with them whores,” the man said. “You done good this time, Ronald. You keep this up and we won’t have to call you the Lizard King no more.”

Now that the light was off her, Gracie spread her fingers so she could see between them. The tall skinny one had come further into the room and now stood above them about fifteen feet away. She didn’t have the nerve to look up toward the flashlight or his face. In the reflected light she could see his scuffed pointy-toed cowboy boots, tight jeans, and an oval bronze belt buckle. The two men behind him, the trucker and the one with the badge, were still in shadow.

“Woo-eee,” the skinny old man said, dragging the word out.

She raised her eyes. The man with the badge behind the cowboy bent over, stood back up, and extended his hand toward the cowboy’s neck and she saw the outline of a gun in it.

The bang was concussive in the closed room and the skinny man dropped straight down. She heard the thud of his knees on the concrete and he was directly in front of her. The flashlight rolled away from him toward her, strobing across the side wall.

She got a glimpse of his face in the flashing light: long and horselike, sallow cheeks, unshaven skin sequined with silver whiskers like some kind of backwoods hillbilly type from the movies. His mouth was open slightly to reveal long yellow teeth and his eyes looked right at her but there didn’t seem to be anything intelligent behind them. He looked surprised.

The big man in the uniform stood behind him and pressed the muzzle of the gun to the back of the cowboy’s head and there was another explosion. The cowboy stiffened and fell over face-first.

Something hot and viscous landed on her bare leg but she didn’t look down to see what it was. She could smell gunpowder, blood, and burned hair.

“Dumb son of a bitch,” the man with the gun said. And to them, he said, “Sorry you had to see that, girlies.”

Gracie asked, “Are you here to help us?”

“Hardly,” the man with the badge said. Then, to the man behind him, “Ronald, help me drag this dumb son of a bitch into the corner for now.”

36

Ronald Pergram watched it happen; Jimmy striding into the room blathering and whooping, asking for Legerski’s flashlight and reaching back for it, clicking it on and shining it on the girls in the corner, the beam playing on them like an evil eye. Then down and to the right, in the corner of his eye, he saw the trooper squat down surprisingly quick for a man of his bulk and tug up on his pant leg to reveal the butt of a revolver jutting out from an ankle holster, pulling it, and with one motion raising it up so the muzzle was four inches behind Jimmy’s ear. Jimmy never sensed it coming or looked around.

When the man went down, he watched Legerski fire the kill shot into the back of Jimmy’s stupid head.

Pergram didn’t make a move to stop the sequence. He just watched. There was no fear whatsoever that Legerski would turn on him.

Because he was the Lizard King, he had insurance, and right now he was bulletproof. Legerski turned and brandished the gun.

“The throwdown I used earlier,” he said, meaning it was the same untraceable weapon he’d used on Hoyt.

The trooper said, “Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of it soon enough.”

Jimmy’s body was light. Pergram grabbed a leg and dragged it toward the wall. He could feel Jimmy’s muscles twitch and quiver beneath the denim. Jimmy’s broken head left a wide spoor of black blood behind him like a wake behind a boat.

They got the body into the corner and Legerski kicked the stray flung-out limbs into some kind of order.

“Get the flashlight and help me.”

Dutifully, but resenting the hell out of following any man’s orders, Pergram closed his hand around the barrel of the flashlight on the floor. It was sticky from rolling through the blood. He carried it over to where Legerski was bent over Jimmy’s body. The trooper was looting his pockets of change; a folding knife, his wallet, and a wad of credit cards, receipts, and notes to himself Jimmy kept bound with a rubber band in his shirt pocket. Legerski unbuckled Jimmy’s belt and pulled it free through the loops.

“So they don’t have something to use as a weapon or to hang themselves.”

Then he took Jimmy’s cowboy boots off and tossed them through the open door into the hallway.

The act made Pergram remember the door was still open and it seemed to do the same to Legerski, because the trooper pivoted on his boots and pointed his finger toward the girls in the corner.

“Don’t neither of you even think of running through that door. There’s no place to go and we’ll stop you before you even get there. You seen what happened here, what I’m capable of. You have no idea what my partner is capable of. So just sit there quiet until we leave.”

Pergram turned and hit them with the flashlight. They hadn’t moved, but he saw something flash in the younger girl’s eyes. She’s been thinking about it, thinking about trying to dash by them toward the door. He smiled but he knew she couldn’t see him do it.

The girl with the dark hair said, “You’re going to leave him in here?”

“For a while,” Legerski said. “Until we figure out what to do with him.”

Pergram watched as Legerski looked around, saw the old blanket on the floor, and snatched it up to cover most of Jimmy’s body. “There,” the trooper said, “now we don’t have to look at him.”

Pergram didn’t want to talk, even though Jimmy, the stupid old coot, had actually said his name. So had Legerski. Even so, he doubted the girls would remember it, given what happened. They’d heard his voice before, but why push it now?

The older one buried her face into her hands and Pergram heard a sob. He looked at the younger one. She looked back, grim, her face a mask of defiance.

He thought, She’ll be fun to break. All that misplaced attitude based on nothing he could see. She was just another one of those overachiever types like his dead sister JoBeth. She didn’t know how the world worked. How could she, when she’d spent her life being coddled, being told how smart and special she was? At least the older was crying. Maybe, on a gut level, she understood. If not, she’d find out soon enough, he thought.

Even though it was the wrong time, the absolute wrong time, he felt his insides stir and his blood rise.

“You ready to go?” Legerski asked him.

Pergram nodded reluctantly. First things first.

As Legerski jammed Jimmy’s possessions into a plastic bag in the other other room, he said, “We’ll be better off without him.”

“Yeah. I never wanted him involved in the first place.”

The trooper looked up. “I know that. I wish I wouldn’t have brought him in. But you know what happened. He started asking me questions about our comings and goings. I knew he was a deviant, but I didn’t know he’d be reckless.”

“I did.”

It had been an unbelievably stupid move on Legerski’s part. Six months before, Jimmy had asked why it was the trooper kept ordering food to go in quantity when there was only one of him still left in his house. Asking him things like, “You got a dolly you ain’t telling me about?” Things like that. One night when the trooper was drunk and off duty, Jimmy showed him his porn collection, which was extensive and revealed his rough inclinations. Legerski noticed a few items that could only be trophies — locks of hair, panties, a pair of glasses. One thing led to another, and the next time Pergram and Legerski went to the bunker for a session Legerski had brought Jimmy along.

Pergram thought letting Legerski in had been his first mistake, although he didn’t feel like he had a choice at the time. Letting Jimmy in compounded the problem.

“It is what it is,” Legerski said, knotting the plastic garbage sack. “No one around here will be very shocked that Jimmy just closed up and hit the road. He’s done it for months at a time before.”

Pergram nodded, but a bad thought was forming.

“You mean you don’t have a real cover story for Jimmy going away?”

“Not really.”

“You’re just winging it? I thought you were supposed to be the great planner?”

“We didn’t have no choice. Jimmy was going to go in there and get them girls before we could get to them first. That was never the deal. He got greedy and stupid. Plus, we don’t have the time for that now. We’ve got to take care of our situation first and get the heat off.”

Pergram nodded for the sake of nodding.

“Look,” Legerski said, “I’ve got to get to Livingston and see that judge. That cunt cop is probably wondering where the hell I am now. I’ve got to get up there and cover my ass.”

“And leave mine hanging,” Pergram said.

“No, it’s not like that.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

“Ronald,” the trooper said, “you’ve got to step up now. I’ve been doing all the dirty work. It’s time you stepped up.”

Pergram leaned back and looked at Legerski through slitted eyes, waiting. The bad thought was turning into a freight train headed right at him.

“That Helena cop knows me,” Legerski said. “She don’t know you. You can get close enough to her to hit with a roofie. You can either take her to your secret spot in the park or bring her back here, I don’t care. But we’ve got to get her off the street before she stirs things up around here and asks too many questions and starts putting things together.”

Pergram said, “You saying you want me to kill the lady cop?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Won’t that bring down seven kinds of hell on us?”

Legerski stepped back from the table. “It could,” he said, “but not if we do it quick and thorough. The Park County sheriff’s deputies aren’t due for hours. She’s completely on her own. If we take her out now, it’ll be a mystery but no one will know jack shit unless we screw it up.

“In fact,” Legerski said, warming to it, “I can steer things a different direction. I can say I saw the two of them — Hoyt and Dewell — getting intimate in a car on the side of the road. Who’s to say they didn’t just run off together? The disgraced cop and his lover and partner? It sounds like something Cody Hoyt would do. It’s just crazy enough people will believe it.”

Then he grinned, and said, “I’ll work on the story. I’ve got between now and seeing the judge to work on it. I can plant the seeds with the Park County guys I know. There might be some holes but for now I’m liking it.”

Pergram didn’t say he did, didn’t say he didn’t. All he knew was that everything he’d built over the years was piled up between the tracks and that freight train was coming. All he’d accomplished was coming apart and spinning wildly out of control and the person running the show was standing right in front of him with a trash bag of a dead man’s remains in his hand.

Legerski grasped the handle of the ammo box Pergram had delivered with one hand and held the plastic bag with the other. For a moment, Pergram refused to let go and the two men stared in each other’s eyes. Then Pergram released his grip and let Legerski take it.

“You know I’ve got more copies,” Pergram whispered.

“I’ll need them, too.”

“Not until I decide to give them to you.”

“You might get us arrested if you keep them.”

“Yeah,” Pergram said, “but if that happens it’ll be the both of us. We’ll go down together.”

Legerski gave Pergram his best cop dead-eye, but Pergram didn’t crack. He’d been on the receiving end of cops and their looks for years.

Pergram gave it a beat, didn’t want to ruin Legerski’s good time. He changed the subject and said, “What does this cop look like and what is she driving?”

The trooper described the Ford Expedition and the Lewis & Clark County plates. He said, “Midthirties, heavy-set, medium-length brown hair, brown eyes, wearing a dark pantsuit and a white blouse.”

And added, “She has a pretty face.”

37

Cassie sat in the parked and idling Ford Expedition on the shoulder of the highway and thought about Thanksgiving, churches, and God.

The compound for the Church of Glory and Transcendence was across the river on the other side of Yankee Jim Canyon. She’d seen it years before as she passed by but she’d never studied the layout or paid much attention to it overall. Now, she looked at it through field glasses, building to building, hoping to find something that would lead to solving the disappearance of the Sullivan girls and Cody Hoyt. She saw no fresh tire tracks on the moist dirt road leading to the compound or on the roads within it, and she saw no red Ford, no sign of Cody’s pickup.

The morning sun, fused through winter storm clouds, came soft and late to the valley. Colors, shadows, and contours appeared flat. There were so many days of sunshine in Montana that a day without it always felt odd to her, and it somehow dampened her earlier enthusiasm that she was doing the right thing and that the investigation was going somewhere.

A hundred yards up the road was a closed gate. The road beyond the gate wound down her side of the river to a two-lane bridge over the river to the compound. It looked to be the only way in and out, although she couldn’t tell if there were roads into the mountains from behind the buildings, and guessed there must be.

The compound was laid out on a huge bench of land directly across from her. Sharp-walled foothills rose in back and to the sides, and it looked as if the mountains were cradling the compound in the palms of its open hands. There was a kind of military precision to the layout. To the left, there were four or five long neat rows of small white single-family houses, all with green roofs. In the middle of the assemblage was a massive chapel marked by a pointed steeple. The four rows of stained-glass windows indicated there were at least four floors within it, or at least the front half. The chapel was also painted white. A two-level clapboard building served as the school, she guessed, based on the playground equipment in a fenced area adjacent to it. To the right were large anonymous buildings, garages and equipment sheds and storage facilities, she guessed. That would be the place to look for the missing vehicles, she thought. The rest of the bench to the right was a plowed field that was fuzzy green with early shoots of winter wheat.

What was remarkable about the compound, she thought, was the utter lack of human activity. Sure, there were wisps of woodsmoke from the chimneys of the houses and curlicues of steam from the roof pipe of one of the outbuildings, but there were no people about. She wondered if they were all underground, and the thought unnerved her.

She tried to imagine the network and scope of the underground complex that supposedly existed underneath the buildings. Except for odd concrete abutments that appeared for no rhyme or reason in the gravel yards in front of the homes and within the outbuildings, there was no reason to suspect it was there.

During one of the long spells when her mother was gone, Cassie had been shuttled to her uncle Frank’s place on a small, windswept cattle ranch outside Miles City, Montana, on the eastern plains. Uncle Frank and Aunt Helen had four boys, two older than her and two younger, none of whom still remained in the county. Until Uncle Frank lost the ranch and moved to town, she was one of the boys when it came to ranch work. Although her uncle wanted to spoil his only girl, she’d have none of it. Part of the reason was to avoid teasing from her cousins, the other part was her desire to fit in. She built fence, delivered calves, and pulled the flatbed behind the truck or tractor; loading hay bales in the summer and feeding the hay to the cattle in the winter.

Every Sunday they’d go to church in Miles City, the First Congregational Church. Her cousins hated it, but she secretly loved the opportunity to dress up once a week, be a girl, drive to town with brothers who smelled clean and looked nice. She never understood why they went to the Congregational Church, and never understood the difference between Congregationalists and Lutherans or Baptists or Presbyterians. She knew Catholics thought themselves special and she always envied them for it because they seemed to know something she didn’t. There were a few Mormons in town and they had the most modern church with a basketball court inside, and she envied that, too.

She decided she was a Christian back then, and she figured she still was. When she glassed the compound she wondered about the members who were so devout they’d uprooted and moved there years ago so they could be with like-minded believers. She envied them like she’d envied the Catholics and Mormons because they seemed to believe in something. She didn’t think they were stupid, or ignorant. In fact, maybe they were smarter than her in a spiritual way. At least they believed in something that could help guide them through their lives.

She didn’t hear the bell but it must have rung for recess, because suddenly the yard near the school was filled with children. They filled the swing sets and lined up for the slide. Boys squared off for a football game. Children who didn’t get to the equipment or the organized games stood in knots in the corners of the yard talking among themselves. Three adults bundled in parkas supervised by walking around.

She zoomed in. The children varied in ages from probably five to gawky teenagers. They looked healthy and well dressed in conservative but not tremendously dated clothing. She noted the rosy cheeks of some of the girls in the cold morning, and the clouds of condensation that floated above their heads like thought bubbles.

Cassie moved the binoculars and focused on a group of five or six small children in the corner of the yard. They were apart from the older kids and kept to themselves in the natural tribal order of children on a playground. Their coats seemed too large and bulky for their size — probably hand-me-downs — and their little legs stuck out the bottom like twigs. They weren’t much older than Ben, she thought. Two of the boys could be Ben. The thought made her heart swell and she fought off a sudden and unexpected urge to cry.

Cassie sighed and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and lowered the binoculars to her lap. She was not getting any kind of suspicious feeling from what she saw that the church members across the canyon were malevolent, that they’d be involved in the disappearance of teenage girls or Cody. It was silly to think that, she knew. Evil people often didn’t look evil from the outside. That was one of the revelations of police work for her; that the man out mowing his lawn could be as awful as the crackheads who lived in the rental cabins above Lincoln. She knew God-squad types could be capable of great crimes. But she just wasn’t getting the vibe, despite what Trooper Legerski had said.

She wished she could ask Cody for his thoughts on the situation. He put more stock in intuition than most cops she’d met. Once, he’d said, “When something feels hinky, better go with it.” But nothing she saw or felt in the compound seemed hinky.

Cassie considered driving up to the gate and asking them to open it. That had been her original intention. But when she thought more about it, she decided she couldn’t risk it even if it was what Cody likely would have done — and possibly did. If they didn’t let her in and she had to wait for the warrant to arrive, that might give them hours to hide and dispose of evidence if there was any. And if they let her in and her intuition about them was wrong — there she was. They could disappear her the same way they’d disappeared the Sullivan girls and Cody.

So she’d wait until the Park County deputies arrived with the warrant, and, if necessary, they’d use it for access. She had plenty of time to kill and wonder if what she was doing made any rational sense.

She checked her wristwatch. An hour and a half toward lunchtime, an hour for lunch, then maybe three or four more working hours left in the day before everyone took off for the Thanksgiving holiday. It took forty-five minutes from Livingston to get where she was, so that cut down the available time for the Park County deputies to help her even further. She cursed the timing of it all. Why couldn’t this have happened on a Monday, instead?

The Sullivan girls had been missing for barely thirteen hours, and Cody eight. If they were being held alive in the compound or elsewhere, what were the chances they’d still be alive after the four-day weekend? After ninety-six hours of captivity? She’d seen the crime statistics for kidnapping at the academy. The odds were slim to none.

Then she thought again about Ben. He deserved a Thanksgiving dinner. He deserved some kind of normalcy and tradition, the things she never had growing up with her mother. She’d get back to Helena, she decided, as soon as she could. The Albertsons stayed open late and if they didn’t have turkeys left she’d buy a ham. If necessary, she’d cook all night.

The thought of being at home with Ben while the Sullivan girls and Cody were still missing brought a nauseating wave of guilt. But what could she do if they found nothing to go on?

Cassie tried to jump-start the process. She called the Park County Sheriff’s Department on her cell phone and asked for Sheriff Bryan Pedersen directly. The receptionist placed her on hold, and enough time went by that Cassie imagined a conversation between the sheriff and the receptionist to concoct the best cover story they could come up with to refuse the call.

Finally, “This is Sheriff Pedersen.” His voice was dry and high, not pretentious.

“This is Investigator Cassandra Dewell of Lewis and Clark County,” she said.

“Right, Deputy Dewell. Whenever I hear your name I think of Deputy Dawg, the cartoon character.” There was a beat. “I hope you aren’t offended.”

“No, it isn’t the first time I heard it.”

“Sorry, then.” He chuckled. “So what can I do you for?”

“Has Sheriff Tubman contacted you this morning? He said he would.”

“Oh, yeah,” Pedersen said, “it slipped my mind. We’ve got everybody out on assignment right now but I might be able to spare a couple of guys after lunch.”

“After lunch?”

“Yeah, I got Gadbury and Simmons I can send down there. They’re two of my best investigators.” Meaning plainclothes detectives, similar to Cassie and Cody.

“What about some uniforms?” she asked.

“Not likely. We’re running a skeleton crew as it is because of the holiday coming. I’ve got to have a couple guys here on call and I’ve got to man my jail. I can’t pull anybody to drive down there today.”

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply to remain calm. Legerski’s words came back to her, that just because she was having a crisis didn’t mean anybody else was.

“Sheriff, we’ve got three missing people. Trooper Rick Legerski is on his way up there to get a search warrant from the judge, and I really need some manpower from your department to help serve it.”

“This is for the church compound?” Pedersen said, an unmistakable note of reluctance in his voice.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I guess I know about this,” Pedersen said.

She waited for more, but more didn’t come.

“Sheriff, is there a problem?”

A long sigh. “No, I told Tubman I’d help you out. I owe him a couple. But you have to understand something, Deputy Dewell. This whole thing sounds flimsy to me. You’re asking us to go down there and turn a church group upside down the day before Thanksgiving based on what you suspect? How do you suppose that’s going to play with them or with the residents in the valley? It seems damned heavy-handed, if you ask me.”

I didn’t, she wanted to say. Instead, she said, “Look at it this way. The quicker we clear them the quicker we can look other directions. I’m sure they’ll appreciate that.”

“You think?” he said, dubious. Then, “You’re determined to do this today?”

“Yes.”

“Less than twenty-four hours after these girls were reported missing … somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure it can’t wait a little while? Say after the holiday weekend? We’ll have more guys available then and we might have more to go on. We don’t even know if those girls disappeared in the canyon for sure, do we?”

“No. But Investigator Cody Hoyt told me personally he was coming here last night to investigate. That’s the last we heard of him.”

Groaning, Pedersen said, “I know Cody. He’s an obstinate son of a gun. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised he thinks it’s just fine to cross the county line and start an investigation out of his jurisdiction without bothering to inform or involve the local authorities.”

“He’s on his own,” she said, knowing she sounded defensive.

“He always is, and that’s the problem with guys like that.”

She said, “We can debate Cody’s methods or we can try to save some lives, Sheriff.”

Pedersen sighed again.

“I heard you were kind of tough to deal with.”

“Who told you that?” She suspected either Tubman or Legerski. Either way, as much as she wanted to deny the feeling, it cut into her. Then she thought: not Tubman. Even sheriff to sheriff, he wouldn’t cast aspersions on his own high-profile diversity program hire.

“So Trooper Legerski has been in contact with you this morning?”

“Just a few minutes ago, as a matter of fact. He wanted to know if the judge was in chambers or off for Thanksgiving.”

So she knew. Legerski.

She said, “Is the judge in?”

“Until noon. After that, he’s on the road.”

“Good. We should be able to get the warrant.”

“I suppose, Investigator Dewell. But he might have some of the same questions I do. He may wonder why we can’t wait.”

She closed her eyes, fighting real anger. She said, “If it turns out those girls and my partner were hurt down here and we could have prevented it, maybe then you’ll be able to explain to everyone why it was best to wait over a four-day weekend to save them.”

“Calm down, little lady—”

“I’m not anyone’s little lady, Sheriff.”

“And no wonder. But never mind. I’ll send Gadbury and Simmons like I said. And if I can rustle anyone else up, I’ll send them, too. I’ll ask them to give you a call when they get close so you can arrange a place to meet.”

She said, “At the locked gate that leads to the compound. Tell them to meet me there.”

“All right.”

He said it as if he couldn’t wait to get off the phone.

Fuming, she noticed as the Expedition idled there was only a quarter of a tank of gas left, and she decided to run the ten miles farther to Gardner to fill up. As she pulled back onto the highway toward Gardner, she replayed the conversation with Sheriff Pedersen in her head, and got even angrier. Little lady? Legerski had poisoned the well. Why?

She thought again about the number of cigarette butts she’d found in the Dumpster. She thought about the furtive way he’d acted when they met that morning. She speculated what the trooper had told the sheriff in their conversation about her other than she was “tough to deal with.” She thought about what he’d mouthed when he left.

Cassie opened her phone again and speed-dialed Edna’s cell phone back in Helena. She didn’t want to talk to the chief dispatcher over the radio where anyone listening could hear.

After recapping what had happened and where she was, Cassie asked, “Didn’t you say your sister still lives in Gardiner?”

“Yes, hon. Sally. She owns the little quilt shop there. Yellowstone Quilt Shop.”

Cassie nodded. “I have a little time. I might just drop by and see her.”

“I’ll call her and tell her you’re coming. I’ll bet she’ll do a twenty percent discount for you if I ask.”

“Edna,” Cassie said sharply, “please don’t call her. I’ll just drop by. I want to ask her a couple of questions about her ex-husband Rick Legerski. I’d rather she didn’t know that before I got there.”

Edna paused and said, “She’s a private person. But if she trusts you she has plenty to tell. Okay, I won’t call her.”

“Thanks, Edna.”

38

The snow squall had stopped for the time being but the storm clouds to the north looked to be gathering, bunching, closing their fists to deliver a much harder blow later in the day. Pergram bounced the old Buick down the rutted private road toward his home, a sense of black calm in his head and heart.

Although he did poorly in school and barely graduated, he’d always had an innate ability to plan and figure, to think several steps ahead. If he was ever called to write his formulas down on paper he couldn’t do it. But he had learned over the years from trucking that he could outthink and outmaneuver his fellow drivers and keep himself ahead of the game. He was superior to them. That’s why he kept his load just under the 80,000 pounds gross vehicle weight by not filling both 125-gallon tanks all the way and adding the extra weight of fuel. When he ran he never used cruise control but used his gears to avoid unnecessary stress on the motor, and he kept it below the speed limit between sixty-two and sixty-four miles an hour, optimal speed for fuel savings. He knew his truck would get 6.2 miles per gallon in the summer and 5.5 in the winter and he planned accordingly; putting on more fuel in low-tax or rebate states like Illinois and driving across high-tax hard-ass Minnesota without stopping at all. He ate and slept in his cab and didn’t waste money at truck stops unless he could help it. He perfected the art of shifting his load slightly from the front of the trailer to the rear and vice versa by applying pneumatic air to different parts of the trailer as he drove over scales.

All those strategies gained him time, saved him money, and ended up on his bottom line every month. Over the years, he’d earned tens of thousands by not being stupid, not being brash, just trucking along thinking a hundred miles in front of him while the scenery rolled by.

He did that now, as he drove to his house. He could see a hundred miles ahead of him and he knew what he needed to do.

The “Oh Shit” box sat on the passenger seat next to him.

The flimsy old curtain in the living room opened a few inches as he noted the scarred foot of a cane holding the fabric back. That’s how she looked outside these days without actually standing up. She leaned forward in her chair and parted the curtains with her cane. He pretended not to notice her.

Pergram didn’t go straight into the house. Instead, he carried the “Oh Shit” box to his Peterbilt, hoisted himself up, and climbed inside. The box went between the seats. Then he shut the door and leaned on the coil and started up the Cat 15 motor. It was cold at first and he sat quietly and feathered the fuel until the racketing of the diesel motor smoothed into a familiar hum. He checked the stacks and observed them until the exhaust turned from oily black to chalky to clear.

He checked his gauges, fuel level, air pressure, temperature, fluid levels. Everything was beautiful. It felt good to be back inside his cab. It felt right, a warrior mounting his warhorse, he thought. His foray onto solid ground this time had been a disaster.

He left the truck idling and swung out of the cab and clambered down the steps to the dirt. He knew she hated it when he left his truck running outside so close to the house.

Pergram went in through the front door and shinnied his way through the tunnel toward his bedroom door. As he passed her she was still in her chair where she’d been when he left. She shook her cane at him and her mouth moved and sounds came out. He didn’t even look over.

He unlocked his bedroom door and strode inside. Within a minute, he’d packed his laptop, video camera, digital cameras, and VHS to DVD converter into a hard-sided case. Standing on top of his bed, he reached up through the cheap paneling squares and grasped a grocery bag containing copies of all the original discs and tapes he’d delivered to Legerski. The bag had so many video sessions preserved he could barely fit it into the case. But he managed, and he clicked the hasps shut.

The door remained open as he left the room. No need to lock it, he thought.

The droning, cackling sound he heard as an irritating soundtrack came into focus because he let it. He paused a few feet short of the alcove of stacked treasures where she still sat.

“Ronald! You know how I feel about that truck running right outside my window. I can’t hear myself think it’s so loud. It’s like somebody is shaking me. I can feel the whole house shake. I can smell the fumes and they make me sick. What have I asked you about leaving that truck running?”

He didn’t respond. Just stood there.

“Ronald, I know you’re there. I know you can hear me, you rude son of a buck. I know you’re right there.”

He nodded to himself as if answering.

“Did you fill my car up with gas like you promised? If we’re going to have a nice Thanksgiving I need to go into town and stock up. I don’t want to run out of gas, Ronald.”

Then, “Are you going on another run? Is that why you started that truck? Does that mean you won’t even be here to share Thanksgiving with your old ma? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

Pergram reached out with his free hand and placed it on a column of newspapers, magazines, and folded empty brown grocery sacks that rose from floor to ceiling. He put some weight into it, and it leaned a little. Dust motes floated down from the top level into the shaft of light from the front-room window. He leaned the stack toward the open aisle that led to her chair in the alcove of debris.

“Ronald, what are you doing? You be careful there.”

“What did I say about all this shit?” he said finally.

“I’ll clean it out. I told you I’d get rid of it.”

He sighed.

“What about Thanksgiving, Ronald?”

“I guess you’ll be able to spend it with JoBeth.”

She paused.

“What did you say?”

“I said I guess you’ll be able to spend this Thanksgiving with JoBeth, Ma.”

“You’re talking nonsense.”

“Tell her I never could stand her.”

She gasped, speechless for once.

“Tell her I couldn’t stand her friends, neither.”

“Ronald, don’t say that. Don’t say it.”

He put more weight behind his hand against the stack. A few of the newspapers from the top fell off into the aisle.

“This place is a fire hazard,” he said. “How many times have I told you that?” Mimicking her tone and cadence.

“Ronald, be careful. That ain’t funny.”

“It’s kind of funny,” he said as an aside. Then, “You told that highway trooper you thought there was something wrong with me. That I was up to something.”

“What highway trooper?”

“The one who pulled you over a few years ago. Legerski.”

“I don’t even remember, I really don’t.”

“That being the case,” he said, “I wonder how many other folks you talked to about me you can’t remember, either? Just because what you say doesn’t mean nothing to me, that doesn’t mean other people might not listen to you. Ever think about that?”

He shoved hard and the column collapsed, sealing the aisle.

“Ronald!”

All he could see of her back there among the garbage was the top of her silver head. It rocked back and forth as she yelled.

“Ronald, I told you that would happen. Now you’ve got to help dig me out of here. Some of them things fell on my legs.”

He stepped back and reached into his breast pocket with his free hand and withdrew a book of matches that read JUBITZ TRUCK STOP/PORTLAND OREGON. That was one of the good ones, he thought. No lot lizards there.

He opened the cover, fingered back a match, and rubbed it across the strike strip. The smell of sulfur was sharp and a curl of smoke hung in the stagnant air.

“What are you doing, Ronald?” she asked, finally scared.

He tipped the book so the flame spread to all the matches. It flared and he nearly dropped it because the heat singed the tips of his fingers. Then he flicked it toward the fallen stack.

“Ronald…”

He backed out the door and could already feel the heat on his face.

He checked his side mirrors as he ran through the low gears and the Peterbilt pulled away. The mirrors were filled with flame and roiling black curls of smoke coming out through the windows and doors of the old house. It wouldn’t be long, he thought, before the Buick went up with it and rendered any hair or fiber evidence to ash. Already, the dense Russian olive bushes on the side of the house were crackling with flame.

Pergram slowed as he approached the junction to the highway, checking both lanes. He took the turn wide as he had hundreds of times, careful not to let the end of his trailer clip a delineator post, and pointed the snub nose of the Peterbilt south toward Gardiner.

Looking for that fat lady cop from Helena.

39

The Yellowstone quilt shop was a former residence on Scott Street, the main road through town. It stood between a white-water raft outfitter company closed for the winter and a pawn shop with a sign that read GUNS! It was a neat Victorian, narrow with a steep roof of wooden shingles and a covered wooden porch on the front. A hanging sign made of quilt squares hung in the window and indicated it was open.

Cassie parked the Expedition along Scott Street in front of the shop and climbed out and brushed crumbs from her lap and the front of her coat. She’d filled the tank and eaten a half-dozen miniature chocolate donuts at a convenience store near the bridge that crossed the Yellowstone River. The clerk behind the counter, a bald man with a full beard who wore suspenders, said he’d never heard of the quilt shop. A woman customer behind her chewed the man out for being oblivious and gave Cassie directions.

She could hear the roar of the river behind the row of shops. It was far below them in the canyon, but the sound of rushing water carried.

White lace curtains on the inside gave it a homey, quaint feel, Cassie thought. It stood out from the elk antler look of the rest of the town. The shop, like all the buildings on the block, was close to the street. Only a narrow strip of brown grass behind the white picket fence separated if from the sidewalk.

A small bell rang as she pushed through the door. The shop was small and filled with fabrics on tables and displayed on the walls. A slim dark-haired woman looked up and smiled shyly from behind a sewing machine at an antique desk at the front. The machine she was working with went silent.

“Good thing you made it,” the woman said. “I was planning to close at noon today for the holiday. But not to worry. You can browse as long as you like. The fabric on the tables is marked twenty percent off, and I’m running a nice special on fat quarters.”

Cassie was embarrassed not to know what a fat quarter was and didn’t ask. She always felt guilty about knowing so little about quilting and other sewing crafts. Instead, she squared her shoulders and said, “Are you the owner?”

“Yes.”

Sally Legerski looked gentle and almost elegant, Cassie thought. She had high cheekbones, a wide mouth, and large blue eyes and she was slim and petite. Cassie could see very little of Edna in her facial features or build. Although she guessed Sally to be in her late forties, it wasn’t hard to imagine that she’d been quite a beauty in her teens and twenties. Quite the contrast with Edna.

Cassie dug into her purse and withdrew her wallet badge and let it flop open.

“Mrs. Legerski, I’m Investigator Cassandra Dewell from the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Department. I’m in the area investigating the disappearance of two teenage girls last night and I hope you can answer a couple of questions.”

“Oh, dear.” Cassie could tell it was an expression of concern for the girls, not alarm that Sally was being questioned. Cassie had deliberately not mentioned Cody. For some reason, she didn’t think that would help her.

“Two girls from Colorado on their way to Helena were last heard from after they passed through town. Since then, we’ve not been able to locate them or their vehicle. It’s been over eighteen hours.”

“I see,” Sally said, obviously puzzled where the line of inquiry would go from there. After a beat, she asked, “Are you wondering if I saw them?”

Cassie raised her eyebrows. “Did you?”

“I don’t think so,” Sally said. “It’s possible, though. There is quite a lot of traffic that passes down that street out there right outside my window. You know, people going to and from the park. Right now it’s very quiet, but in the summer it gets kind of ridiculous. It gets noisy and I tend to just tune it out. What time did you say they came through town?”

Cassie checked her notes. “After nine.”

“P.M.?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m sure I didn’t see them. I was home by then. I live up on the hill where I can’t see the road. I hope someone saw them, though, and you’re able to find them. This whole town is dead by that time in the winter. I get so worried about young girls driving alone on the highway. Are you asking me because they were quilters or something?”

Cassie felt a flush of embarrassment in her cheeks.

“Not that I know of.”

Sally Legerski nodded, and said, “Well, okay,” as a polite way of saying, Then why are you here?

Cassie took a deep breath and chanced a concerned smile. She said, “I should probably just come clean with you.”

Sally cocked her head slightly to the side, puzzled.

“I want to ask you some questions about your ex-husband, Trooper Rick Legerski.”

At the sound of his name, Sally’s eyes and expression iced up. It was a visceral reaction, Cassie thought. Sally pushed back from the table and folded her arms over her breasts.

“What about him?”

“Mind if I sit down?” Cassie asked, gesturing to a folding chair on the side of the table.

Sally nodded her okay.

Cassie sat down so the two were much closer, so it would seem more like a conversation than an interrogation.

“I met with him this morning about the missing girls since he’s the only patrolman on this stretch of highway,” Cassie said. “I guess we didn’t hit it off very well. I came away with the feeling he was holding something back on me. I got the feeling there were things going on behind the scenes he didn’t want to tell me about. I’m new to this job and I’m a stranger down here in Park County. So I was wondering…” she faltered. What is it exactly she wanted to know? Did she want an ex-wife to dish dirt on her ex-husband? What was the point of that? To get revenge on the man who called her a horrible name?

“Let me guess where you met,” Sally said, “The First National Bar in Emigrant, right?”

Cassie nodded.

“And was the owner there? A tall creepy guy who kind of hovered around the whole time saying inappropriate things?”

“Jimmy.”

“Yes, Jimmy,” she said, and her top lip curled slightly as she said the name. “If I ever see Jimmy again for the rest of my life it’ll be too soon.”

“I didn’t like him, either,” Cassie said.

“He’s bad news. I always hated going in there, even with Rick. Those two…” She didn’t finish, but looked up suddenly at Cassie. She seemed startled at her own vehemence. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re dredging up some bad memories for me.”

“That’s not my intention,” Cassie said. Although it was.

“What do you want to know about Rick?”

“I’m not sure,” Cassie said. “I guess I want to know what kind of man he is.”

A shadow passed over Sally’s face and it turned into a mask.

She said, “I’ve closed that chapter in my life and I really don’t want to open it up again. I’ve moved on, and I’m not the kind of woman who gossips about her ex-husband. I’ve got no respect for women who trash their ex-husbands as if they didn’t bear any responsibility for choosing them in the first place. I hope that’s not what you expected of me.”

“I’m not meaning to pry.” Cassie took a breath, unsure how to proceed.

“It sounded like you were.”

“No. Let’s keep this entirely professional and not personal. You were with him as he advanced in rank and moved around the state. So he must be a good highway patrolman?”

She spoke as if reciting. “Rick was a great law enforcement officer. He worked hard, put in more than his share of hours, and he didn’t cut many corners. He likes to throw his weight around a little — make sure everyone knows who’s boss — but that isn’t unusual with some state troopers. He maintained that it was part of his job. After all, those men are usually out there on the highway all alone. They don’t have partners and in a state like Montana, backup could be twenty minutes away. Asserting authority defuses situations that might become volatile.

“Believe me,” she continued, “moving around the State of Montana with him through the years, I met a lot of highway patrolmen. I guess what I’m telling you without saying it very well is his job comes first.”

Cassie nodded for her to go on.

She didn’t. “Are we done here?”

“Yes. Unless there’s something you want to tell me.”

“I really don’t. It’s personal.”

Cassie was ashamed of herself. She didn’t know what direction to go. In her mind was a furious tangle of different threads and none of them came together in any logical way. There was Cody’s disappearance, the presence of the church compound, the cigarette butts, the rebuffs by both Legerski and the Park County sheriff, the missing girls out there …

Sally said, “No one can ever really understand what goes on in the marriage of other people without being there. It’s the most complicated thing in the world. I’ve completely stopped trying, you know? There was this wonderful couple who live right behind me. Married forty-three years. Every time I saw them they doted on each other. The man, Walt, called her ‘honeybunch’ instead of Wilma, her name. I really envied them. Then one day, he says he’s going out for groceries and he never comes back. She won’t talk about what happened, and I have no idea.”

Cassie shook her head.

“You always hear the arguments are about money or sex, and that’s probably true. But sometimes it’s just about a bad vibe. Sometimes you can look across the table at someone you’ve been with for years and realize to your horror you know nothing about them. That they are living another life right in front of your eyes. That you have absolutely no idea what he’s doing out there away from home and he won’t even offer a fake explanation why sometimes he’ll roll in looking flushed and used up.”

Cassie felt her scalp twitch.

Sally said after a beat and without prompting, “I’ll tell you one thing: he keeps some strange company for a cop.”

“You mean Jimmy?”

“Him, too,” Sally said.

Before Cassie could ask, the silence of the shop was filled with the clatter of a clattering diesel engine outside on the street.

“This is what I meant earlier,” Sally said, raising her voice to a near shout to be heard, “it’s a great location to catch the tourist traffic but a lousy one when you’re trying to concentrate or carry on a conversation. Especially when it’s those big trucks.”

Cassie followed the shop owner’s line of sight and turned in her chair. A massive black truck with a long silver trailer was right outside on the other side of the Expedition. It was stopped in the street. She leaned down and tried to see the driver through the lace curtains but the cab was too high from her angle. The truck had stopped in the street near Cassie’s Expedition. She waited for the truck to move on so they could resume their conversation.

Cassie stood up and walked around the fabric tables to the window and pushed aside the lace and looked outside. A stout, heavyset man in jeans and an oversized tan coat pulled himself up into the cab of the truck and shut the door. She couldn’t see his face or even a quarter profile — only a band of light-colored hair beneath the band of a greasy cap. Why had he stopped and gotten out of his truck?

With a hiss of air, the truck lurched and rolled away.

“What was that guy up to?” Cassie asked.

“I don’t know,” Sally said from behind the table. “I can’t see.”

The clatter of the truck subsided as it vanished from sight down the street. It made a wide turn on the end of the block and Cassie strained to see the license plate but all she could discern was it was commercial and from Montana.

She said, “I’ll be right back,” and went out the front door. The bell rang as she stepped out onto the wooden porch. Although she could no longer see it, she could track the black truck by its sound. It had turned and turned again, and was coursing up the next street over, laboring back the direction it had come.

As she walked out to the Ford, she unbuttoned her coat and reached back and rested her hand on the butt of her Glock.

She peered into the vehicle through the passenger side window and could see something on the driver’s seat. She hadn’t locked her door and someone — no doubt the truck driver — had opened it and placed it inside.

Cassie walked around the car and looked in. On top of the seat was a misshapen white square package. She pulled on her left glove and opened the door to retrieve it.

Three square white envelopes bound by a rubber band. She recognized them as the kind that covered CD or DVD disks. And on the white smooth surface of the outside envelope was spidery writing: There at the Schweitzer place.

40

Cassie returned to the quilt shop with her briefcase and the package just as Sally Legerski rotated the hanging sign in the window from OPEN to CLOSED. She paused on the porch but Sally waved to her through the window to come in.

“That’s for my customers,” Sally said as Cassie closed the door behind her. “What happened out there?”

“That truck driver left me something.”

“You’re kidding,” Sally said. “Do you know him?”

Cassie stopped. She hadn’t even considered it. “No. But it’s just weird because I’ve been thinking a lot about long-haul truck drivers lately.”

Sally nodded, understandably unsure what she meant.

“He left this,” Cassie said, gesturing with the envelopes.

“Oh, my.”

“Can I use the table here to check them out?”

“Sure, let me clean it off.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Cassie said, dragging the folding chair over to a table covered with folded yards of fabric. She opened her briefcase and withdrew the county laptop and opened it on top of the fabric. Sally hovered behind her, and Cassie turned her head and said, “You might not want to see this.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure, but I’ve got a very bad feeling about it.”

Sally returned to her chair behind the counter. From where she sat, Cassie didn’t think Sally could view the screen.

As Sally started ringing out the register for the day, Cassie slid the first disk from the envelope and fed it into her DVD drive. There was no label or marking on the disk, and she thought it might contain fingerprints. She decided to save the other two for the evidence techs if necessary and not handle them further. She found her headphones in the briefcase and plugged them in. If there was sound accompanying the video, she didn’t want Sally to hear it.

Without preamble, the video launched. A man’s face masked in a balaclava filled the screen. She could see his eyes but they were so close to the lens they were blurry and unrecognizable. He wasn’t looking into the lens. Instead, he seemed to be fiddling with the camera itself. There were thumping and static noises. Then he stepped back and turned with his back to the camera and came into focus. Cassie unconsciously placed both of her hands on the sides of her face.

He looked large and blocky, wearing a black long-sleeved sweater and black sweatpants and lace-up boots. A huge belly extended out over the waistband of the pants. Large white hands extended from the cuffs of his sweater. She looked for a distinguishing mark or wedding ring but saw neither. Still, she was struck by the size of his hands. He had Legerski’s frame, she thought, but so did a lot of men.

The masked man turned slightly, stepped aside, and swept his arm to present a stark bedroom of some kind. He said, “And here we are once again. This ought to be a good one because it stars … me!” His voice was electronically altered and sounded disembodied, inhuman.

Cassie noted the camera was at shoulder height, likely on a shelf or tripod. It wasn’t high-quality video or audio and the lighting was bright but garish.

“Wait just a second until I bring out the talent,” he said, and went off-screen. The camera didn’t move with him.

After a minute of nothing but still life, the man reappeared holding what looked like a leash. No, Cassie saw, not a leash. A chain. It snaked out of his hand and extended behind him. Then he gave it a sharp yank.

A skinny naked woman was pulled into the shot and she sat down on the bed and glanced at the camera. The chain was attached around her ankle. She looked terrified. Cassie stared back at those haunted eyes. The man in black took his end of the chain and snapped it to get her attention, then fastened it to a ringbolt on the wall next to the bed. She could see the chain was long enough to allow movement around the bed but no further.

As he did, Cassie tried to see the girl better. Her face seemed familiar, Cassie thought. Then it came to her: she was one of the missing three local girls she’d researched the night before. She couldn’t remember which one, couldn’t attach the name, but she knew she’d be able to connect them when she had her files in front of her.

For the next few minutes, time stood still and Cassie was transported into a real-life version of hell. Even as she watched it, she knew she’d never be able to scrub the images from her mind for the rest of her life. She had to remind herself to breathe.

The man seemed jaunty and cruel at the same time. When he glanced back at the camera — there was a second of wide-spaced deep eyes — there was no doubt he seemed to be enjoying himself.

It came in horrible flashes, and Cassie found herself fast-forwarding, getting the gist but not dwelling a second longer than necessary on the actual details.

The man shoved his crotch into the girl’s face and grabbed at his zipper with one hand and her hair in the other …

Fast-forward-fast-forward-fast-forward

The camera never moved or zoomed in, to Cassie’s relief, and she assumed there was no one else in the room even though the monster liked to address the lens himself as if hosting a show.

At one point, after he’d turned the girl over facedown on the bad and waddled up behind her, he addressed the camera with a flushed red face and jabbed his finger at it and said, “Don’t fuck with me again, Lizard King!”

Lizard King? she wondered.

Fast-forward-fast-forward-fast-forward

The poor girl, Cassie thought, feeling her own eyes fill with tears as the girl cried and begged for him to stop. He backhanded her hard enough that she fell off the bed. As he bent down to pull her back up, Cassie noticed a large discolored mark of some kind on the skin of the small of his back. Like a stain or a botched tattoo. As if he realized the same thing himself, he self-consciously reached back and tugged down the hem of his sweater, hiding it again.

Fast-forward-fast-forward-fast-forward

Staggering and spent, the man lurched to his feet and stood there, the girl curled up on top of the bed. He breathed hard, glowered at the camera. Then he lurched toward the screen and went out of view.

The girl lay on the bed in a fetal position, hugging her knees, her back facing the screen. Cassie could see her bent spine, her shoulders heaving from crying. On the small of her back was a tattoo and Cassie recognized it as the Harley-Davidson logo. She remembered one of the missing girls had the tattoo …

Then he returned, holding a long bladed knife that looked like a bayonet. He lurched across the screen toward the girl in the bed, and stopped to look back over his shoulder and smile.

Fast-forward-fast-forward-fast-forward

Blood, everywhere.…

Cassie felt as disgusted and abused and as horrified as the murdered missing girl as she removed the headphones, closed her eyes, and croaked, “Holy Mother of God.”

“What?” Sally said, alarmed. “You look like you’ve seen the devil himself.”

“I have,” Cassie said and wiped furiously at her face as if it would remove the images. It didn’t.

“Something’s bleeding,” Sally said.

“What?”

It took a moment for Cassie to realize Sally wasn’t referring to the girl in the video, but to her own hand. She’d balled her fist so tightly when she watched that she’d cut into the palm of her hand with her fingernails. She had smears of blood on her face.

“Here,” Sally said, approaching with a Kleenex.

Cassie slammed the laptop closed, even though the video was over so Sally couldn’t see it.

“What?” Sally asked again, as Cassie clutched the Kleenex with her right hand and opened the laptop and restarted the disk and then froze it during the opening minute. She froze the image of the spare bedroom itself before the girl was brought in.

“I need your help,” Cassie said. “I want you to look at something.”

Sally looked scared.

“Don’t worry,” Cassie said. “I’ve paused it. I just want you to identify a location for me if you can. You’ve lived around here for a while and you may recognize it as local.”

Sally Legerski took a deep breath and came around the table. She leaned down so closely Cassie could smell her scent.

“Do you know this room?” Cassie asked. She watched Sally’s face and saw a twitch of recognition in it.

“What happens in that room?”

“Never mind that. Do you recognize it?”

“Possibly.”

Cassie felt an electric charge fire through her. She tried to remain calm.

“Where is it?”

“I said possibly.”

“Is it connected to your ex-husband?”

“I just don’t know without seeing more.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Cassie said firmly.

Sally sighed. “Rick bought this place, this old abandoned ranch not long after we moved down here. I thought it was idiotic at the time and I still do. He made noises about fixing it up for our retirement home, but the house was a wreck and the well hardly worked.”

“This bedroom is in the old house?”

“No,” she said, “the man Rick bought it from built this underground shelter. I don’t know how much it must have cost, but he claimed it would withstand a nuclear war. It’s right outside the house, the entrance, I mean. This looks like the bedroom that was down there. I never spent more than ten minutes in that shelter because it creeped me out and I was mad at Rick for blowing our savings on it, but this sure looks like the bedroom but I can’t swear to it.”

Sally pointed toward the screen. “I recognize the concrete walls but those ring things are new…” her voice trailed off when she seemed to realize what she was saying. “What happened in it?”

Cassie ignored the question and said, “Is it known as the Schweitzer place?”

Sally said, “How did you know?”

“I think it’s where the girls are,” she said.

It wasn’t “There at the Schweitzer place” as written in the ungrammatical scrawl. It was: “They’re at the Schweitzer place.”

Sally reached out for the side of the table so her knees wouldn’t buckle beneath her.

Cassie walked toward the back of the shop, through a packed storeroom, and through a storm door into a tiny backyard. She needed air, and she needed a few minutes. There was a chain link fence along the end of the yard. Just a few feet beyond the fence was the rim of the canyon where the Yellowstone River roared far below.

She gripped the top rail of the fence with both hands and closed her eyes. When she did she could see the terrified face of the girl on the video looking back, then the set of his shoulders when he approached her with the bayonet. She’d read enough and learned enough at the academy to know most serial killers kept trophies of some kind to remind them of their victims. Photos and videos weren’t unusual. But she’d never actually looked at them, and she wished she could somehow unwatch what she’d seen. She wondered how many victims were on the second and third disks.

Then she raised her head and opened her eyes. She was suddenly furiously angry, and she cursed herself for taking the time to gather her thoughts, to regroup. It was time the Sullivan girls — and possibly Cody — couldn’t afford to have wasted because of her indecision.

She glanced at her watch. Enough time had lapsed. She felt a pang of guilt regarding the dirty trick she’d played on Sally, leaving her in there with the laptop. But she had no doubt Cody would approve.

Cassie turned on her heel and marched back into the shop. Sally Legerski sat again behind the counter but didn’t look over as Cassie sat back down at her computer. Sally looked shell-shocked. The paused image on the screen included the man and the girl. It was just after he’d yanked her back onto the bed.

“You watched some of it,” Cassie said.

“I had to.” Then, “It’s him. It’s Rick.”

Cassie felt a surge of excitement. “How can you be sure? We never see his face.”

Sally wouldn’t meet Cassie’s eyes. “That birthmark on the small of his back. You can see it when his shirt pulls up. I recognize that birthmark. It’s purple and it covers most of his back. He was always self-conscious about it because it’s sort of in the shape of a skull. He used to call it his death’s-head, and it does kind of look like that.”

“You’re sure?”

Sally looked over with fury in her eyes. “It’s him.”

At least, Cassie thought, looking at where the video was stopped, Sally hadn’t advanced it to the end.

“What’s your Wi-Fi password?”

Sally didn’t respond. She seemed to be in a rage.

“Sally, what’s your password?” Cassie asked sharply.

After Sally told her, Cassie went to work. Sally talked in a wooden voice, as much to herself as to Cassie.

“He is a very controlling man.”

Cassie acknowledged her with a “Um-hmmm.”

“For the first few years, I didn’t mind it that he wanted to know everything I did during the day and who I might have talked with. I found it kind of endearing that he was so jealous. But it wasn’t just jealousy — it was possessiveness. Like he didn’t trust me at all and he was suspicious of everything I did or said. He’d go over the phone bills and ask about strange numbers, or check the computer to see what Web sites I looked at. And he’d get angry if I didn’t agree with him on something, even if it was trivial. After a while, I felt suffocated and I couldn’t stand it.”

Cassie could guess the next part, and it came.

“But I never thought he was capable of something like this.”

After the last five minutes of the video file was copied to her hard drive, compressed and sent, Cassie opened her cell phone and redialed the most recent number called. Again, she got the receptionist at the Park County Sheriff’s Department.

“This is Lewis and Clark Investigator Cassandra Dewell. I need to talk to Sheriff Pedersen right now. It’s an emergency.”

“He might have left for the day, ma’am.”

“Then patch me through to his cell or his house. Right now!”

The receptionist paused as if to argue but thought better of it.

After a minute, Pedersen came on the line. It didn’t sound like he was using his cell. “Yes, Deputy Dewell?”

She ignored the irritation in his tone. “Where are you?”

“Here, at the office. But I was planning on packing it in early this afternoon, why?”

“Is Trooper Legerski still there?”

“I’m not sure. He might have left after he talked to the judge.”

“Please look,” she said.

“Can you tell me what this is about?” he asked, still annoyed.

“Legerski’s a rapist and a murderer. He’s probably got the Sullivan girls imprisoned right now on some land he owns and I don’t know if they’re dead or alive.”

The silence was infuriating. Cassie said, “Sheriff, find Legerski and lock him up before he knows what’s going on. He’s a fucking monster, and if you check your e-mail you’ll see proof. But detain him first, and then watch it if you can.”

“Hold on,” Pedersen said, and she could hear the receiver clunk down on his desk. In the background, she heard Pedersen ask, “Is Rick still here?”

There was an exchange of voices she couldn’t make out, then Pedersen was back on the phone.

“He was in the squad room bullshitting with a couple of deputies but I guess he left. If you hadn’t heard, the judge turned down your request for a warrant.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Go find Legerski and take his firearms away and put him in your jail. I’m not kidding, and if you don’t do it right now everybody in Montana will want to know why when this thing breaks.”

“Look,” Pedersen said, “I know Rick pretty well. What you say comes across as kind of crazy. I can’t just arrest him based on your accusation and with no evidence.”

“I told you,” she said, her voice rising until it was a shout, “The evidence is in your goddamn e-mail in-box. You’ll see proof of your buddy raping a girl who’s chained to a wall and then gutting her like a deer. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and the man who did it was in your office. Get him secured away and then cancel all the holiday vacations and get every officer you’ve got on their way to the old Schweitzer place off U.S. Highway 89.”

She paused and looked at her screen. “The coordinates for your GPS units are Latitude 45–10′06′ North, Longitude: 110-51′45′ West. Got that?”

Silence. Then Pedersen moaned, “Jesus. Oh, my God…”

Cassie said, “You’re looking at the video file I sent.”

“Oh, man.” Then: “Oh, my God. Where did you get this?”

“Somebody left it for me.”

“I can’t see his face. How do you know it’s him?”

“He’s got a birthmark on his back. There’s a point in the video where you can see it.”

“But—”

“His ex-wife is sitting right in front of me and she made a positive identification. She says it’s him.”

“Are you sure this thing isn’t faked?”

“It doesn’t look faked to me. Does it look faked to you?”

“Repeat the coordinates,” Pedersen said, suddenly all business.

She did.

Then, “Sheriff, don’t put the call out over the radio to apprehend Legerski. If you do he’ll hear it and run for cover. It would be better if you sent some guys to find him and pull him over.”

“I agree.”

“I’ll meet you at the Schweitzer place,” she said. To herself, she whispered, “Hold on, girls. Hold on, Cody.”

41

Gracie and Danielle stood huddled together along the side wall of the room under a metal air grate. It was the one place in the room they’d found where the odor from the dead body in the corner and blood on the floor was the least likely to make them gag.

Gracie’s bare feet were cold from the concrete and the cold seemed to be seeping up through her bones. She held Danielle tighter, hoping to transfer her sister’s body warmth, but didn’t know what to do to warm her feet. Sometimes when she exhaled, her breath came trembling out.

She thought about snatching the blanket back from where it was draped over the dead body, but she couldn’t yet make herself do it.

Danielle stood wordlessly chanting her mantra and rocking.

“The next time someone is at that door, do the cell phone trick, okay?” Gracie said to her sister.

Danielle hadn’t spoken or looked up in an hour. It was the longest she’d ever gone without talking, Gracie thought.

“Danielle, pretend Justin is on the other side of the door.”

Danielle rocked. Gracie hoped there was some way to reach her.

“What do you say? Will you do it this time?”

There was a remote vibration in the floor and despite her freezing feet, Gracie could feel it. Danielle could, too, because her head jerked up and she stared at the door in wide-eyed terror.

Gracie whispered, “They’re back. Start texting and sell it.”

Danielle gathered up the tin and sat with her back to the wall, the Altoid box poised in front of her, her thumbs at the ready. Gracie was thrilled.

She rose, yanked the blanket from the dead body, and stood poised next to the door.

Gracie heard more distant and muffled sounds, but no conversations like before. Gracie was sure they were out there, but what were they doing?

After a series of heavy footfalls the sliding metal plate on the door slid back. Gracie stared in terror at the pair of shadowed, piglike eyes as they moved around the room until they settled on her sister.

“There you are,” the man said. She recognized the voice as belonging to the man with the badge, the man with the gun who’d shot the tall man in the corner.

“How’re you girls doing?”

Gracie looked over at her sister. Danielle had lowered the tin between her knees out of view. She wasn’t going to go through with it, and Gracie sighed and let the blanket slide to the cement floor.

“I see one of you,” the man said to Danielle. “Where is the other? Where’s your sister?”

Gracie froze. The man couldn’t see her because she was out of the sight line of the sliding panel.

Instinctively, Danielle’s eyes moved to her.

Gracie felt as if she’d been stabbed in the back by her sister.

“Come out where I can see you,” the man said.

Gracie stepped into the center of the room.

“Hiding, huh?” the man said. “You’re not the first to ever try that trick.”

Gracie looked down at her bare feet. She was afraid if she looked at Danielle she’d dive at her and try to tear her sister’s hair out.

“I shouldn’t really be here,” the man said, as much to himself as to Gracie, it seemed. “But I wanted to see how you’re doing.”

She nodded.

“Has my other friend been here since we left?”

“No,” Gracie said, looking up.

“You’re not lying to me, are you?”

“No.”

She could see him nodding through the slot in a satisfied way. He said, “I believe you since you’re standing.”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” the man said. “But you two need to keep something in mind. Your role here is to satisfy me. As long as you can do that, I’ll keep you around. I won’t let that trucker hurt you, and believe me — he will. He likes the sound of bones snapping. You saw what happened to Krystyl and the cook there. Think about them, and then think about me. Think of ways to make me happy. If you do that, girls, I can protect you from the trucker and we can discuss your future later. Got that?”

Neither said a word.

“Good,” the man said, and slammed the slider shut.

“If he doesn’t kill you, I will,” Gracie growled at her sister.

Danielle shrugged, tears in her eyes.

At the same time, Cassie Dewell kept one eye on the road and the other on her GPS unit as she coursed up the Highway 89 north from Gardiner. If she’d programmed the coordinates correctly, the screen said she’d be at the old Schweitzer place in six minutes.

Six minutes.

Back at the quilt shop, she’d debated with herself whether to wait on the highway for the contingent from the sheriff’s department in Livingston to storm the Schweitzer place en masse or to find it herself. Finally, she thought: What would Cody do?

She smiled grimly at the thought: WWCD.

Then she said good-bye to Sally Legerski, who was still in shock behind her silent sewing machine, and went out to the Ford. She made a vow to go back when it was over and offer what comfort she could. There were so many victims of crime, she thought. So many friends, relatives, and family members on the periphery of evil.

As she sped along the highway she noticed a black spoor of smoke to her right, toward the mountains. A big fire of some kind several miles from the highway. It seemed odd in the late fall/early winter when there was no wildfire danger. The low pressure of the storm front kept the smoke from rising straight up and flattened it on the top so it looked like a T. Because her driver’s side window was open, she caught a hint of the stench. It smelled like burning plastic and rotten garbage.

Her mind raced, fueled by adrenaline, lack of sleep, and horror. She imagined how horrible it would be to be a prisoner in the shelter without an inkling of who out there might be trying to find her, if anyone was. Every minute would be its own nightmare. The only positive aspect she could think of was how unlikely it was Legerski could have molested the Sullivan girls in such a short time since their abduction. She had to remind herself it had been less than twenty-four hours, and for much of the time Legerski had been entertaining Cody Hoyt and her. Inadvertently, that might have spared the Sullivan girls the fate of the girl on the DVD. But she couldn’t be sure, of course, and if he was given more time she had no doubt what their fate would be. One of the jarring impressions she had taken away from viewing the DVD was that he was well practiced.

She’d told Sheriff Pedersen she’d meet him at the Schweitzer place, but she didn’t say at the same time he arrived. She wanted to get there first, find and free Cody and the girls, and wait for the cavalry to arrive. She wanted to see Cody, put an end to the investigation, be the hero, and get home for Thanksgiving. It was something she could tell Ben about some day; how his mother was a hero like his father had been.

The GPS indicated she should turn off the highway within 0.5 miles, so she slowed down. The road displayed on the screen was nothing special; an ungraded private two-track with no official name. She looked ahead and saw that it wound up through the sagebrush and up and over a rise to what looked like a valley on the other side. As she turned she noticed a series of fresh tire tracks in the mud of the road, more activity than she thought there should be for such a forlorn location, and her heart began to whump.

And it was as if Cody was back in the Expedition with her, chain-smoking and doing one of his cynical monologues about human nature and the corrupt judicial system. She could hear him lay out the pros and cons, the very real scenario where everything they tried to do right turned out for shit.

What would happen if the evidence itself, the DVDs, turned out to be tainted somehow? What if the man who’d given them to her had stolen them? Would they hold up in court? What if Legerski claimed they were fraudulent, that some video sharpie with digital equipment had the know-how and technology to make it appear that he was raping and killing women? Isn’t that what they did in Hollywood — created realistic images of beings and people via computer? CGI — computer-generated imaging. What if they couldn’t find corroborating evidence to back up the images, or if the evidence they found was thrown out due to some technicality like an illegal search and seizure? After all, Cassie had made the decision to proceed with speed and force instead of careful deliberation. She hadn’t even tried to obtain a search warrant for the Schweitzer place or the shelter.…

There was still the truck driver who had blown the case open by leaving the disks. She didn’t know why he’d done it, whether he was somehow involved or whether he was a Good Samaritan who wanted to steer her in the right direction but leave himself out of it. Either way, the speed in which he’d driven away and his method of passing the damning evidence indicated he wanted to get out of town fast. She’d not called him in or put out an APB on his all-black truck, not wanting to risk Legerski hearing about the incident over his radio and panicking. She wanted Trooper Legerski to be caught before he knew he was a suspect.

Finding the driver and his truck shouldn’t be difficult, she thought. Although she didn’t know all the particulars of long-haul trucking, she did know the drivers were heavily regulated and their identities available through a national database. It wouldn’t take long for investigators to name him and pull his license plate number and put out the word to highway law enforcement. Plus, he had U.S. Department of Transportation numbers stenciled on the door of his truck for identification. There was no way, she thought, for a trucker to stay unidentified for very long, once the word was out to highway patrolmen, federal and state DOT officials, weigh station attendants, and truck stop cashiers. It should be a matter of hours or days before he was apprehended and brought back. She looked forward to questioning him. And maybe thanking him for being a knight of the road.

When she topped the rise and drove down into the steep mountain valley she made a decision. She thought again: WWCD.

Maybe it was seeing Legerski’s highway patrol cruiser parked beside the run-down old house in the valley below. Maybe it was the two rectangles of fresh upturned soil out in the hay meadow, and the outline of a half-dozen similar disturbances that were visible because the light snow from that morning clung to the natural grass around the rectangles and exposed them to her naked eye. She didn’t understand the reason for the plots, but they were certainly discordant and suspicious to the landscape.

She parked next to the highway patrol cruiser and got out. A slight icy breeze rustled her hair and she pushed a strand of it out of her eyes. It was obvious there was no one in the old house because the windows were broken out and the front door hung open like a gaping mouth.

Cassie reached back through her coat for her weapon. It was a .40 Glock 27 with nine rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. She’d never fired it in the line of duty, and had rarely pulled it out of its holster except at the qualifying range. It was a compact weapon that fit her hand and had plenty of firepower. She’d always wondered if she’d be capable of killing another human being, but what she’d seen on the DVD changed all that.

She followed several sets of tracks to the concrete abutment on the side of the house. It reminded her of a storm cellar entrance but the construction was thick and solid and it looked impregnable. It had been there long enough that blue-green veins of lichen climbed the sides. There was a set of closed wooden doors at the mouth of the passageway that swung out. She noted the rusty hasps on the edge of the doors but saw no lock on them.

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, then bent over and opened the doors one at a time, revealing a steep set of concrete steps that led to a closed steel door on the bottom of the landing. She started to climb down, hesitated, and then retreated back up to the opening.

Instead of descending into the shelter, she leaned into the stairwell and shouted, “Trooper Legerski! It’s Cassie Dewell. Are you down there? I saw your car outside.”

Silence for a moment, then she heard what sounded like a thump behind the closed door.

“Trooper Legerski, are you down there?”

She tried to keep her voice from trembling or sounding shrill. She wanted it to come across as normal as possible and as clueless as he thought she must be.

She was ready to throw herself to the side if he came out blasting. Instead, she heard a bolt thrown and saw the door crack open a few inches but she couldn’t yet see him.

“Mr. Legerski, are you down there?”

“What do you want?” He sounded gruff, but somehow false, like he was attempting to sound understandably annoyed. “What are you doing here?”

“Your ex-wife told me you owned this place, that’s how I found you.”

“Sally? Jesus Christ.” But there was a hint of relief in his voice.

“Did you get the warrant from the judge? I’ve been waiting for you to call and let me know.”

She heard him sigh. “Didn’t you hear? He wouldn’t issue one. He said there wasn’t enough probable cause, just like I told you would happen.”

“Damn,” she said, and stomped her foot. “No, I didn’t know that. Hey, can I come down there and talk with you? We need to go to Plan B.” She thought she sounded sincere.

“Jesus Christ, lady,” he said. After a beat, he said, “Stay there, I’m coming up.”

“What kind of place is this, anyway?” she asked the empty stairwell. She heard him curse and say something under his breath, then open the door. He was in uniform, although he looked as if he were buttoning up the top of his shirt. That did it. Why else would he be partially unclothed in a place like that?

At that moment, she was sure he had the girls down there and he didn’t want her any closer to them than she already was.

He filled the narrow staircase as he climbed. He stepped heavily, lurching from side to side as if each step was a chore. His wide shoulders nearly brushed both walls as he came up.

She waited until he emerged from the shadow and she could see his face in a band of sunlight. He was six steps from the top when she set her feet in a shooting stance and raised the Glock with both hands.

He looked up and saw the gun and his horrible fleshy face went slack. Then his eyes widened and he opened his mouth to speak but she didn’t let him and she didn’t stop pulling the trigger until the slide of the gun locked back, the magazine empty. Legerski tumbled backward in slow motion, arms and legs flopping lifelessly, a sack of meat kicked down the stairs, blood spatter everywhere.

Cassie ejected the magazine and slammed another one home and followed her gun down the stairs, using the handrail when the steps became slippery with blood.

She stepped over the massive twisted body, turned, and shoved it on its side with her boot. It was heavy, and his uniform front was black with blood. He had holes in his cheek, neck, and hands.

She bent down and grabbed a handful of his uniform tunic where it was tucked into the back of his belt and pulled hard until it came free. His skin was pasty white but there it was: an oblong purple birthmark on the small of his back nearly eight inches high. There were two flesh-colored spots within the mark that looked vaguely like eye sockets. It did remind her of a death’s-head …

Cassie drew a glove from her coat pocket and pulled it on her right hand. She found his service weapon and removed it from its holster. There was another gun in an ankle holster, a snub-nosed revolver with the serial number filed off. A throw-down. Cody always packed a throwdown or two, but she didn’t need one. She put the revolver back in the holster and tugged the pant leg hem down to hide it so it would be discovered later.

She stood and stepped back, breathing hard. She looked down into his open eyes but there was nothing there. He didn’t look so tough now, she thought.

Then she aimed Legerski’s service weapon up the stairwell and fired two shots through the opening into the sky, and tossed the gun up the stairs.

She said, “Poor guy — killed by a stupid cunt.”

When the sliding steel window plate opened, Gracie looked up. Instead of the leering piglike eyes of the man who’d been there earlier and said he was coming back, she saw two blue eyes belonging to a woman barely tall enough to look in. Her heart swelled with hope.

Of course they’d heard the shots, one after another, in rapid succession like so many firecrackers.

Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. Then, two more.

“Gracie and Danielle Sullivan?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” Danielle replied softly.

“God, yes!” Gracie squealed, both at the voice outside and Danielle’s reaction to it.

“I’m Investigator Cassie Dewell of the Lewis and Clark Sheriff’s Department. Trooper Legerski is dead. Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Gracie said.

“Did he hurt you?” Dewell asked.

Danielle said, tossing the tin aside, “He took our clothes and our phones and put us in this room…”

“But did he hurt you?”

“No,” Gracie said, understanding the meaning if Danielle didn’t. “Not yet,” she added.

“Thank God,” Dewell said with genuine emotion. “Is Cody in there with you?”

Gracie and Danielle exchanged puzzled glances and looked back.

“Is that the name of the dead guy in here?” Danielle asked.

The only Cody Gracie knew was Justin’s dad.

“Let me get this door open,” the woman said, dropping her eyes from the slot.

The door opened and she swung it out. She was short and solid with an open face and large eyes. There was a gun in her hand. Gracie ran to her and Cassie wrapped her arms around her in a firm hug. “It’ll be okay,” Cassie said into her hair, “it’ll be okay now.”

Gracie didn’t want to let go but Cassie gently pried her arms away. Gracie watched as Cassie approached the body in the corner and produced a small flashlight. She twisted it on, revealing the man’s face. There was a gaping red hole from an exit wound where the man’s right eye should have been. Gracie looked away and Danielle closed her eyes. Cassie stood and said, “Jimmy.”

“We never heard his name,” Gracie said.

“Maybe that means Cody is still alive,” Cassie said. “Do you girls know of anyone else who might be down here?”

Gracie shook her head, and said, “There was a girl named Krystyl. I think he killed her.”

“But no Cody Hoyt?” Cassie asked.

“Justin’s dad?”

“Yes.”

“Why would he be here?” Danielle asked.

Cassie shot Danielle a look that was a little accusatory. “He was looking for you.”

“No,” Gracie said, “we never saw or heard about Mr. Hoyt.”

Cassie nodded, then smiled. “Let’s get you two out of here and get you some clothes.”

“Thank you,” Gracie said.

Cassie nodded.

As they reached the top of the stairwell with blankets from the shelter draped over Gracie and Danielle, Cassie looked up to see a stream of law enforcement vehicles, lights flashing, pour down the road toward them.