“You got his message, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah.”
“ ’Nuff said.”
A few more minutes, then Deputy Quinn returned. “Okay, we’re all set. We’ll meet Jon at the airfield in fifteen minutes. Did you see Sheriff Kosmo?”
“He stopped in to have a word,” Cork said.
“One word, period,” Stephen added.
Quinn laughed. “If Jim likes you, Stephen, you sometimes get two. All set?”
“Yes.” Stephen leaped to his feet.
“Then let’s go.”
As they passed the contact desk, Quinn said to the deputy there, “Kiss-My-Pulitzer still around, Bolger?”
“Nope. I stonewalled her and she split.”
“I’m ten-seven for the next hour, unless something new develops with the air search.”
“I copy. Good luck, O’Connors,” Bolger said.
“Thanks,” Stephen threw back and gave him a wave.
Outside, the mountains to the west were blue-white under an azure sky. “The airfield’s up there,” Quinn said, pointing toward a massive ridge rising beyond the outskirts of Hot Springs in the direction of the mountains. “Just follow me.”
He got into a departmental TrailBlazer. Cork and Stephen hurried to their Wrangler and followed the deputy out of the lot. They took a street called Carson that cut due west before winding its way up the ridge Quinn had indicated. They passed the town’s water tower and what looked like a small, abandoned mining operation. At the crest of the ridge, the road divided. A sign pointed to the right and read, OWL CREEK GOLF COURSE—PUBLIC WELCOME. Quinn took the left fork, and Cork spotted the airfield immediately, a fenced area with several hangars and a couple of other small buildings beside a single runway. The gate was open, and they rolled through. Cork followed the TrailBlazer to the far side of one of the hangars, where they found the chopper and its pilot waiting.
Jon Rude’s face was all about friendliness, from the laugh lines and the big smile to the wry glint of his eyes. He was Cork’s height, just under six feet, and had a handshake that was firm without over-doing it.
“Thanks for letting us ride along,” Cork said.
“No problem. Ever been in a chopper before?”
“A few occasions doing S and R back in Minnesota.”
“That’s right,” Rude said. “Dewey told me you were in law enforcement for a while. What about you, Stephen?”
“I never have.”
“You do okay on roller coasters?”
“Heck, yes.”
“Then you’ll be fine. We’d best be off. Got a lot of territory to cover.” He addressed Quinn. “Any word from the others?”
“Nothing new.”
“Okay, then. Stephen, you want to ride shotgun?”
“Sure.”
“You’ll need eagle eyes.”
“I got ’em.”
“Hop aboard and let’s see what we can see.”
TEN
Day Four, Missing 76 Hours
That’s my place down there,” Rude said. He banked the chopper in order for Cork and Stephen to have a better view.
They were flying low over a flat valley that was threaded down the middle by a stream lined with cottonwoods. The floor of the valley was covered with irrigated fields, mostly alfalfa. Rude’s place consisted of a small ranch house, a barn, a corral, and a few outbuildings. From the air, it looked nice and neat. The nearest neighbor was a good half mile distant.
“I call her the Chopping R.” Rude grinned.
“Do you ranch?” Cork spoke into the microphone attached to the flight helmet he wore. Rude had given flight helmets to both him and Stephen. Without them, the noise inside the cabin would have made verbal communication almost impossible.
“Yeah, but I can’t make a living at it. Truth is, around here it’s hard to make a decent living at much of anything, so I do just about everything. In winter, I fly skiers who like the extreme stuff up to remote slopes. In fall, I fly hunters. In summer, I do some crop dusting. Most of the rest of the time I contract out my services to BHPC.”
“BHPC?”
“Big Horn Power Co-op. I fly their power lines doing inspection or giving a hand with repairs when they need me. My wife’s taking classes down in Riverton to be a teacher. Soon as she’s finished and gets herself a position at a school, things’ll ease up a lot. I’ll be able to spend more time with the ranch.”
“Kids?” Cork asked.
“One. Gorgeous girl. Anna Marie. Six.”
They left the valley, and the land rapidly turned harsh, almost desertlike. The grass was replaced by sand and rock and low-growing cactus and sage. The dusting of snow gave the place the alkaline look of an area where nothing could live. Wide, empty flats lay between ridges of barren stone, and as far as Cork could see in every direction there was no sign of human habitation.
“North section of the Owl Creek Reservation,” Rude said. “Big place, not an acre of it worth shit. Maybe gas or oil underneath, nobody knows. We won’t let anybody go looking.”
“We? Are you Arapaho?”
“On my mother’s side. German on my father’s. Fifty-fifty.”
The mountains loomed ahead, great, hoary giants whose crowns touched the sky. This close they were absolutely forbidding, and Cork felt his hopes take a bitter slide.
The chopper began to bounce and to be shoved right and left.
“Lot of downdrafts and crosscurrents as we head into the mountains,” Rude said. “Can be tricky. You guys okay?”
“Yeah,” Stephen said.
Over his shoulder Rude said something to Cork, but all Cork picked up on the headgear inside his flight helmet was static. He said, “I’m not reading you, Jon.”
Rude made a sign for Cork to whack the side of his flight helmet. When Cork did, he could hear Rude again.
“Sorry,” Rude said. “I’ve been meaning to get that looked at. In the meantime, if you can’t hear, just give her a good smack.” He pointed toward a massive formation in the distance, three peaks joined by a ridge that created a wall across the wilderness. “Up there, that’s Heaven’s Keep. Found a plane in that area yesterday. We thought at first maybe it was the one your wife was on. Turned out to be an old crash site.”
Stephen said, “Why do they call it Heaven’s Keep?”
“Know what a keep is?”
“No.”
“The strongest part of a castle, the part that’s hardest for an enemy to take. Looks pretty formidable, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. But what about the heaven part?”
“I always figured it’s because it’s so high that it feels connected to heaven. That’s my explanation anyway. Now the Arapaho take a whole different approach. They call it Honoocooniinit. Basically means they consider it the devil.”
Below them the land was covered with evergreens and seemed to have become a turbulent sea full of deep plunges and sudden rises that crested in knife-edged ridges of rock. They flew over meadows too small for a plane to land safely where the snow lay drifted deep enough to bury a house. They followed canyons whose rugged walls would smash a plane into small pieces. Over it all loomed Heaven’s Keep, casting a long, dark shadow across the ice-white landscape.
“I’m heading toward the high plateaus just east of Heaven’s Keep,” Rude explained. “There are a few flat crowns up there above the tree line. It’s the most likely place for a plane with engine trouble to attempt a landing. It’s been gone over before, but I’m thinking that something buried in snow might be easy to miss. I’m taking my chopper in for a closer look.”
“What about the black box?” Stephen said.
“The flight recorder? Small charter planes aren’t required to carry them. Or a cockpit voice recorder either. And even if they had one, it wouldn’t be much help in the search, Stephen. What we’ve been trying to get is a signal from the ELT. That’s an emergency locator transmitter. In the event of a plane crash, the ELT is designed to send a signal that satellites can pic
k up and can be used to triangulate a position.”
“Have you got a signal?” Stephen asked eagerly.
“No. And there are two main possibilities, one good, one not so good.”
“Good news, bad news?” Cork said. “How about the bad news first.”
“That would be that the ELT was destroyed by impact forces.”
“The good news?”
“The plane landed softly enough that the ELT was never activated. That would mean there’s an excellent chance of survivors. That’s what we’re counting on, right?” He gave Stephen a thumbs-up and got one in return.
They climbed rapidly, and Cork’s stomach rolled at the chopper’s pitch. Then Rude leveled out and they were flying over a treeless snowfield.
“If the pilot had any knowledge of the area, he might’ve tried an emergency landing here,” Rude said. “It’s not ideal, but it’s better than most of the other options.”
They flew a hundred feet above the snow, crisscrossing the field, which was several hundred yards wide and nearly a mile long. There were mounds here and there that stood out above the level of the rest of the snow.
“Boulders,” Rude said. “But they’re easier to avoid than a forest full of trees.”
After half an hour, they’d found no sign of the plane and Rude banked north and east, heading toward the next plateau. He spoke over his shoulder again, and again Cork didn’t pick up a clear transmission. He thumped the side of his helmet without effect, then took the helmet off to bang it harder. The cockpit noise was deafening. He gave the helmet another whack, put it back on, and heard Rude clearly this time.
“Ham sandwiches in the basket back there, if you’re hungry,” Rude said. “My wife made them. Plenty to go around. Lemonade, too.”
Cork and Stephen hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Cork found the basket and distributed the sandwiches. There was only the one thermos cup for the lemonade, but Rude said hell, he didn’t mind drinking from the same trough.
They spent the afternoon flying over half a dozen sites, all above the tree line, all possibilities for an emergency landing though none was ideal, and all without a sign of the plane. When he realized fully the enormous difficulty of the situation, the lift of spirit Cork had felt at being involved in the search was replaced by disappointment. He saw the same dismal look gradually filling Stephen’s face.
The sun was being eaten by the western Absarokas when Rude said it was time to turn back. It would be dark soon. As the chopper curled toward Hot Springs, he said, “What I don’t understand is why the pilot, if he was having mechanical difficulty, didn’t turn north toward Cody or south toward Riverton. Both have airfields where he could easily have landed. Why try for Casper? I mean, assuming what those snowmobilers heard was your wife’s plane.”
“Maybe they were wrong,” Cork said. “Maybe the pilot did try for one of those airfields.”
Rude shrugged. “We’ve gone over both those corridors. Nothing. Hell, if he’d only been able to make radio contact, at least we’d have some idea where to concentrate our search. As it is, we’re kind of shotgunning it. Scattered, you know.” He glanced at Stephen and added heartily, “But we’re going to keep looking until we’ve covered every reasonable acre.”
The mountains became deep blue in the twilight, and the canyons between were like dark, poisoned veins. Though the sun had dropped below the rest of the range, it hadn’t yet set on Heaven’s Keep, which towered above everything else. Its walls burned with the angry red of sunset, and it looked more like the gate to hell than anything to do with heaven.
As they flew back over the reservation, the land was black and empty as far as the eye could see. Rude, who seemed to read Cork’s thoughts, said, “The rez covers thirty-four hundred square miles, an area the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. The number of people who live here could just about squeeze into a double-decker bus. It’s empty, uninviting country. But to the Arapaho it’s home and it’s sacred.”
A short while later, Rude set the chopper down on the landing strip at the Hot Springs airfield.
“You two have dinner plans?” he asked. “My wife’s Italian. She makes pasta like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Thanks,” Cork said, “but we’ve got to get ourselves into a hotel.”
“Got one in mind?”
“Dewey Quinn recommended the hotel on the grounds of the hot springs.”
“A good choice. When you’re ready to eat, try the casino. Good food, good prices. Just a mile or so south on Highway 27. Can’t miss it.” He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and looked west, where darkness had swallowed the mountains. “Look, there’s a lot of territory still to be covered. We’ll give it another go tomorrow and every day after that until we find them.”
“Can we go with you again?” Stephen asked. Cork was amazed at the hope still evident in his son’s voice.
“Absolutely. I’ll make sure Dewey knows that. Let’s rendezvous here at oh-seven hundred hours.”
“Seven o’clock,” Stephen said.
“Right you are. I’ll take a look at that helmet, Cork, but I won’t promise anything.”
“Thanks, Jon.” Cork shook the man’s hand gratefully.
Rude set about securing his chopper. Cork and Stephen got into their Wrangler and headed toward town.
ELEVEN
Day Four, Missing 82 Hours
The Excelsior Hotel was a sturdy little two-story structure of brick with a lovely courtyard whose centerpiece was a small octagonal pool fed by the hot springs. The night was turning cold, and a thin cloud of vapor that smelled faintly of sulfur drifted up from the pool, giving the courtyard a mystical appearance.
The woman at the front desk had passed along to Cork a message from Dewey Quinn, which was to call him at the sheriff’s department. After they’d carried up their luggage, Cork used the room phone.
“How’re you doing?” Quinn asked.
“Okay. We’d be a lot better if we’d located my wife.”
“I wish I had something good to report from the other search planes.” He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Jon told me you’re going out with him again tomorrow. You okay with that? I can ask one of the other pilots, if you’d like.”
“We’re fine with Jon as long as he’ll have us. You work long hours,” Cork said.
“I’m just about to call it, get myself something to eat.”
“Dewey, thanks for everything.”
“Just wish I could do more. Good night, Cork.”
Next he called home and gave Rose a rundown of the first day in Wyoming. Stephen was in the room, and Cork wasn’t as candid as he might otherwise have been. “There are lots of good people working hard out here to find the plane,” he told Rose. “Also, there’s a thing called an ELT that sends a signal if the plane has crashed. Nobody’s picked up that signal. There’s still plenty of reason to believe we’ll find Jo.”
He didn’t mention that the snowdrifts were deep enough to bury a school, that the canyon walls could rip off wings and pulverize a fuselage, or that they had no idea if they were even looking in the right places.
“I’ll keep praying,” Rose said.
“And I’ll keep you posted,” Cork promised.
“Are they okay?” Stephen asked after his father put the cell phone away.
“They’re fine. Worried, but fine.”
“Worried?” Stephen said. “I remember when worried meant I was afraid you’d burn the meat loaf.”
It wasn’t really funny, but Stephen laughed, and Cork laughed, too, and he realized not only how taut their nerves had been drawn but how well, all things considered, Stephen was handling this. He threw his arm around his son’s shoulders. “Let’s go get a steak,” he said. “I’m famished.”
Half a mile outside of town, they passed a sign that told them they’d just entered the Owl Creek Reservation, home of the Owl Creek Band of Arapaho.
The Blue Sky Casino was, as Rude had said, o
n the highway, just about a mile south of Hot Springs. Compared to the Chippewa Grand Casino back in Minnesota, it was a modest-size establishment set in a kind of strip mall with an Old West façade—wooden sidewalk, wood overhang supported by wood uprights, hitching post railing. The BP gas station at the edge of the highway looked modern and jarringly anachronistic, but there was probably no way to disguise a gas pump. The Antelope Grill was attached to the casino but had its own entrance off the wooden sidewalk. The parking lot was only a quarter full.
The place smelled of meat on a grill, and the décor would have pleased Buffalo Bill. It was all about hunting, with trophy heads of deer and elk and antelope mounted above the booths, and a buffalo hide as big as the back end of a semi tacked to a wall near the entrance. The music of the casino slots funneled into the restaurant through the door that connected the two establishments. Cork and Stephen were seated near the bar and handed large menus. Cork asked if they had Leinenkugel’s, and when he was told they didn’t he requested a Fat Tire. Stephen asked for a Coke. They sat at the table, quiet and exhausted. Their drinks came and they ordered. Cork got the prime rib, Stephen a cheeseburger and fries.
“Feels like forever ago that we left Aurora,” Stephen said.
“To me, too.”
“I hope . . . ,” Stephen began.
“What?”
Stephen seemed to be searching for the right words. “I hope we find Mom. I thought that once we got here it was going to be easy. But today . . .” He looked away and didn’t finish.
“Still a lot of ground to cover, buddy. She’s out there somewhere. We’re going to keep looking till we find her.”
“Promise?”
Now it was Cork’s turn to look away. His eyes settled on the huge buffalo hide splayed on the wall. It seemed to him that what was left of the animal was trying to climb out of that place.
“Promise?” Stephen pressed.
Cork gazed into his son’s dark, expectant eyes. “Promise,” he said. Stephen sat back, satisfied. “Look!” He pointed toward the bar, and Cork followed his gesture. “It’s Deputy Quinn.”
Sure enough, Dewey Quinn had just walked into the Antelope Grill. He was accompanied by a young blond woman, a real looker, dressed to kill. He’d changed into civilian clothes and was wearing creased blue jeans and a white sweater with a thick turtleneck. They walked to the bar. The woman sat on a stool, leaned toward the bartender, and said something that made him laugh. Quinn laughed, too.
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