When I began photographing her, I noticed that there were bruises on her face and arms, some of them older than those caused by her fall. There were also scratches on the backs of her arms that looked like they might’ve been inflicted by someone grabbing her with great force, maybe a week ago.
The devil must be beating his wife.
I continued photographing.
The fingernails on her left hand were bloody and bent back, some even missing, but other than this and the indications of abuse, she appeared to have been a normal, healthy young woman. I noticed that there was even a small purse still trapped under her arm as I covered her with the plastic sheet from the case.
I was tempted to move her and go through the purse, but I assumed the Montana authorities would just as soon do it themselves, making sure to use special care not to disturb any trace evidence. It seemed odd that she had decided to walk the air with her child. I thought that, at that horrible moment when I’d seen her fall, her only concern had been something in her arms. I finished up and put the camera away. My work would be preliminary in comparison to the crime lab that would soon be here from either Hardin or Billings.
Besides, I had other resources.
I walked down the hill to the creek and found Chief Long tossing small pebbles into a pool a little downstream. A small, brown trout had risen from the depths but then disappeared under my shadow. “How you doing, troop?”
She turned, sheltering her eyes with a hand, and looked at me. “What’d you just call me?”
I crouched down beside her and watched the lazy water coat the rocks so that she wouldn’t be self-conscious about her red-ringed and still-damp eyes. “Troop. It’s a term my old boss used to use on me when I was starting out; I use it with my deputies.”
“Well, don’t use it with me.” She took a breath and tossed another pebble; this time the fish ignored it.
“We’re pretty much done down here.”
She looked at a simple Luminox wristwatch, the kind that Spec Ops used. “What the hell is taking them so long?”
I raised my eyes and looked at what now seemed desolate surroundings; as unlikely as it was that Cady would have gone for this site before, it was surely out of the question now. “Hopefully they didn’t get lost.”
“Yeah.”
“Looks like it’s still going to rain.” I studied her, judging whether now was a good time and figuring the basics wouldn’t hurt. “What’s her name?”
She didn’t move, and her voice might as well have been coming from the trees or the cliffs above. “Audrey Plain Feather; she was half Crow.”
Audrey. “And the child’s name-the boy?”
“Adrian.”
I nodded to myself and looked up the slope; there was a more manageable route to the west, an area where the ridge fell back-it would be easier to make the grade, especially at an angle. “I’m going up.”
“I’ll go with you.”
I placed a hand on her shoulder. “Somebody’s going to have to stay here and wait for the crime scene folks.”
She shrugged off my hand and stood, partially pulling the radio from her belt. “I’ve got this, and I figure they’ll be able to get close on their own. I can spot them on the main road easier from up on the ridge anyway.”
“Well then, can you do me a favor?”
“Depends.”
I sighed. “It’s going to take me a lot longer to get up this cliff than you, so I want a head start.” I smiled, but she didn’t smile back. “On the next ridge over there and toward the saddle?” I pointed to the area across the creek. “There’s another camera sitting in the grass where Henry and I dropped it when we saw Audrey fall; would you mind going to get it and bringing it with you or putting it in your vehicle?”
She took a second to respond. “All right.”
I looked up at the gathering gloom and then called after her. “You’re sure you want to go up there?”
“Yes.” She turned back and opened an ear stem of her sunglasses with her teeth, then carefully navigated them onto her face. “Besides, you’re still under arrest. Now get moving-I don’t want to have to wait for you.”
She started up the hill, her broad back and strong legs aiding her climb effortlessly.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The grade was indeed easier up to the right, and there was a gully to the left with trees in it to lean against; the older you get the more important things like that become.
The ground was soft where the earth had sloughed from the ridge above, and after a while I gathered a rhythm that seemed familiar and similar to the one that had carried me up Cloud Peak only two months ago. The thought of that adventure brought a chill, even though the ambient temperature lingered around ninety.
I removed my hat and took a breather about three-quarters of the way up. From this height I could see Lonnie’s crows harassing an eagle that was lazily circling in patterns along the valley. The crows probably had nests nearby and were protecting their young, or just getting their exercise before the thunderheads massed and we had a real frog strangler.
I inhaled and started up again still using the smaller trees as walking sticks, finally getting to the depression at the ridge. When I did, I looked to the right and could see Lolo Long making mincemeat of the more difficult direct route.
I would’ve yelled to her, but I didn’t have the breath.
There was a two-track dirt road that stretched in both directions just a little bit back from the precipice, so I turned right and worked my way along the ridge. After a few minutes, I noticed that the grass was flat and there were tread marks in the dirt; I stopped and kneeled down to look-someone had driven up here and back out and not long ago. My eyes followed the tracks where the vehicle had parked, made a two-point turn, and then gone out the way it had come. The depressions were deeper where the vehicle had sat for a period of time-there were even two small oil leaks with matching soot marks from where what I was assuming was a truck had been parked.
After a couple of hundred yards the grade leveled and the rounded surface of the rock fell away to the cliffs-a dangerous place. Lolo Long, looking out into the distance with her hands on her hips, stood about ten feet from the edge.
“Hey, Chief.”
“What?”
“Somebody drove a four-wheel-drive up here and not too long ago. There are two patches of differential fluid, and the tires are wide and the duel exhausts are set close-I’d say a Jeep, something like that.”
She turned to look at me. “How do you know where the exhaust was?”
I pointed. “The two soot marks from where it was restarted.” I stood. “They’re going to need a ring job before too long.” Something further back on the trail caught my eye, and I walked over to where it was lodged among the taller stalks of Johnson grass; it was a plastic bag, the kind you find at any grocery or convenience store. “Did she have a vehicle like that?”
Her lips tightened into a line, and the muscles in her jaw worked. “No, the guy she was shacking up with, Adrian’s father, does.”
I pulled the blue plastic sack from the weeds. It was full of crushed beer cans, a couple of empty chip bags, and some candy wrappers. There was a receipt in the bottom of the bag, soggy from the remnants draining from the containers.
I pulled the receipt out and held it up. Across the top were the words WHITE BUFFALO SINCLAIR and listed below were the items that were in the used bag, with the exception of the beer and a pack of cigarettes, as well as thirty-two dollars’ worth of regular gasoline; the date was today at 11:22 A.M.
Chief Long approached, and I handed the sack to her, along with the receipt; she read it, withdrew a couple of evidence bags, and carefully placed the slip of paper inside one, the blue plastic into the other.
I took out the camera and began taking pictures again, sucked in a breath, and trudged along to the precipice.
The surface was a loose scrabble of sedentary shale that looked like shattered terra-cotta in a wil
d cathedral floor; the footing was unstable, and a few lizards scrambled like ball bearings over the hard surface. I moved toward the edge and kneeled down to look at the disturbed rock shelves at the point where the woman had fallen. The wind picked up a little, nudging me from behind, as I allowed my eyes to drift toward the clouds again, some of them trailing low enough to almost reach out and touch.
The crows and the eagle continued to flirt with them, pinwheeling and passing away from each other, circling, and using the rising thermals and gusts of wind for lift.
There was a rapid movement that pulled me from my trance-a little pygmy rattler swiveled from a small outcropping to my left-probably after the lizards. I picked up a small rock and tossed it toward him to let him know he should keep going away from us, and he obliged by disappearing.
I could see where Audrey had gone over the edge, and where she’d desperately attempted to hold back the inevitable with one hand-must have been the one that was missing fingernails. There was another area of disturbance in the rocks right in front of me, possibly where she had tripped or possibly where there could’ve been some sort of struggle.
I shot a look back at Chief Long and pointed to the edge. “Do you see that?”
She stood her ten feet back and made no effort to move. “What?”
“The marks in the rocks.”
She glanced over my shoulder. “Yeah.”
“You can see it better from over here.”
She adjusted the strap of the crime scene bag on her shoulder. “I can see fine.”
I took another series of shots, the rocks crumbling and shifting under my boots. Catching my balance, I took the few steps back to where she stood like a pole. “You okay?”
“Yes.” It was a quick answer and was meant to cut off any more conversation on the subject-the kind of response I’d learned to ignore.
“What’s up?”
She gave me the full kaleidoscope eyes, and I felt like I’d been kicked.
“I don’t like heights.”
I gazed back at the cliff and gestured toward it. “Well, it’s only natural, considering…”
“That’s not it.”
I tipped my hat back and studied her; she really was beautiful, and I could see the complexity of conflicting thoughts as they played across her face. I raised a hand toward her. “What then?”
She swallowed and retreated from the edge and my touch. “I… I have this urge to jump.”
Shrugging a shoulder, I stepped past her toward the main part of the grass-covered trail. “That’s normal, too. It can be categorized as a risk impulse; it’s the subjective aspect of our natures that makes rodeo riders strap themselves to Brahma bulls or skydivers jump out of perfectly good airplanes. Freud called that kind of risk-taking behavior the ‘death drive’ and associated it with gambling, sex and, well, a lot of other things.”
She stayed put and kept looking for signs in the passing clouds. “He connected everything with sex, didn’t he?”
“Pretty much.”
She turned and looked at me as her radio crackled. She lifted it out of her belt and looked at the road below. “Roger that, unit 1. We’re at the top, but we’ll be right down.”
I walked back toward the cliff and could see a white Yukon, a black Expedition, and a highway patrol cruiser. “Looks like they didn’t get lost after all.”
“Yeah.” She didn’t move after reholstering the two-way.
“You want to go down and meet them?”
She nodded and reset her jaw. “Are we through up here?”
“With the limited resources we have, yes.”
She still didn’t move, and I could tell there was a lot more she wanted to say. “Look…”
I waited, but she didn’t say anything else. Then she cleared her throat and coughed up a few words. “I’m… I’m new to this stuff, but I don’t feel like being railroaded by the… I mean, maybe I’m a lousy cop, but I’d like to find out on my own.” She stopped and turned to look at me. “Before we go down there, I’d like to make sure we’re on the same page.”
“Meaning?”
“I know more about this case than you or they do; I know the people involved, and I’m not buying it.” Her eyes came down to the edge of the cliff and studied the surface-fractured and dangerous. “It’s not that high.”
“Most suicides are from approximately five hundred feet-high enough to kill, but low enough to not last too long.” The wind gusted, and I was reminded that this was no longer a good place. “You’re not buying what?”
Lolo Long stood there like a sentinel. “There’s no way a woman walks out to the edge of a cliff like this with her child in her arms.”
Bingo.
I smiled and studied her in a professorial manner. “Maybe you’re not such a lousy cop after all.”
Her eyes flared and she looked directly at me, and I thought for a moment that she might try and throw me off the cliff. She took a step and turned to the right toward the direct path down, then called over her shoulder. “There’s another reason.”
I followed along behind her. “Reason for what?”
I barely heard the words as they drifted back with the breeze that continued to stiffen. “For jumping: just to have it all over with.”
The Feds were already setting up camp on the same ridge where we’d parked, and a blond-haired young man, who looked like one of the agents, and a highway patrolman were the first to reach us. The FBI agent, in a short-sleeved shirt, held out a hand to me.
“Bo Benth. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sheriff. I’ve heard and read a lot about you.”
I shook his hand and introduced Lolo. “This is Chief Long.” I went ahead and threw in the next, just so there wouldn’t be any confusion. “She’ll be the primary investigator.”
Agent Benth smiled as Long studied her ropers. He glanced up at the cliff. “We understood it was pretty cut and dry.”
“No, actually, it’s not. There’s a survivor, and a friend of mine and I actually witnessed the fall. Chief Long and I have already done the preliminary crime scene work, here and above.”
He looked at the gathering thunderclouds building over the cliffs. “Good, ’cause I’ve got a feeling we’re about to get pissed on.” They started past toward the deceased. “As to whose responsibility this is, you can take that up with the new agent in charge.”
“Where’s he?”
Benth threw a thumb over his shoulder and gave me a strange smirk. “Trying to get reception on his mobile back in the vehicle. You’re gonna love him.”
As we walked down the hill, Officer Long hooked her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans. “Great.”
“What?”
“A new AIC; just what I need.”
I nodded. “Did you know the last one?”
“Only over the phone; I was lucky.” She glanced back at Painted Warrior. “I guess my luck ran out.”
We passed a few more crime lab infantry, but not my good friend Bill McDermott, who must’ve been working another part of the state.
The white Fed Yukon, which was the AIC vehicle, was parked the farthest away, and a tall man with a goatee and wild-looking hair dressed in a pink shirt and blue blazer hung an arm over the sill of the open door. He held his cell phone at the other arm’s length and was looking at it with an expression of disgust, his sunglasses perched on his forehead.
Lolo Long glanced back at me. “I’ll handle it this time.”
The federal agent tossed the mobile into the backseat of the Yukon. “Is there any cell reception in fucking Montana?” He glanced at me. “I mean, I know there isn’t any in fucking Wyoming, but fucking Montana, too?”
He turned to study Chief Long. “Hey, things are looking up.”
Long ignored the remark, adjusted the crime scene pack strap on her shoulder, and held out her hand. “Lolo Long, Cheyenne tribal chief of police. I’m the primary investigator on this case.”
He kicked his face sideways and smirked with even
more enthusiasm than had the younger agent-evidently it was a bureau thing. He looked at her hand but didn’t shake it. “You don’t say?”
She was showing remarkable patience and ignored that remark, too-but her voice was now carrying that edge. “I am intimate with the subjects involved and have information that may lead to an early arrest.”
He shook his head as if to clear it, glanced at me, and then back to her. “Early arrest, huh?”
She took a breath and finally lowered the hand. “Sheriff Longmire and I-”
He interrupted her carefully planned speech and glanced at me again with a more than knowing look. “Uh huh?”
She stumbled but then regained her footing; she was getting angrier. “We… I have reason to believe that this may be more than a simple case of misadventure.”
“You do?”
Full on angry now. “Yes.”
He took the sunglasses off his forehead, tossed them after the phone, and massaged the sockets of his eyes on either side of his elongated nose with thumb and forefinger. “Sounds like I don’t have a thing to worry about.” He raised his face-and this time it was a grin, the kind hyenas have-then reached out a fist and actually punched her shoulder; then he spoke in the singsong pattern of bad TV. “Well, how ’bout I introduce myself-Cliff Cly of the FBI.”
3
“You could’ve told me that you knew him.”
She banked the turns at ninety, and I was beginning to think that this was just the way Lolo Long drove, kind of like A. J. Foyt.
“And when was I supposed to have done that?”
“You could’ve jumped in at any time.”
I braced a hand against the dash and checked my seat belt. “You said you wanted to handle it, in a tone of voice, I might add, which told me that I must’ve done a bad job previously.” She didn’t say anything. “You got what you wanted; you’re the primary investigator on the case.”
As the crow flies wl-8 Page 4