Heaven's Keep

by William Kent Krueger

  Cork sat up.

  “A woman and her daughter tried to escape,” Rose said.

  “What woman?” Cork struggled to bring himself fully awake.

  “From the compound in Kansas. They shot them as they ran.”

  “The police?”

  “Someone from the compound.” She wiped her eye, dealing quietly with a tear. “The girl was only ten years old. What kind of religious community kills its mothers and its children?”

  Cork had no answer for that.

  “Here I am praying for Jo and for all of us. I should be praying for them, too, I suppose. Sometimes it just seems there can never be enough prayers.” She took a deep breath and exhaled. “You were talking in your sleep.”

  “What did I say?”

  “Nothing I could understand. It sounded angry.”

  That was probably right. He was afraid, and long ago he’d come to understand that translating fear into anger helped him deal with situations that threatened to paralyze him.

  “Rose, I don’t know if going out there will do any good.”

  “You have to go, though. You have to act, Cork. It’s what you do best.”

  “What about you?”

  “I pray. It’s what I do best.”

  In what quiet comfort they could draw from each other’s company, they sat until Stephen came downstairs with his suitcase. He looked at his watch.

  “Mr. Parmer will be here in an hour, Dad. Have you even packed?”

  “Last night.”

  “Should we, like, wait out front?”

  “It’s a little early for that.”

  “Maybe some breakfast first,” Rose suggested, rising.

  “That would be awesome, Aunt Rose.”

  Stephen dropped his bag by the front door, then stood at the window staring eagerly into a morning that still looked very much like night, as if he was trying hard to hurry the dawn. Cork showered, dressed, and brought his own suitcase downstairs. Mal was up now, too, drinking coffee in the kitchen and helping Rose. Stephen sat at the table, doing a lot of damage to a stack of pancakes. The girls came down a few minutes later. And shortly after that, Hugh Parmer arrived.

  Cork introduced Parmer, and they all made a fuss of thanks, which Parmer accepted in a genuinely humble fashion. Stephen was eager to be off, so they were quickly and cleanly on their way to the Duluth airport in the dark of a very early November morning. Cork had cautioned Parmer to watch for deer, who were crepuscular creatures, apt to be lurking along the road as dawn approached. They made it to the airport without incident. Just as the sun began to rise over the vast inland sea of Lake Superior, Parmer’s Learjet lifted off the ground, made a long curl to the west, and headed toward Wyoming.

  After Stephen grew tired of looking out the window at the earth thirty thousand feet below, he turned to his host and asked, “Do you own this jet?”

  “Yep.” Parmer sat with a cup of coffee in his hand. “Lock, stock, and twin Honeywell engines.”

  “It must’ve cost like a million dollars.”

  “Several, Stephen. But in my work I need the freedom that having my own set of wings gives me.”

  “You build things, right? I mean like condominiums and stuff.”

  “Communities, Stephen. I develop communities.”

  “Dad says you’re planning on trashing the shore along Iron Lake.”

  “Sorry, Hugh,” Cork said.

  Parmer laughed. “One man’s vision may be another’s nightmare, son. Your dad and I have a lot of talking to do. I think we’ve finished dealing through intermediaries. I believe we’ll be working face-to-face on this from now on, man to man, which is the best way to do business, I think. But we’re going to worry about that later. Right now you and your dad have more pressing concerns.”

  Stephen studied the interior of the Lear with continued admiration. “Maybe we could use your jet to look for Mom.”

  “I think you’ll want something that maneuvers in and out of those mountains a little better. I’ll bet we can arrange for that.”

  “We?” Cork said.

  “Manner of speaking. But when I offered to help in any way I could, I wasn’t just blowing smoke, Cork. If you want to arrange for your own aircraft in the search out there, you do that. Have ’em bill it to me.”

  “That’s a lot more than I intended when I asked for your help, Hugh.”

  “And little enough for me to give.”

  Stephen said, “Were you always rich?”

  “Nope. Grew up in West Texas working on the same spread where my father was a ranch hand. That’s how I started out.”

  “How’d you get rich?”

  “The truth is that I married the rancher’s daughter. Didn’t do it because she was rich. I loved that woman with all my heart.”

  “Still married?” Cork asked.

  “ ’Fraid not. Lost Julia almost twenty years ago to a drunk driver.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’d think that after twenty years I’d get used to the idea.” He looked out the window of the plane. “I hope you find your wife, Cork. I truly do.”

  The flight was smooth and uneventful, and shortly before ten o’clock the Lear touched down on a runway of the regional airport in Cody, Wyoming.

  Cork had called ahead and arranged for a rental car, a Jeep Wrangler. After he confirmed that it was waiting, he and Stephen said good-bye to Hugh Parmer. They shook hands, and Parmer said, “I’m heading home, but if I hear that there was some way I could’ve helped and you didn’t ask me, I’ll be well and truly pissed.”

  “I’ll be sure to let you know,” Cork said. “Hugh, I appreciate everything you’ve done.”

  “We’ll be talking,” Parmer said. He ruffed Stephen’s hair. “Your old man’s lucky to have you along for backup. Keep him out of trouble, okay?”

  “I will,” Stephen said earnestly.

  “And, son,” Parmer added. “I sincerely hope you find your mother.”

  They drove southeast toward the Bighorn River, into a basin from which they could see the Absarokas to the west. The mountains were completely covered with snow, and at one point Stephen said solemnly, “They look like the teeth of a wolf.” They drove between irrigated fields, where great rolls of hay lay wrapped in black plastic and wore a mantle of snow. They drove through rocky hills dotted with prickly pear cactus. They saw ranch houses in the distance, isolated, lonely-looking places, and spotted cattle grazing near gullies lined with cottonwoods. The farther south they drove the more rugged the land became, marked by the rise of long escarpments whose sharp cliffs were red as open wounds. Cork was surprised how little snow there was in the Bighorn Basin, in some places not much more than a dusting.

  After an hour and a half, they came to Hot Springs, which proved to be a large town perched on the high ground at a bend in the Bighorn. On the far side of the river, steamy vapor drifted up from yellow pools. Hot Springs had an old western feel to it, a community carved out of rock and bedded in sand. It was, in a way, colorful. Blue sky, blue river, blue-white mountains, red rock, yellow springs. The day was warm, the temperature in the high forties. In the hills above town lay pockets of snow, but in Hot Springs itself most of what had fallen had already melted away. They drove directly to the courthouse, an old building of tan brick, and they parked in the lot of the annex, a newer two-story addition that housed the Owl Creek County Sheriff’s Department and the county jail. Also parked in the lot were news vans from stations in Casper and Cheyenne with satellite dishes on top. Cork and Stephen went inside and found themselves in a small waiting area, empty at the moment, with two inner doors. One door was marked JAIL, the other AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. There was a public contact window so dark Cork couldn’t see what was on the other side. He walked to the window and spoke into the small grate embedded in the glass.

  “My name is Cork O’Connor. This is my son, Stephen. We’re here to see Deputy Dewey Quinn.”

  “Need to see some ID,” came the voice from
the other side.

  Cork took out his driver’s license and dropped it in the trough beneath the glass, where a couple of fingers drew it in from the other side. A minute passed, then the license came back. “Have a seat,” the tired, disembodied voice said.

  They sat in a couple of uncomfortable black plastic chairs in the waiting area and didn’t talk. Cork kept eyeing his watch and couldn’t believe how slowly the minutes passed. All he could think of was how close they were to the search and how much precious time was being wasted.

  Finally the Authorized Personnel Only door opened, and a man in a deputy’s khaki uniform came out. He was of medium height, with dark brown hair in a crew cut. You could see in the deep tan of his face and the taut draw of the skin around his eyes and mouth that he spent a lot of time in the sun. Cork pegged Quinn at somewhere in his early thirties.

  “Dewey?”

  The deputy didn’t appear happy to see him. “I wish you’d have let me know you were coming, Cork.”

  “Would it have made a difference?”

  “I’d probably have tried to talk you out of it.” He turned his attention to Cork’s son. “Stephen?”

  “Yeah. I mean, yes, sir.”

  He shook hands with them both.

  “We’re not here to cause you problems, Dewey,” Cork said.

  “I know. Doesn’t mean you won’t.” He looked past them, out the front door, and said, “Oh, shit.”

  Cork glanced there, too, and saw a pretty blonde in jeans and an expensive-looking shearling coat sweeping toward the door from the parking lot.

  “Quick,” Quinn said, “follow me.”

  He hustled them to the door he’d come through, and they followed him inside.

  Cork found himself in familiar territory. The Owl Creek County Sheriff’s Department was not that different from the sheriff’s department in Minnesota. There was a large common area and, along the perimeter, doors that led to other rooms and offices. To the right was the contact desk, currently staffed by a stout-looking deputy with a buzz cut and his sleeves rolled back. Beyond him was the dispatch desk and radio. The smell of fresh coffee filled the place.

  “Who were you avoiding?” Cork asked.

  “Felicia Gray. TV newswoman out of Casper. We’re lucky because most of the media is up in Cody, where the Civil Air Patrol is coordinating the air search. Not as many reporters on this as there were at first. That standoff thing with the religious nut in Kansas seems to have grabbed everyone’s attention.”

  Cork understood. A few missing Indians wouldn’t be news for long.

  “But we’ve got Ms. Gray,” Quinn went on. “She’s the one who broke the story about the pilot’s drinking. She gets hold of you two, your nuts are deep-fried. She’ll harass the hell out of you, believe you me. Probably can’t avoid her forever, but you might as well delay it as long as possible. Bolger,” he called to the deputy at the contact desk, and said by way of introduction, “the O’Connors. Miss Kiss-My-Pulitzer questions you about these two, you don’t know anything, got that?”

  “Ten-four, Dewey.” He gave a two-fingered salute, then used the same gesture as a greeting to Cork and Stephen.

  “Come with me.” Quinn turned and walked briskly down a narrow hallway to a southwest-facing conference room where sunshine flooded through a long window. Beyond the glass, the streets of Hot Springs, lined with small houses and bared trees, ran toward the distant mountains. The conference table dead center was cluttered with maps and papers. A large topographic map hung on the wall opposite the window. It was studded with pins of various colors and lined with corridors crudely drawn with neon highlighters. There was a portable dispatch radio on a table against another wall. Several chairs were scattered about, all unoccupied at the moment.

  “Like I said, the air search is being coordinated up in Cody by the Wyoming wing of the Civil Air Patrol,” Quinn said. “Commander Nickleson of the Cody unit is in charge, and she’s being assisted by units out of Big Horn and Jackson. We’re in constant communication. This is where we’ve been handling things on our end.” He swept his hand across the room. “When I say ‘we,’ I mean ‘I.’ We’re a small department and we’re stretched to the max. Cork, I swear to you, we’re doing the best we can.”

  “Where’s the sheriff?”

  “Out on a domestic disturbance call. We still have our regular duties to see to. If he comes in, he probably won’t say much. Just give you a look that’d scare a grizzly bear. Have a seat and I’ll bring you up to date.”

  Cork took one of the chairs and Stephen another. Quinn walked to the map on the wall. He pointed to a black pin near the top of the map. The other pins and the highlighted corridors spread out south of it.

  “This is where radar contact was lost.” He moved his finger down a few inches. “This is where the snowmobilers reported hearing a plane fly low overhead. Now, normally a plane is going to follow certain flight lines, or vectors, dictated by the FAA. This is way off any vector. But if the plane was in trouble and if the snowmobilers were right, then the plane may have turned back and been trying to clear the mountains and find a flat place to land. Maybe the pilot hoped to make it to Casper. We just don’t know.”

  Cork leaned his arms on the table and studied the map, which showed all of Owl Creek County and portions of the adjacent counties as well. “Have you sent planes over the area to the east, between the mountains and Casper?”

  “Yes.” Quinn studied the map and shook his head. “We’ve checked most of the logical locations, but it’s a lot of country to cover and most of it’s deep in snow.”

  Cork waved toward the window. “But there’s not much snow here.”

  “Sometimes the mountain ranges—the Absarokas, the Bighorns, and the Wind River Range—divide the big storms and they end up sliding north or south of us. Creates a little microclimate here in the basin that’s often quite moderate in the winter.” He went back to the map. “We have nearly a dozen planes involved, CAP volunteers and a few pilots and aircraft on loan from the Air National Guard out of Cheyenne. And there’s Rude’s chopper. Several of the pilots are scanning the High Plains east of here, the rest are over the Absarokas. The mountains in the Washakie Wilderness area here”—he pointed toward one of the highlighted corridors—“are promising if you’re thinking a plane might try an emergency landing. There are some very high, relatively barren plateaus where it might have a chance of coming down safely. We’re looking particularly hard in that area. But there are two basic problems. One is the snow, of course. It’s fallen so deep at the high elevations that it’s covered everything.” He kept his eyes on the map and hesitated.

  “And the other problem?” Cork said.

  He shot out a frustrated breath. “We’re not at all certain that we’re searching in the right places, Cork. Except for the report of the snowmobilers, we have nothing to go on after the plane dropped off radar. The pilot could have proceeded northwest along the same vector, hoping to poke through the storm. Commander Nickleson has planes searching that vector. He could have swung north toward the airport at Cody or southeast toward the one at Riverton. CAP planes are flying those areas, too. See, we just don’t know.”

  Cork looked at the map and felt the weight on his shoulders grow heavier. “Even with a dozen planes it seems like a lot of area to cover.”

  “Believe me, it is,” Quinn said.

  “We saw a woman on CNN, the wife of one of the passengers, an Arapaho woman, I believe. She said her people were involved in the search.”

  “Ellyn Grant.” Quinn didn’t sound happy. “Yes, they’re involved. They have one plane in the air. It’s flying a search grid over this area. The Teton Wilderness.” Quinn pointed southwest of the black pin where radar contact had been lost. “It’s not a flight pattern that any pilot would logically follow, but she claims one of her people has had a vision of the plane coming down there. So that’s where they’re looking. She’s not happy that we’re concentrating on the Washakie and east.” He sat
down across from them at the table. “Okay, what did you have in mind?”

  “I’m not sure,” Cork said. He looked at Stephen. “We were kind of hoping we could go up in one of the planes.”

  “How about a helicopter instead?”

  “Sure,” Stephen jumped in.

  “Our chopper pilot, Jon Rude, had a mechanical problem this morning. Delayed him a little. He’s scheduled to take off in about an hour. I’ll contact him, ask him to take you along. If he’s willing. It’ll be his call. Fair enough?”

  “More than,” Cork said.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “We haven’t decided.”

  “The hotel that’s on the grounds of the hot springs is excellent. A fine little place that’s on the National Register of Historic Places. This time of year you should have no problem getting a room.”

  “Thanks, Dewey.”

  “Wait here. Let me give Jon a call.”

  He left the room.

  “What do you think?” Cork said to Stephen.

  “We’re here and that’s good. We’re going up in a helicopter and that’s good. And Deputy Quinn is really nice and that’s really good.”

  The deputy had been gone only a few minutes when another officer entered the room. He was tall and bulky, and he fixed Cork and Stephen with the eye of a hunter.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  Cork stood up to introduce himself. “Cork O’Connor. And this is my son, Stephen.”

  The man made no move toward them to shake hands. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for Deputy Quinn.”

  “He brought you back?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Briefed you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do what he says, clear?”

  “Crystal.”

  “All right then.” He turned and left.

  “Who was that?”

  “Sheriff Kosmo would be my guess.”

  “Not very talkative.”