The River Wild

by Denis O'Neill

The second trooper joined him at the map. “This is goddamn useless, sergeant.” The two men peered at the map, seeking inspiration, if not answers.

  Page sighed. “If they’re out there in this, they’re probably drowned, anyway.” The two troopers retreated to their pickup truck, dragging their reluctant four-legged partners with them.

  ** ** **

  Trooper Heston stood in the Lieutenant’s open door. “Sir, I pulled together those profiles.” He handed a file to Long. “From juvenile court records, probation reports, local police records, pre-trial court transcripts, newspaper articles, parole evaluations, informed contact with the suspects. Anything I could find.”

  “Thank you, Trooper.”

  Composite Profile

  William Deakens Patterson. 38. Born in Big Timber, Montana

  Father was a rancher. An alcoholic, he abused his wife and his only son, Deke. State Family Services alerted on numerous occasions. Father beat Deke on a regular basis. Deke had trouble staying out of trouble in school. One night, Deke killed his father. He was fifteen.

  Served three years in Youth Authority Camp. Released on eighteenth birthday under supervised probation. At the age of twenty broke into a gas station and stole a pickup truck out of the service bay and drove it through the roll down door. Was apprehended in Grand Junction, Colorado, extradited back to Montana, and sentenced to six years in state prison. Was a model prisoner, accrued one-for-one good time credits and was released after three years. Six months later police responded to a 911 call reporting domestic violence at a roadside motor lodge. Upon entering the motel room, Deke was found sitting on the bed, shirtless and covered in blood. As he held out his hands to be cuffed, he calmly muttered: “The bitch is in the bathroom, yes I know my Miranda rights and no, I ain’t talking. Let’s go.” Officers found sixteen-year-old Clarissa Woford, a runaway from Great Falls, naked and bleeding profusely from multiple cuts and abrasions to her face and head.

  Deke spent six months in the county jail awaiting trial. During pre-trial hearings Deke was attentive and respectful to the judge but oddly confident. As he was led to the lockup after each hearing, he would smirk and wink at Woford. She tried to hide her smile back. Deke faced charges of kidnapping, assault on a minor, and aggravated assault with great bodily injury. A week before the trial, Woford left her mother’s house to walk to the 7-Eleven to buy some cigarettes and was never seen again. On the eve of the trial, Deke’s defense attorney, Dave Larson, went to see him in jail to let him know the news and to let him know the DA would be unable to proceed and the case would be dismissed. Years later, after retiring, Larson would always remember the look on Deke’s face that afternoon in the jail. It gave Larson chills. “He was eerily knowing, as if he already knew the girl was gone.” Deke was released from custody.

  Diagnosed psychopath. His mother died in a car accident.

  Married cocktail waitress Abigail Brennan at the age of twenty-seven. No children. No surviving siblings or parents.

  Murdered his wife and his wife’s lover two years later when he caught them together in a Livingston, Montana hotel room. Convicted of voluntary manslaughter. Sentenced to fourteen years in a state prison.

  ** ** **

  Composite Profile

  Terrance Everton O’Reilly. 35. Born in Manhattan, Montana

  Some birth canal trauma led to permanent disability with cognitive processing issues. His parents owned and operated a steak house in Manhattan.

  Terry, one of six children, left school after the eighth grade to help in the family restaurant. Terry caught having sexual relations with his younger sister. Was sent to dual diagnostic child sexual abuse treatment facility.

  Released in 1995. Had trouble holding steady employment. Worked in the restaurant business at the Big Sky Ski Resort, at restaurants in Billings, Great Falls, and Bozeman.

  In 1998 at the Clarry Foundation Group Home for Autism, twenty-year-old Justine Kendrick, an autistic woman, reported to a group counselor that one of the kitchen workers had “stuck his thing in her mouth.” Terry was arrested while arriving for the work the next morning and was identified as the suspect in a photo line-up and DNA match. He was sentenced to eleven years in prison for forced oral copulation.

  In 2009: Raped two Montana State college girls at a homecoming party at a private residence where he helped cater the meal. Convicted of multiple rapes. Sentenced to twenty-five years at Montana State Correctional Facility in Deer Lodge.

  ** ** **

  Lieutenant Bobby Long set aside the profiles. The wall clock showed two a.m. Rain slanted against the windows of his Great Falls office. A half-empty box of doughnuts was visible on his desk along with two empty bottles of Moose Drool beer and a half dozen empty Styrofoam coffee cups. Bobby swung his cowboy boots off the desk and lifted himself out of his desk chair. Every part of him was sore. He stretched this way and that. He walked to the window and watched the rain pound down through the light of a parking lot streetlamp.

  Trooper Heston walked into the room. “Just heard from Sergeant Noel.”

  Bobby Long said, “He’s wet … just a guess.”

  Trooper Heston shrugged. “That, too. Nothing.”

  The lieutenant stared out the window. “If there ever was a trail,” he said, “there ain’t one now. I’d like to think the sons o’ bitches are at least shivering their asses off somewhere out there … maybe preparing to die of pneumonia.” He returned to his desk and offered Billy a doughnut.

  “No thank you, sir,” Heston said.

  Bobby eyed him suspiciously. “Trying to keep your boyish figure, trooper?”

  “I’m more of a salt guy than a sugar guy,” Billy told him. “Potato chips, fritos … ”

  “One way or the other, we’re going to have to put some meat on you.”

  “Yes sir. That’s what my mother says.”

  “She proud you chose to get into law enforcement?”

  “She’s happy I’m working.”

  “Why did you choose law enforcement?”

  “My dad’s brothers were both cops, in Boston. They told great stories. We had family gatherings on Cape Cod every summer when I was a kid. Jeez, they could talk. And drink. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I liked them, and I liked that they liked what they did. After college, I took the federal law enforcement test and I did okay. I like the traditions of it. I like that there’s a right way of doing things, and a wrong way. But I also like that you can follow your intuition, too. Like I see you do sometimes. That you have to think ahead of what the other guys are thinking.”

  Bobby Long sighed. “How are we doing so far?”

  “You’ll get them,” Trooper Heston assured him.

  “It’s getting them before they get other folks, that’s the assignment. That girl you read about, Clarissa Woford, they never found her. They put her face on milk cartons. Posted reward money. She walked away from her house one night, and Deke walked a few weeks later.”

  “He was in jail when she disappeared, right?”

  “Technically. Physically.” Bobby Long looked haunted.

  “You think he had something to do with her disappearance?”

  “You read the memorandum, his defense attorney thought so.”

  “And you?”

  “He killed her. Or had her killed. My guess is he told her to walk and he’d meet her when he got out. Then he finished what he started in that motel room. She was sixteen. He was an outlaw. You know what they say. Especially small-town girls from broken families. He’s evil and smart, that Deke,” Bob Long said. “And sick. Stealing. Lying. Killing. It doesn’t even register with psychopaths because they have no conscience. It’s just a means to an ends.”

  He walked to the wall map of Montana. His intuition was shooting blanks. The best approach now was good police work. Standard stuff, three yards and a cloud of dust—but always the best way to start. The way pro football coaches would plot out the first twenty plays of a game based on what they knew, and what worked
best. Then they mixed it up if that didn’t work. Trick plays. Misdirection. When the opponent was William Deakens Patterson, Bobby Long knew it might come down to a Hail Mary. For now, lacking intuition, it was Pawn to E4.

  He looked at the big board. Along the Canadian border a dozen tiny plastic police cars were magnetically stuck to the border, representing deployed manpower. He lowered his gaze to an area of the map east of Great Falls, a green, rugged patch called the Lewis and Clark National Forest. There were no assets there, no miniature cars, or helicopters, or tracking dog units … only a windy, blue ribbon, romantically named the River Wild.

  13

  Morning. The storm had blown through, leaving the campsite littered with downed branches and leaves. The river surged with discolored runoff. The camp gear was mostly struck. Gail and Tom secured their gear to their raft at the water’s edge. Gail looked drawn. She was red-eyed, fidgety—sleep had been hard to come by. As she lashed a waterproof duffel onto the cargo load, she glanced back at the campsite, where Terry was stuffing his tent into a sack. She repositioned herself on the raft to look downstream without seeming to be looking downstream. Deke and Maggie watched Roarke fish. Tom was repacking the food in their cooler.

  Gail spoke in a low voice, “How can you even think there might be an innocent explanation?”

  “C’mon, Gail, you’re the lawyer. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

  Gail’s knuckles turned white as she snugged a knot.

  “Look,” Tom said, “they’re your new best friends … not mine. Especially Deke.”

  Gail glared at him.

  “First, they’re babes in the woods,” Tom said, “now they’re butchers. Make up your mind.”

  “If he touches Roarke, I’ll kill him,” Gail said.

  “Jesus, honey, calm down. I’ve never seen you like this.”

  Gail exploded, “Don’t tell me to calm down!” Her voice echoed in the canyon.

  Terry looked at Gail, visibly curious. Deke glanced upriver, reacting to the tone in Gail’s voice.

  Gail leaned close to Tom—her voice softer, but knife-edged. “Tell Peter and Jim.”

  “I hope we get to,” Tom said. Then, consoling, “We will.”

  Downriver, Deke waded up to Roarke’s side. He watched Roarke cast and follow the fly intently. He scratched Maggie’s head.

  “Looks like you’re getting pretty good at this,” Deke said to the boy.

  “Mom says small victories. That’s what you get fly fishing … a little better each time out.”

  “It sure looks like fun.”

  “Real fun, even when the water’s off-color, like today.”

  Deke glanced up at Tom and Gail again. “How would you like to show Terry and me how to do it?” he said to the boy. “Ride with us, this morning.”

  “I can show you what I know,” Roarke told him.

  “Well, it’s a hell of a lot more than I do,” Deke told him, rubbing his head. “See if you can teach an old dog a new trick.”

  Upstream, Tom grabbed Gail by the shoulders. “We’ll play it safe, okay? As soon as we can, we’ll take off on our own. God knows it won’t be hard for you to put some distance between the two rafts. Fair enough?”

  “I’ve never been this scared, Tom. Not on this river. Not off this river. That’s how much these guys spook me.”

  Tom kissed her, thumped his chest Tarzan style. “I’ll protect you.”

  Gail forced a smile, then stiffened suddenly, as she heard Terry approach. The big man tossed his tent into their raft, walked off for another load.

  Gail glanced downstream at Roarke, bit her lip anxiously. “Roarke, honey!” she yellowed downstream. “Five-minute warning. We’re all packed up here.”

  ** ** **

  Tom nudged their raft into deeper water. Gail sat at the oars. Terry had wiggled his raft into shallow water and climbed aboard. He sat in the rower’s seat, his oars angled into the sand to hold his position. Deke walked up and grabbed the nose of their raft, slid it into slightly deeper water, and saluted Gail. Gail forced a return smile. Roarke reeled in his line and jogged up the beach, accompanied by a barking Maggie. When he reached the rafts, he vaulted aboard Terry’s raft with an assist from Deke. Deke quickly shoved the raft into deep water and hopped aboard. “Mom,” Roarke said, grinning, “I’m going to show these turkeys how to fish, okay?”

  Gail stood up abruptly in her raft, panicked. “No!” she screamed. Her cry echoed off the canyon wall. The return “Nooooo!” seemed even more anguished. Deke’s hard look convinced Gail she had revealed her paranoia. She scrambled to recover her composure, even as Terry dipped his oars into the water and pulled, putting even more distance between the two rafts. “I want you with us, honey, that’s all. You shouldn’t be bothering Deke and Terry.”

  “No bother to us, ma’am. I figure he might be able to teach us what the sport’s about. When in Rome, right?”

  Terry stroked harder for the central tongue of current—roily and nearly chocolate-colored because of the night’s rain burst.

  Gail trembled as her son moved further away. “Truth is, the fishing won’t be any good till the water clears up. Plus, you’re not experienced enough on this river to take a little boy.”

  “C’mon, Mom,” Roarke argued, “you always tell me I swim like a fish.” Gail looked helplessly at Tom, who was cinching the last duffel. “Tom, you don’t think it’s safe either, do you?”

  “Mom, please. Just till lunch. Then we’ll switch back.”

  Terry straightened their raft in the main current and gave a few strong strokes to start them on their way.

  Tom could see it was a done deal. Defusing the desperation seemed the most they could salvage. “I think it’ll be okay, honey,” he told Gail in a normal tone. “We’ll switch in a few hours … plus we’ll be right behind you all the way.”

  “Don’t worry,” Deke said grinning, we’ll leave you a few fish.”

  Their raft gained speed as they locked in with the surging current. Gail offered a brave face, but she was on the brink of throwing up.

  ** ** **

  A few miles downstream, the river entered one of the extended straightaways that punctuated the more frequent succession of back-to-back S turns. Deke and Terry were fifty yards ahead of Gail and Tom, in sight, but out of earshot. Roarke cast from the bow of the convicts’ raft, happily oblivious to any tension between the boats, let alone the marginal fishing conditions. Tom had relieved Gail on the oars. Gail sat facing him, her butt on the bottom of the raft, her back supported by the bow seat. Maggie stared at the river from her stern position, seemingly mesmerized by the changing bottom and occasional raft-skittered trout.

  Tom was doing his best to talk his wife out of her agitated state. “You have to admit we don’t exactly have the grounds to convict. Right? You’re the lawyer, Gail. What’s the evidence? … Pretty circumstantial. For all we know Jim and Peter could be sitting on the Cape, sipping beers, counting stitches, not bears … comparing salt water to their recent misadventures on fresh. Right? It’s probably more likely than any of the dark possibilities you’ve conjured up. That’s number one.”

  “How could I have been so stupid to let them tag along?”

  “Number two,” Tom continued, “they don’t know we think something’s screwy. So that’s to our advantage, too.”

  Gail shook her head slowly. “Then I go and save the guy from drowning. It’s so ironic it makes me puke.”

  “And third, if they are killers, we’re in a shitload of trouble, and that’s something I don’t even want to think about.”

  Tom cranked the oars a few times, then pulled in his oars so they would just go with the flow.

  “Who are they, Tom? What do they want?”

  After a long, ominous silence: “I don’t know.”

  Downriver, Roarke was poring over a topo map of the river and the surrounding National Forest with Deke. Roarke had studied this exact map with Gail in their Brookline Vi
llage home. “So that’s where we camped last night, Bear Flats. And tonight … ” He traced the curves of the river with a finger. “We’ll pull out here, at Sulphur Springs.”

  “You’re really learning your way around these woods,” Deke told him.

  “Mom always wanted me to,” the boy said.

  “So where’s the takeout?

  “A place called Canyon Gorge.” He scanned the fold-out map and finally plunked his finger down.

  “How far’s that from here?” Deke asked.

  “Not too far,” Roarke told him. “You could figure it out by using the scale down here.”

  “Rest of the river like this?”

  “Mom says there’s one scary rapid we’ve got to run right above takeout … right here. And see how close together these squiggly lines get? That means the mountains get really, really steep.” His eyes afire, he added, “Mom says the rapids are really kick-ass.”

  Deke pointed to a narrowing of the river below Canyon Gorge where the topo lines were even more densely packed. “What’s below the takeout? Any other places to get off the river?”

  “Below Canyon Gorge?” Roarke said, like a boy describing a pirate’s treasure map.

  “That’s the Gauntlet … a place you don’t want to be. A class of rapids off the charts. Mom told me she ran it once when she was younger … and crazy. She said a bunch of people have died over the years trying to run it.”

  Deke tapped the map below the Gauntlet, “What if you did make it?”

  “There’s supposed to be an old logging road out. Hardly anybody uses it anymore because nobody’s crazy enough to run the Gauntlet.”

  14

  Night and day lost all meaning at Trooper Long’s Great Falls State Police Headquarters. The more time that passed without a tip or a lead meant more time for the trail to grow cold. Deke and Terry were not survivalists, so their chances of living off the land long term weren’t good. But their prospects of busting into a hunting cabin or lying low in a subsistence ranch at the end of a long dirt road were good. There was a lot of open space in Montana and a lot of antisocial folks who liked it that way. People tended to mind their own business. Live and let live was a more common world view than the if you see something, say something approach promoted by law enforcement in an era of terrorism. Extended absence from the local community—large or small—would not be seen as out of the ordinary. Bobby Long knew that Deke knew this, and it worried him.