The Forgotten Girls

by Owen Laukkanen

  “Long and tough sounds right up Hurley’s alley,” Windermere said. “Take us east.”

  —

  The pilot wasn’t joking. To the west, the forest grew gradually out of the flatland at the bottom of the Rocky Mountain Trench, extending to the shore of the lake in a more or less orderly manner. What roads had been cut through the trees followed a vague kind of grid pattern, unencumbered by any major topographical irritations.

  To the east, the Rocky Mountains rose in earnest from the valley floor, and the roads were thinner, rougher, and fewer in number. They wound up the sides of steep hillsides, curved and doubled back on one another, arced up toward the border and back down again. Stevens guided the pilot across the terrain, one eye on the map, searching out any path through the wilderness that might have conveyed Leland Hurley north.

  “I see three potential entry spots,” he told Windermere and the pilot. “Each of these roads loops up to within three hundred yards of the border. Unless Hurley’s a total masochist, he would have had to follow one of them.”

  “Except our guy is a masochist,” Windermere said. “We’ve already established that.”

  “Sure,” Stevens said. “But still.”

  But Hurley hadn’t followed any of the three roads—at least not in Kerry Finley’s Explorer. And if he’d left footprints, they were obscured by the snow. None of the occupants of the Flathead County helicopter could see any evidence that Hurley had passed this way.

  “Maybe he ditched the truck farther back,” Windermere said. “Hiked through the forest. Or he hid it.”

  “Or maybe we’re wrong and he stayed west, after all,” Stevens said. “Or maybe he took a different tack entirely.”

  The pilot gestured out the window to the west, where the sun had started dropping toward the mountains already. “If you want to check the lake before dark, we’re going to have to move,” he told the agents. “We’re going to start losing daylight faster than you think.”

  Stevens and Windermere looked at each other, and Stevens felt a gnawing indecision, made worse by the pressure of the situation. If they couldn’t track Hurley within the next couple of hours, they would lose him for the night. And giving Hurley another night in these mountains was tantamount to buying him a plane ticket, as far as Stevens was concerned.

  Windermere was still waiting. Time was wasting. Stevens rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. “Damn it,” he said. “I guess we’d better check out the lake.”

  —

  And they would have checked the lake, and as many of the logging roads west of Roosville as they could manage before dusk—were headed that way, chasing the sun—when the helicopter’s pilot happened to take a pass over a low earthen dam and the snow-covered lake behind it. And Windermere, eyes attracted to the break in the monotony of the tree-covered mountain, happened to glance down at the dam and the lake and the road that ran beside it, and as she followed the road north with her eyes, she caught the glint as the sun’s rays landed on something that wasn’t rock, snow, or forest, but chrome and steel and glass.

  “Hold up.” Windermere leaned forward, made to grab the pilot’s arm. Decided, on second thought, that wasn’t the best idea. Settled for pointing down instead, through the bubble windshield and back toward the truck—Finley’s truck, she was sure of it—where it sat a couple hundred yards from the dam and a solid three miles from the border.

  “There it is,” she told Stevens, her heart starting to pound. “Now, where the heck is Kerry Finley?”

  94

  Stevens got on the radio to the Canadians—the Border Services Agency and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—gave them the approximate location of Kerry Finley’s truck, told them to keep an eye out on the closest stretch of border.

  “We’ll get our guys out there,” the RCMP officer told Stevens. “But you should know that it’s a huge piece of land, and not much in it. Pretty easy for a guy to get himself lost.”

  The Mountie was a woman named Cronquist. She sounded upbeat, anyway, even as she explained the long odds. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m up for a challenge,” she told Stevens. “I just don’t want you thinking we’ll have your man gift-wrapped and waiting for you first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “We know all about needles and haystacks,” Stevens told her. “We’ve been tracking this guy through these mountains for days, infrared night vision and everything. If getting lost in the woods is an art form, this guy’s Picasso.”

  “I never was that big into art,” Cronquist said. “But feel free to bring up those infrared cameras, if they’re just lying around. They work just as well on this side of the border.”

  Stevens told her he’d arrange it. Called down to Wasserman and Mundall, filled them in, told them to bring the hunt north, find someone to start working on the paperwork. Was just saying his good-byes when the helicopter pilot dropped into a low hover above the earthen dam site, the only place he could find room to get low enough for a drop.

  “Come on, partner,” Windermere said, sliding the chopper’s rear door open. “Let’s see if all this helicopter noise hasn’t scared the deputy out of hiding.”

  —

  It might have been the noise of the helicopter’s approach. Then again, maybe not. But when Stevens and Windermere had slogged their way off the dam and up the logging road to approach Kerry Finley’s Lincoln County Explorer with their pistols drawn, they found the front seat deserted, cold, the only sign of Hurley a faint trail of snowshoe tracks leading north toward the border.

  “No sign of her,” Windermere said. “Shit.”

  Stevens squinted up the logging road, daylight slipping away, shadows all-encompassing. Knew they’d never track Hurley fast enough on foot, not in their heavy boots and Hurley in snowshoes, knew he would hear the chopper from miles out, find somewhere to hide.

  But Stevens wasn’t focusing on Hurley now, not really. Stevens was thinking about how he couldn’t see any other footprints in the snow around Finley’s Explorer, thinking that meant either the deputy wasn’t here or she was here, thinking that second option was infinitely worse.

  Stevens was turning back to Finley’s Explorer, hoping maybe the deputy was in a ditch somewhere back near Stryker—a snowdrift or something, hurt but still alive—he saw Windermere lingering at the back of the truck, peering in through the rear window, and he caught the expression on her face and knew they were done playing make-believe.

  “Ah, damn it,” he said, walking back toward Windermere, though he really didn’t want to. “Damn it, Kerry, no.”

  95

  Hurley could hear the helicopters again.

  They’d started around dusk, the dull, distant drone of the rotors, one machine at first, then more as night fell. Now it was dark, pitch-dark, in the forest, and Hurley could hear the helicopters above him—at least three, maybe more. They’d mostly stayed south, kept close to the border, but now and then they flew closer, close enough that Hurley had begun to look for places to hide.

  But there was no hiding. The terrain here was forest, mountain foothills, not the jagged peaks and cliffs he was used to. Anyway, his night-vision goggles were shot, the batteries dead, and Hurley was having a hard enough time picking his way through the snowy undergrowth, let alone searching for shelter.

  There was nowhere to hide, and no time. The helicopters were behind him for now. Ditto the snowmobiles Hurley could hear patrolling what few roads existed on this side of the line. The law hadn’t counted on him making it this far north, but they would figure it out soon enough. Hurley had to keep moving.

  But he was tired. Exhausted. He’d been a fugitive for days, slept a few hours at most. Hadn’t eaten a meal since god knows when, was fully out of ration bars. He was hungry. His muscles ached; his limbs failed him. He fell often, crashed against trees and stumbled into creek beds. Hurley knew he was about at his limit. Knew, suddenly and without do
ubt, that he couldn’t make another night like this. He needed rest. He needed food. He needed to come in from the cold.

  Shit.

  The highway was west, a few long miles through the forest. It skirted the mountains, followed the lake north. There would be civilization by the roadside. Food. Shelter. He could hide, try to sleep, replenish his energy. Then set out again and get away from this place.

  Hurley hated to do it. He’d counted on his survival skills, his self-sufficiency. He hadn’t counted on the law catching up to him so fast. And he would die out here if he tried to outrun them.

  Hurley stopped in his snowshoes. Leaned against a massive Rocky Mountain fir and caught his breath. Listened to the helicopters behind him, incessant, relentless. They were going to keep coming. They weren’t going to stop.

  Hurley summoned his strength. Hoisted his rifle. Turned and began to walk west.

  96

  Staff Sergeant Lynn Cronquist was waiting at the roadside when the Flathead County helicopter touched down at the border checkpoint in Roosville, British Columbia. She’d closed the highway; an RCMP Crown Victoria sat parked across both lanes to the north, its red-and-blues flashing. To the south of the checkpoint, two US Customs and Border Protection Explorers stood guard. Otherwise, the highway—and the tiny town beyond—looked mostly deserted.

  Cronquist was a tall, solid woman about Stevens’s age. She hurried across the pavement toward the helicopter, ducking the rotor wash, helped Stevens slide the door open and shook his hand, then Windermere’s, and led them away as the helicopter took flight again. It was five minutes to midnight. The air was bitterly cold.

  “We’re mostly set up on the Canadian side,” Cronquist told them, leading them toward a small single-story building, a single guardhouse on one end, a Canadian flag atop the roof. She waved at the customs officer in the guardhouse, hurried them past.

  “Probably need all kinds of permits to bring you guys over here,” she told Stevens and Windermere over her shoulder, “but I figured we’d save the paperwork until we get this guy caught, huh?”

  Stevens glanced at Windermere, caught her slight nod, approving. Figured he shared her sentiments, had been afraid the Canadians would get hung up on procedure, wouldn’t grasp the importance of timeliness in this chase.

  “I guess there’s a whole story about why a couple of Minnesota FBI agents are chasing serial killers in Montana,” Cronquist continued. “But I imagine that’s one more thing we can hash out in the afterglow.”

  Then the Mountie’s face grew serious. “They said you were pretty close with the deputy this guy killed,” she said. “I’m sorry to hear it. We’ll do everything we can to catch the scumbag, you can be sure of it.”

  Stevens didn’t say anything. He’d been trying to keep Kerry Finley out of his thoughts, trying not to see the Lincoln County deputy how they’d found her, shot all to hell and crammed dead in the back of her truck. He was trying not to feel personally responsible.

  Cronquist caught the look on his face. “Well, never mind,” she said, pushing open the door to the customshouse. “Let me show you what we’ve got going on.”

  The staff sergeant had taken over the sleepy customshouse—“Nobody coming through here this time of night”—and turned it into a makeshift operations center.

  “Our closest detachment’s about forty miles north,” she told them. “So we’re leaning on Canada Customs to help out.”

  She’d amassed a team—customs agents from both sides of the border, what RCMP help she could call in from the surrounding region, the Flathead County and Lincoln County sheriff’s departments, and, of course, the FBI.

  “We borrowed a Squirrel from the base in Kelowna,” she told them. “That’s our local helicopter; it’s an AS350, European. Kelowna’s a couple hundred miles away if you’re flying, though, so there was a bit of a lag getting the chopper on line. There’s only one for the region, and it’s a pretty big region, so . . .”

  “Yeah, we’ve heard all about it,” Windermere said. “Limited resources all over the map.”

  “You said it. I called in as many guys as I could muster, sent them out into the woods on Ski-Doos, but again, lot of space to hide, not many people to look. Like I told you on the radio, this isn’t going to be easy.”

  “It hasn’t been easy so far,” Stevens said. “Why would it start now?”

  He’d been afraid of flying at one point in his life. The concept seemed laughable now. He’d spent most of the last three days in the air, in one law enforcement helicopter or another, too preoccupied by the search to worry about the physics of powered flight. He and Windermere had left Kerry Finley’s body in the care of a team of local deputies, climbed back into the helicopter, and searched the woods along the border well into the night, pausing only for a quick dash back to the airport in Eureka for fuel. They’d scanned untold miles of featureless black forest with the chopper’s infrared camera and saw a couple of elk, but no Leland Hurley. And none of the other helicopters on scene were reporting any different.

  “We’re still behind him,” Stevens told Cronquist and Windermere. “He passed through Stryker just after midnight last night. Gives him a full day to make that crossing. He could be miles inside the country by now.”

  “And he probably is,” Windermere said. “Given that we’ve been skunked with every pass we’ve made close to the line.”

  “So we need to go deeper. Follow him north.”

  Cronquist pursed her lips. “You want to bring your helicopters over?” she asked. “I can fudge the script for a couple of agents, but if you’re wanting to bring the air force into our space, I should probably wake somebody up to check in.”

  “Do what you have to do,” Windermere replied. “But every minute we hold up those choppers gives Hurley that much more time to scatter.”

  Cronquist sucked her teeth. Thought about it. Finally, she seemed to come to a decision. “It’s a dark night,” she said. “Anybody gets ornery, we’ll just tell them your choppers got lost.”

  97

  The helicopters were closer by the time Hurley reached the highway. Louder. But Hurley barely heard them. He’d taken nearly three hours to cover the last miles to civilization; his legs felt like cement, and his mind struggled to focus. Right boot, left boot. Try not to fall. Try not to give in to the temptation to quit.

  But Hurley wasn’t a quitter. He pushed himself forward, stumbled his way through the inky-black forest, down into gulches and over rises, dodging deadfall and frozen streams. And then the trees parted and he was staring at highway again, and beyond it, the railroad. The highway was empty. The tracks were, too. But up the road, maybe a half mile or so, Hurley could see lights: a farmhouse, a porch light, a couple outbuildings. No lights on in the windows, nobody awake. But there would be food inside, and maybe somewhere to rest. Hurley stepped out of his snowshoes, strapped them to his pack. Started up the highway.

  —

  The house was large and handsome. Old, but cozy, and as Hurley approached, he felt a pang of envy for the occupants within, warm and well fed and content. He shook the thought from his mind.

  Hell, you’re getting soft, man.

  Beyond the house was a compound, a bright light on a standard illuminating a garage and a modest-sized barn. Tire tracks to the doors of the garage; he could steal the car, maybe. Catch some sleep in the barn, recharge. Be gone before anyone knew he’d been there.

  Sanctuary.

  But Hurley’s stomach was empty. He was weak with hunger, with thirst. And he knew if he didn’t eat now, he would lie awake in that barn, wishing for food. He needed to eat. Then he would sleep. Then he would continue his journey.

  Hurley stuck to the shadows. Crossed the compound as far from the glare of the bright light as he could, hurried toward the farmhouse, the back door. Crept up the steps to the porch, his boots squeaking on packed snow, and moved as
quietly as he could to the door, tried the handle. The handle turned. The door was unlocked.

  Oh, Canada.

  Hurley pushed the door open and slunk inside the house.

  He found himself in the kitchen. It was large, comfortable, spacious, an old stove and a huge, buzzing fridge, a table large enough to seat eight adults comfortably. No bowl for dog food by the door. No leash hanging over a doorknob.

  Hurley did see car keys dangling from a coat hook just inside the doorway. Three sets: Dodge, Toyota, Volkswagen. This was a bonus. As soon as he’d eaten, he could drive away from this place.

  But first, the food. Hurley crossed to the refrigerator, hoping the machine’s racket would muffle his boot steps. He pulled the door open, saw tonight’s leftovers—roast chicken, potatoes—and a couple cans of Molson beer. Cheese, yogurt, lunch meat. Hurley took the bologna. The cheese. Hesitated a moment, then liberated a drumstick as well, a can of beer for good measure. Closed the fridge and devoured the chicken where he stood, couldn’t help it. Finished the drumstick and went back for a thigh.

  It was as Hurley was reaching for the refrigerator door again that he glimpsed the girl’s photograph. It sat on the fridge at eye level, held in place by a Jiffy Lube magnet. The girl was about sixteen or seventeen. She had dark hair and fine, delicate features. She was smiling at the camera, the mountains behind her. A blue sky, green forest. Perfect white teeth.

  Hurley let the fridge door close, feeling the heat rising in his chest as he studied the picture as best he could in the light through the kitchen window. Then he looked around the kitchen, took in the pink snow boots lined up by the door, the matching fur-lined parka above it, by the keys. A backpack slung over a chair at the table. A calendar on the fridge: figure-skating practice, school council. Yes, she was one of them, all right. She smiled out from the picture like she was already laughing at him. There was no telling how many boys she’d ruined already.