Billy Heston was a millennial, albeit a Montana millennial, if that wasn’t a cultural oxymoron. He did know his way around the Internet, which offered a bookend of social media savvy to the lieutenant’s old-school “boots on the ground” approach. When he finished the list of things to do the lieutenant gave him, Billy attacked the manhunt in his own way. First, he googled the family histories of Deke and Terry and contacted whatever kin and next of kin he could turn up to see if they had heard from or heard tell of the two fugitives. From the family members willing to discuss friendships either men might have had along the way, Billy widened his circle of possible contact points for the two men. Their mug shots were posted on social media. An anonymous tip line was established. Billy also contacted the family of the long-missing girl, Clarissa Woford, in case the lieutenant’s suspicion that she was dead was contradicted by any contact from her, overt or clandestine. Billy warned them that if she were alive, her life was in danger with Deke on the loose. For some, it was the first they heard of the prison break. He also asked for contact information for the girl’s friends in case any of them might be in touch with her, or know anything about the man who had courted her and cut her up. His main leverage was that she could be in danger if she were alive and that cooperation with the State Police was the best way to help keep her safe. With that social media web in place, he moved on to a general study of manhunts to see if he might learn something that could aid their own search—an element they might have overlooked or a tactic that could be tailored to the specifics of the Montana manhunt.
When he had finished doing everything he could think of on the computer, he walked into the lieutenant’s office to see what else he could do. Long was on the phone, the composite profiles in front of him on his desk, a tuna sandwich off to one side. Billy Heston paced nervously behind him. Long barked into the receiver: “Find them! That’s what I fucking want you to do!” before hanging up. He wedged half the sandwich into his mouth. “Goddamnit!”
Trooper Heston’s face fell. “You did say tuna … right?”
The lieutenant looked at him as if he had two heads. “The goddamnit was not for the tuna.” He spoke between mouthfuls. “I love tuna. The goddamnit’s because we got almost four hundred men, counting the National Guard, shaking the trees of this state … and the only thing falling out are pine cones and possums and not the two lifer-psychos who probably couldn’t start a fire in the forest if they had a goddamn Duraflame log and a blowtorch. So where the hell are they?”
He grabbed a toothpick and walked over to the wall map. “What if those sons of bitches went south instead of north … thinking we’d be thinking they’d go north? Misdirection.” He tapped the green shaded swath of National Forest surrounding the River Wild. “What if they went here?!”
Trooper Heston looked skeptically at the map. “Nothing in there but snakes and grizzly bears you don’t want to know about, sir. They wouldn’t stand a chance.”
The lieutenant studied the contours of the river and poked at his teeth with the toothpick. “Who? The bears?”
15
Lunch on the river was a test of nerves. The rafts were beached on a patch of sand. The sun beat down hot and hard as it tends to do after a blowout thunderstorm. Roarke and Maggie were prowling the water’s edge, looking for crawdads. Deke, Terry, Gail, and Tom sat in the shade of a cottonwood set back from the water, slow-chewing on sandwiches. They considered and vetted scenarios in silence: If we do this … they’ll do that … and if they do that, then we could do this. These thoughts were punctuated by darting eyes, flickered fake smiles that were civil on the surface but excruciatingly tense an inch below.
Terry inspected the remaining half of a roast beef sandwich. “Almost too hot to eat … almost.”
“I could eat in hell,” Deke chipped in, “not that I’m planning to visit that particular lunch venue anytime soon. You guys ever eat any of the trout you catch? Or do you always let them go?”
“Most of them we release,” Gail said. “I like to keep the fishery healthy. Plus I don’t love the taste of trout. A little bland for me.”
Tom lay back, thinking, his head cradled in his hands. Roarke ran up, grabbed an apple and his fly rod.
“I’m gonna see if the trout are hungry, too.”
“Where’re you going to fish, honey?” Gail asked, concerned.
Roarke shrugged. “Wherever it looks good. Look for heads first … everything you taught me. C’mon Mags.”
“Fish somewhere in sight, okay?”
Roarke waved a hand as he sprinted off.
“Got a good boy there,” Deke said. “Wish I’d learned about the woods when I was a kid. Terry’s afraid, but I think I would have liked them.”
“I don’t like snakes, that’s all,” Terry said.
“And bears,” Deke reminded him.
Terry snorted, “Who the hell likes bears?”
“Where’d you grow up?” Tom asked Deke.
“Oh, here and there.”
“What about you, Terry?”
Deke shot his partner a look.
“Same as Deke, really. Here and there.”
“Here and there,” Tom mused aloud, “population this or that.”
Gail curled up on her side next to Tom, providing Terry a glimpse of her white breasts against her tan chest. “That storm kept me up last night. I’m going to take a nap.”
Tom settled her head under his arm. “Good plan. My group this way.”
Deke stood and dusted off his butt. “Think I’ll take a walk.”
Terry stayed put, happy to be staring at Gail’s cleavage. He slow-chewed his sandwich, imagining he was chewing on her. The thought of doing it for real put a hard-on in his lap and a smile on his face.
** ** **
Deke made his way up the steep slope directly above the lunch site, still visible below. It was one of those river stretches where the sheer canyon had eroded over time, tumbling scree into a wedge abutting the river plain. Spring runoff added silt and soil to the slope, wind and fire planted it with grass and wild flowers. It was a soft, sweet, lush addition to the normal, stone-corseted switchbacks the River Wild was known for. Deke was sweating heavily, puffing hard. He wanted to see what he could see. He liked the protection of the canyons, but it also limited his options.
He walked until the slope gave way to a sheer canyon wall. He looked downriver. He was high enough to see where the straight run they were on gave way to the next set of S turns. But he didn’t have the vantage to see where the next takeout might be or, beyond that, where the Gauntlet Roarke described was hedged in by a narrowed canyon. What he saw when he turned his gaze upriver gave him pause. Two fishermen and a guide, in a raft, bounced through the gentle rapids at the head of the straightaway and into the long run. Worry flooded his face. “Fuck.” He eyed the zigzag path he had taken to get to the top. He looked downriver, to where the straightaway started bending once more. He half jumped, like a mountain goat, toward the bend. His boots carved divots in the soft soil, but held. He started a controlled jog down the steep slope, leaping and landing in places … maintaining his balance, his momentum putting him on the edge of crashing and sliding out of control.
On the river, the fishermen bounced flies off the canyon wall across from Gail and Tom’s lunch site. Fishing was slow at midday, the water still off-color. Their guide eyed the beached rafts, the figures in shade. “Want to pull in here and grab a bite?” he asked his clients. “Or keep fishing?”
One of the fishermen glanced over at the rafts. “Let’s find a place to ourselves,” he told the guide. “No sense of being on the river and sharing it with others. Besides, we might as well float while the fishing’s slow and be at a fishier place we can have to ourselves when the sun gets off the water.”
Roarke was fishing downstream of the approaching raft, wet wading up to his waist so he could get a fly into the deep water and foam along the cliff face. He stripped in his line and waited patiently for the raft to
pass. The guide politely back-oared the raft closer to the shore to pass behind Roarke and not spoil his run. He shipped his oars as he floated close by the boy. “You leaving us any fish, son?” he asked.
Roarke smiled. “A few. Catch anything?”
“Nothing but hogs,” the guide told him, leaning over and lifting a stringer with two rubber piggies, one pink, one spotted. Roarke laughed. The guide smiled wide, always happy to get a laugh on the river. He lowered the stringer from sight, extended his oars back through their oarlocks and aimed the raft once more for the main current. “Time to rock and roll,” he said to his clients.
** ** **
Terry’s face reddened in the noon sun. His snoring overpowered the natural summer buzz of cicadas. Gail’s eyes opened. She craned her head to make sure Terry was asleep, then nudged Tom. He sat up immediately, suggesting a premeditated plan was afoot. They crawled away from the shade of the tree and from Terry’s slumbering form, afraid a higher profile might awaken him. When they were twenty feet away, Gail popped to her feet and began to jog toward their raft. Tom grabbed her. “Walk! If he wakes up, we’re just going for a stroll.”
When they reached the rafts, Tom looked around nonchalantly. Terry was still asleep. Roarke was visible, fishing at the end of the straightaway, within sight, as instructed. Gail was frantic to leave. Tom thrust two open palms down, motioning for her to calm down. Gail circled over to Deke and Terry’s raft and unscrewed the air plug. Then she and Tom each grabbed a side handle of their raft and slid it into shallow water. Tom was watching Terry, not where he was going. His foot caught on a semisubmerged tree stump, and he tumbled over backward, making a sizable splash. Frantic, he and Gail froze. They glanced at Terry, who was still asleep. Gail whispered, “You okay?”
Tom shot her a wobbly hand, mouthing, More or less.
Gail slipped over the edge of the raft and climbed into the rower’s seat. She carefully extended the oars through the oarlocks. Tom gave the raft a final push and belly-flopped over the gunwale. As the raft glided away, she lowered the oars as quietly as she could into the water. She pulled hard, feathered the oars as delicately as possible so as to not make an unnecessary splash, and leaned into another stroke. Maneuvering the raft in a 180-degree semicircle so she could look directly at Roarke, she positioned the raft in the current on a direct line to intercept him where he fished in waist-deep water.
Maggie, in the meantime, patrolled the inland edge of the beach where the sand gave way to scrub brush. She stopped, stared hard at something, and froze for a moment before lowering herself into a predator’s crouch, then bounding off and disappearing into the underbrush.
Just then a trout struck Roarke’s fly. Gleeful, the boy shouted upriver to his parents, “Mom, Pop … four trout on five casts!”
His voice carried across the water. Gail frantically signaled him to be quiet, but he misinterpreted the gesture. His trout leaped clear of the water. Roarke howled,“Yahoo!” even as Gail shook her head frantically, then drew a finger across her throat. Roarke got the fish on the reel as Gail floated right on top of him.
“Mom, he was right behind the rock where he was supposed to be!”
Gail hissed, “Shush,” emphatically pressing a lone finger to her lips. Desperate, she mouthed, unmistakably: Shut-up!
Roarke finally got the message. He looked at his mother and quizzically mouthed, “What’s the matter?”
Gail shook her head sternly. Tom extended a hand to Roarke. “Get in!”
“I got a fish on,” Roarke complained.
Tom grabbed the leader and snapped it with his hands. “Get in the boat, now!”
Roarke handed his rod to his father as Gail back-oared. Roarke hoisted himself over the gunwale and flopped in the bottom of the raft.
“Where’s Maggie?” Tom asked.
Roarke pointed at the brush. “I saw her just before the trout struck. What’s going on?”
Tom and Gail both rushed silencing fingers to their lips. Gail glanced frantically at the campsite, then steered the raft closer to shore into slower water. All three peered at the brush, looking for motion and for Maggie’s distinctive orange coat.
At the lunch site, a bee landed on Terry’s mayonnaise-flavored lips. Terry swatted at the insect, waking himself up. He sat up, looked around; he was alone. He looked toward the river and saw only one raft, half-deflated. His face tensed. He pushed himself to his feet and glimpsed the other raft near the end of the long straightaway, seventy-five yards downstream. Terry started to jog, then broke into a run.
At the raft, Roarke turned to his parents. “Want me to whistle?”
Tom whispered, “No!”
Gail scowled, ”Damn it Maggie … ” Then, “We’ll leave her if we have to.”
“Somebody tell me what’s going on!” Roarke complained. “What’s the matter? We can’t just leave her.”
Tom repeated his wife’s sentiment, “We will if we have to.”
“We’ll tell you everything in a few minutes.” Tom stared at the underbrush, growled, “C’mon Maggie, goddamnit … c’mon!”
Gail looked downstream. A lone pine jutted out over the water thirty yards ahead.
“If we don’t find her by the time we reach that tree, that’s it.”
Roarke fumed. Tom and Gail exchanged desperate, guilty looks.
Moments later, Terry’s voice, echoed in the canyon, “Deke! … Deeeeeeke!”
They both turned to see Terry in a full sprint, crashing down the beach toward them, quickly gaining ground.
When the raft passed beneath the angled pine, a covey of mountain quail exploded from the brush at the river’s edge. Moments later, Maggie’s golden form flew out of the brush and splashed down in shallow water.
“Mags!” Roarke yelled.
The dog began barking and splashed over to the raft, jumped in, and shook her coat. Roarke grabbed Maggie in an affectionate headlock. “Good girl, Mags.” He shot his parents an evil eye.
Gail leaned into the oars and pulled hard for the main current, pulling as if she were back on the Charles, trying to exhaust herself. Tom looked nervously upriver. Terry crashed out of the underbrush and splashed into the shallows at the tail-out of the long straightaway. His chest was heaving. He bent over to catch his breath even as he watched the raft speed up in faster water and bounce out of sight.
Gail expertly navigated the rapids, taking some spray over the bow before steering the raft into the head of the next pool. Deke was standing on a rock ten yards away, holding Gail’s .22. The gun was trained on the raft. Gail put her foot on her waterproof bag in the bottom of the raft, hoping to feel her own .22. Nothing. Deke waved them ashore with the gun barrel.
Roarke was baffled: “Why’s Deke got the gun? Mom, is that your gun?”
Gail’s shoulders slumped. She angled the stern of the raft toward the shore and back-oared.
“Why’s Deke pointing the gun at us, Pop? You’re not supposed to point guns at people.”
The reality of Gail’s worst fear coming true filled them with dread. They were dumbstruck. All Tom could manage was, “Not now, Roarke.”
When they drew close to shore, Maggie jumped out and started growling at Deke. The fugitive drew a bead on the dog.
“Don’t,” Roarke yelled, standing up. “You crazy?!”
Roarke flung a life preserver at Deke just as he squeezed off a shot, deflecting his aim. The bullet zipped harmlessly into the river beside Maggie.
Tom bellowed, “Maggie! … Get out of here!”
Maggie turned to her master to protest and whimpered.
Deke fired a second shot, missing by inches. He took aim a third time. Tom stood up and threw a coke can at the dog, yelled in a tone that promised discipline, “Maggie … go’won!”
Maggie whimpered a final time, and disappeared into the brush.
16
The canyon was as dark as ever that night, but the mood blackened it even more. Terry, holding the .22, sat on a log near the rive
r’s edge, watching Tom inflate the second raft with a foot pump. Tom’s hands were bound. Gail sat close to the campfire, one arm around Roarke. Deke sat nearby, calmly sipping a beer. The fire crackled and hissed. Tom finished inflating the raft, screwed the cap tight, and was ushered by Terry back to the fire. He sat down beside Gail.
Tom glared at Deke. “What’d you do to Peter and Jim?”
“They’re not worrying about you,” Deke told him, “so don’t be worrying about them.”
Roarke looked at his mother, fear in his eyes. “They do something to Peter and Jim, Mom?”
Gail hugged him to her, kissed his head. “I don’t know, honey. I hope not.”
“What do you want, money?” Tom asked, eager to begin a negotiation that would spark a glimmer of a happy outcome.
Deke retrieved Jim’s wallet from his pocket and held up a handful of fifties. “Got plenty of that. Can’t spend it out here, anyway.” He wiggled free a credit card. “Got credit cards, too.” He angled the shiny front of the card in reflected firelight to read: “Jim Robertson. Expires 10-12-20. Not a good thing to be outlived by your credit card.”
Tears spilled from Gail’s eyes. She cradled Roarke’s head in her arms, pressed her head tight to his. She sobbed as she rocked him.
“Course, I don’t plan to take until 2020 to get out of here. Which is where you come in.” He stood, walked over to Gail and squatted in front of her. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of car keys. “We need to get our asses to that takeout, to the rental Jim and Peter had shuttled downriver. Do that for us, and nobody gets hurt.”
“You mean, nobody else,” Tom said.
Deke removed a switchblade from his boot and flicked it open. He ran the blade gently under Tom’s chin.
The River Wild Page 9