Crap.
Mila hurried over to the diner’s front door. Pushed it open and ran out to the parking lot, the snowy pavement and the slush. The Suburban was pulling away now, driving out of Big Al’s lot and north on the highway. Mila ran to follow him. The man drove slow, like he hadn’t noticed her. She gained a little ground, got a better angle on his license plate. Lifted her phone to snap another picture—and then she dropped it.
She dropped her phone onto the hard-packed snow. Heard a crack as it landed. Heard another, louder crack as her momentum carried her over the phone, as her left foot landed square on the screen. The phone slipped out from under her like a clown’s banana peel and Mila lost her balance, tumbled down, landed hard. Watched the Suburban chug away, in no hurry at all.
Mila picked herself up slowly. Her phone lay a few feet away, and she slid over to it. She knew immediately she was screwed.
The screen was cracked. Shattered. It looked like a store window after someone threw a brick. Wouldn’t even power on. Of freaking course.
Mila looked around the tiny town, fought the urge to start screaming. Trudged back toward the diner instead.
56
Twelve hundred miles away from Mila Scott, Derek Mathers’s computer chimed. Even as he swiveled in his chair, he recognized the sound.
Mark Higgins’s cloud. Mila Scott’s phone.
Mathers brought up the cloud on his desktop. Three new pictures, just added. An old SUV, white and blue, at a gas station. A man cleaning his windshield. Climbing into the truck. Driving away. The man wore an army parka, the hood up. Mathers couldn’t make out much of his face save for a dark beard, couldn’t get a read on the truck’s license plate. Still, something about the man had piqued Mila Scott’s interest. But what?
Mathers opened the first picture, brought up the metadata. Uploaded to the cloud just minutes ago, he knew that already. But from where?
Mathers keyed the IP address into his search tool. Sat back and contemplated the results. Someplace called Norma’s Diner, Route 93, Anchor Falls, Montana.
“Anchor Falls.” Mathers brought up Google Maps. “Now where in the heck is that?”
57
Pam Moody’s story was a hard one to hear.
She’d been awake, but just barely, when Windermere walked into her room in the hospital’s critical care unit, Stevens right behind her. She lay propped up in her bed, her face bruised and bandaged, her hands—both of them—wrapped completely in white gauze. She’d been hooked up to an IV and wore monitoring diodes beneath her gown. She was hazy, the doctor told them, from the medication she’d been given.
But hazy or not, Moody remembered. In a slow, dreamlike voice, she told the agents about the night she’d been attacked, from her shift at the Hungry Horse Saloon all the way to the rescue—Stevens and Finley driving past in the gloaming, the wolf right behind her, snapping at her feet as she climbed.
“He was, I don’t know, maybe forty?” she said when Windermere asked about her attacker. “White guy, kind of plain. Big, thick beard, really shifty eyes. Every time we made eye contact, he’d look away fast, like he was really shy or something.”
“This was at the bar?” Windermere asked. “Sometime during your shift?”
“That’s right. He had a booth in the very back, by himself. Drank a couple of Rainiers, tipped me pretty good, and then split.”
“Just like Butcher’s Creek,” Stevens said. “The woman at the Gold Spike said Kelly-Anne Clairmont was talking to a solitary guy in a booth. He left midway through the evening, and in the morning—”
“Clairmont was dead. But nobody at the Gold Spike could remember much about that guy, either.”
“He was just some normal-looking guy,” Moody said again. “Like, he could have been you with a beard, for all I really noticed. He could have been anyone.”
“What about his clothes?”
Moody thought. “He was dressed for the weather. Like, a big army parka and a woolen watch cap.” Then she blinked. “And his knife. He had a bowie knife, a nice one. There was a picture on the handle, someone riding a horse. A woman, I think. I’m not sure.”
Windermere felt her phone buzzing in her pocket. “We can work with that, definitely.” She pulled her phone out. Checked the screen. Mathers. “Excuse me for one second.”
She ducked out into the hall, swiped her screen to answer. “Mathers. Did you hear the good news?”
“The Hungry Horse woman?” Mathers replied. “I heard you guys saved her life.”
“That’s right.” Windermere tried not to sound deflated. She’d been looking forward to bragging a little. “Stevens did most of it. Followed her trail all the way up the mountain. Even had to fend off a wolf.”
Mathers whistled. “Wow. Where were you?”
“Searching the boyfriend’s house back in town. I figured I should follow protocol, go by the book while Stevens chased his bogeyman.”
“And now Stevens gets to be the hero. Well, I’m sure you’ll get your chance to one-up him.”
“Maybe.” Windermere walked a couple steps down the hall. Dodged an orderly with a stretcher barreling the other way. “Anyway, what’s up? You have something you want to talk about?”
“Got an updated location on that runaway,” Mathers told her. “I know you’re not focusing on her right now, but I figured you’d want to be updated.”
“Can’t hurt. Where is she?”
“Real close to you guys, actually. Some place called Anchor Falls. It’s, like, twenty miles north of Whitefish. She logged on to the cloud from some roadside diner this morning. Uploaded three pictures of some dude and his truck.”
Windermere didn’t say anything. Turned back toward Pam Moody’s door, only half-aware she was doing it.
Anchor Falls, she thought. Stevens, you’re a freaking savant.
“Carla?”
Windermere refocused. “Anchor Falls, yeah, Derek. You alert the local cops?”
“It’s Flathead County, same as Hungry Horse. Same sheriff’s department. I figured you might want to liaise.”
“I’m no good at liaising. You do it.” Windermere walked quickly back into Pam Moody’s room, already plotting the drive north. “Tell them to get some deputies on the ground, stat. Tell them the feds will be there in thirty minutes. And send me those pictures, got it?”
She ended the call. Ducked her head into Pam Moody’s room. “Mila Scott just showed up in Anchor Falls, partner,” she told Stevens. “Did anyone ever tell you you’d make a pretty good cop?”
58
The waitress glared as Mila entered the diner again. Mila ignored her. Dragged herself to a booth by the windows and heaved herself onto the vinyl seat.
“And she’s back again.” The waitress had followed her, was standing over the table. “Listen, I don’t know how they do it wherever you’re from, but around here, we think it’s pretty rude to just barge in and interrupt—”
Mila put her ruined phone on the table. Didn’t meet the waitress’s eye. “I’ll get out of here in a minute,” she said. “I just need to think.”
She could ask Big Al who the man was. Ask him where he lived, how to get there. But Big Al might not tell her, some strange girl he’d never seen before today. Big Al might get suspicious. Heck, he might tell the man she’d been asking after him.
It was worth a shot, at least. Somebody in this little town would know who the man was. Someone would know where to find him. Mila just had to hope she found that person before the man figured out she was after him.
The waitress still hadn’t moved. “You broke your phone.”
“I sure did,” Mila said. “Guess I got what was coming to me. For being so rude, hey?”
The waitress frowned. Then her expression softened. “What was the big hurry, anyway? You came bursting in here like you just saw Bigfoot.”
“It wasn’t anything like that,” Mila told her. “It was just some guy.”
“Hurley, yeah. I saw you chasing his truck.”
Mila looked up. “You know him?”
“Leland? I mean, I don’t know that I know him, but I know who he is. Aren’t too many strangers in a town this small.”
“But you know his name is Leland Hurley.” Mila could feel her pulse quickening again.
The waitress shifted her weight. “Sure I do. Leland’s what you’d call a real hermit, lives up there in the mountains, but he comes into town every week or so, gets his groceries. Sometimes he comes across to the diner for lunch, never says much. I get the feeling he’s kind of shy.” She narrowed her eyes at Mila. “Why? What’s got you so interested? He’s a little old for you, girl.”
“He took something from a friend of mine. I want to get it back.”
“Something important.”
“Very.”
“And you can’t go to the police?”
Mila looked her in the eye. Shook her head no.
“You’re thinking you’re just going to walk up into those mountains and tell Leland Hurley he’s got to give back what he took?”
“Something like that,” Mila said. “Do you know where he lives?”
The waitress hesitated. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I can convince you this is a bad idea.”
“I rode a freight train from California to get here,” Mila said. “What that man Hurley took, he had no right to. I’ll find him, I promise, with or without you.”
The waitress glanced out the window, almost involuntarily, her eyes tracing the slopes of the mountains east of town. She chewed her lip like she was thinking it over. Finally, she sighed and sat down opposite Mila. “You still have that map?”
—
According to the waitress, Leland Hurley lived up Trail Creek way, about five miles north of town and another ten east.
“Way up in the mountains,” the waitress said. “It’s wilderness up there. Just a logging road along the creek side winding through the Trail Valley. He lives in a cabin up the head of the valley somewhere, old loggers’ land, the middle of nowhere. You can’t just walk up to his front door and knock.”
Mila studied the map. Trail Creek crossed the railroad tracks about the same place as the siding. The logging road followed the creek into the mountains. The man had disappeared into the forest there, Lazy Jake said. He must have gone east.
“I can find my way out there,” Mila told the waitress. “I just need directions.”
“Take the highway north until you hit Loggers’ Pass.” The waitress traced her finger over the map. “Take a right on the second logging road; it won’t be marked, but you’ll see the creek just before it. Then you follow that road until you get to Hurley’s cabin—or until the snow gets too deep and you get yourself stuck.”
Mila followed the waitress’s finger on the map. Retraced the route until she was sure she had it down. “I don’t want to go out there with all my stuff,” she said, motioning to her heavy packsack. “Do you mind if I leave it here until I get back?”
The waitress started to reply. Looked like a no. Mila cut her off.
“I won’t be very long. There and back. I just can’t make it all the way out there carrying all of this weight.”
The waitress mulled it over. Still didn’t look convinced. “There’s a room where we all keep our stuff in the back,” she said finally. “Come on.”
Mila followed the waitress through the restaurant. There was one cook at work in the kitchen, a young Hispanic man sweating over a grill. He looked up as Mila and the waitress walked in, smiled at Mila, confused, then turned back to the grill.
The waitress was already out of the kitchen. Mila found her in a little break room about the size of a closet. Hooks on the wall for coat hangers, coats hanging from them. A pink snowmobile jacket that would have been the waitress’s and a black down jacket that must have belonged to the cook.
“Just leave the pack here,” the waitress told Mila. “I’ll make sure Ramon knows it’s yours.”
Mila set the pack down beneath the waitress’s coat. Patted herself down, checking for her knife and feeling it through her coat. “Is there a bathroom I could use?” she asked.
“Next door down.” The waitress pointed. “Listen, I have to get back out front.”
“I’ll find my way back.” Mila ducked into the bathroom. Stayed there a believable length of time, then crept out again. Made a quick stop in the break room on her way to the front and another short stop in the kitchen, Ramon cooking up some bacon, completely oblivious.
The waitress was at the cash register when Mila emerged. “I’ll be back soon,” Mila told her. “Thank you for everything.”
The waitress looked like she wanted to say something, like she knew she should. But the elderly couple was at the counter, waiting to pay, and Mila slipped past while the waitress was distracted, pushed open the front door and slipped out into the cold. Hurried around the side of the diner, away from the windows, and stopped to take inventory.
She’d found the key ring in Ramon’s coat pocket, a house key and the key to some kind of Dodge. There was an old Ram pickup parked behind the diner, a big silver diesel with significant rust. Mila tried the key in the door, but the door was already unlocked.
She climbed up into the driver’s seat and took the second item from her coat pocket: a meat tenderizer, a heavy, spiked mallet. She’d been hoping for a butcher’s knife when she ducked into the kitchen, something big and scary, but all the knives were over by Ramon. The tenderizer was the closest item at hand.
A meat tenderizer and a small camping knife. A rusty pickup truck. No phone. No plan. Just a name waiting at the end of a long logging road.
Mila turned the key in the ignition, and the truck rumbled to life. She shifted into drive and steered out onto the highway.
59
Forty minutes after Agent Mathers’s phone call, Stevens and Windermere pulled into Anchor Falls, Montana, in Kerry Finley’s Lincoln County SUV.
Anchor Falls was tiny, little more than a couple of buildings spread out along Route 93, and as Finley piloted the truck across a bridge over the town’s namesake waterfalls, Windermere could pick out a post office, a gas station, and the roadside diner where Mila Scott had uploaded more photographs to Mark Higgins’s cloud.
Mathers had emailed Mila’s latest pictures to Windermere, three blurry shots of a man in an army parka gassing up an old blue-and-white truck. Pamela Moody had recognized the army parka; it was the same as her attacker had worn. And as Windermere scanned the town from Finley’s passenger window, she spotted the gas pump from the picture immediately, at the gas station across the highway from Norma’s Diner, in the middle of downtown Anchor Falls.
He was here. This morning. And Mila Scott found him.
So where’s Mila?
There was no sign of the Flathead County deputies. They were based in Whitefish, Finley was pretty sure, and that meant they’d be coming up the same stretch of highway as Stevens and Windermere. But the deputies were taking their sweet time.
Windermere wasn’t about to wait around for them. She climbed from Finley’s truck and strode up to the front door of the diner, crossing her fingers they’d find Mila Scott sitting pretty in a booth, chowing down on a cheeseburger, maybe coloring on her place mat or something. No such luck.
The diner was deserted, save for a couple men in a booth at the far end and the waitress, a pretty woman with blond curls, probably in her early thirties. Windermere wondered briefly if she was the eponymous Norma, but the woman’s name tag read SHELLY, so there went that theory.
But even if she didn’t run the joint, Shelly the waitress knew what was up. One glimpse of the two agents and the sheriff alongside them and she cursed softly, gave them a look like the kid who
se dog ate her homework. “You’re here about the girl, aren’t you?”
Windermere showed Shelly her badge. “We sure are,” she said. “You want to tell us where she went?”
60
Well, she can’t have gone far,” Windermere said, following Stevens and Finley back out to the truck. “She’s a twenty-year-old girl trying to cover fifteen miles on foot. We’ll catch up to her quick, talk some sense into her. Then we chase down the mystery man.”
Windermere was feeling good, confident, for a change. Figured the end was in sight, the hard work just about done. Shelly at the diner had given them the full story, how Mila had showed up in time for breakfast, how she’d asked for a map. How she’d bugged out when she saw the man with the Suburban.
“Leland Hurley,” Shelly’d told them. “He lives up the far end of the Trail Valley, northeast of town. Keeps to himself mostly, only comes to town to stock up on provisions. Your girl said he stole something from her friend, that’s why she was looking for him.”
“The Trail Valley,” Stevens said. “How close is that to the railroad tracks?”
“It’s close. There’s a logging road into the valley, pretty much Leland’s driveway. It crosses the Northwestern line about five miles north of here.”
Five miles north. The coal train on which Pam Moody’s attacker had fled Hungry Horse had stopped at a passing siding north of Anchor Falls. Might as well have been Leland Hurley’s private train station.
Windermere had called in Hurley’s name to Mathers back in Minnesota, and a couple of minutes later, Mathers had emailed Hurley’s NCIC file to her phone.
“Born in Missoula, Montana, 1970,” Windermere read. Then she went silent. Scrolled through the file. “Shit.”
Stevens glanced at her.
“This dude’s ex-army,” she said. “And he has a rap sheet a mile long. Sexual assault and attempted rape charges from here to Tacoma, dating back to the mid-nineties. Even one for attempted murder, some place called Rock Springs, Wyoming. Trespassing and vagrancy charges, too. This guy is a bad boy.”
The Forgotten Girls Page 17