“So why didn’t we know about him?” Stevens asked.
Windermere kept reading. “Looks like he never did any major time. Pled out, paroled, time served, good behavior. Guess he was going for quantity, not quality.”
“Until now.”
Windermere met his eyes. “Yeah,” she said. “Until now.”
Windermere figured they would track down Mila Scott somewhere on Route 93. Bundle her back to the diner for safekeeping, wait on those Flathead County deputies, and prepare a raid on Leland Hurley’s cabin. Figured they could take their time as soon as they found Mila. Figured she couldn’t have walked far, not in an hour or so, not in this snow.
But as Finley fired up her SUV, Windermere looked across at the diner again, spotted the waitress coming out the front doors, fast. Caught sight of the guy behind her, a young Hispanic man in chef’s whites, the dude looking agitated, pacing, hands in his hair.
Shelly hurried across to the SUV. “She isn’t on foot,” she told the agents.
Windermere stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your girl isn’t walking to Leland Hurley’s place.” Shelly exhaled. “She’s driving.”
“I thought you said she didn’t have a car.”
“She didn’t, but Ramon does.” Shelly gestured to the young man behind her. “A Dodge Ram pickup. I let your girl leave her backpack in the break room when she left. She must have swiped his keys while she was in there.”
Windermere felt a sudden numbness. Realized her confidence had been premature, realized the hard work was nowhere near finished.
“We have to get up there,” she told Stevens and Finley. “That girl’s heading into a death trap—if she isn’t already there.”
61
Mila kept her foot planted and the pickup’s engine roaring. It had been a while since she’d driven, six months at least, and she’d never driven a big truck like this, not in the snow. But the highway was mostly clear, and there wasn’t any traffic. She made Loggers’ Pass in good time, slowed down a shade and scanned the roadside for the creek.
She nearly missed it. The bridge was barely more than a culvert, and the creek itself was snowed over, a narrow gap in the endless forest, almost indistinguishable. But here was the second logging road, like the waitress said, and Mila braked the truck to as quick a stop as she dared, turned the wheel hard over, and steered off the highway.
The road had been used recently. Mila could see track marks in the snow, and she shadowed the tracks with the tires of the Dodge, or tried to; the thing steered like a barge. The road curved and climbed through the forest—more trees, a green so deep they were almost black, thousands of them in every direction. After a while, the road widened slightly, straightened out, and Mila saw the warning signs for the railroad crossing ahead. A junker train sat waiting on the siding track, two big engines and a mishmash of freight cars. Mila guided the truck over the crossing and back into the forest again.
After the tracks disappeared in her rearview mirror, the road began to climb at a quicker pace, the mountains rising on either side of the truck, funneling the creek into a narrow valley. The curves came sharper, the road swerving around forbidding rock faces, twisting and winding to gain elevation.
The truck began to slip in the snow. The back wheels spun and growled when Mila pushed the gas pedal, and she had to press carefully to avoid losing control. As the mountains closed in and the grade got steeper, though, the truck seemed to rebel against her efforts, slowing to a near stop if she didn’t give enough gas, swinging around nearly sideways if she gave too much.
It’s like it knows, Mila thought. It knows where we’re going, and it doesn’t want to get there.
She was sweating. She was nervous. She covered the miles slowly, gripped the steering wheel tight. She couldn’t even turn around if she wanted now; there wasn’t enough room. And anyway, she didn’t trust her ability to pull off the maneuver. She was all in. Somewhere at the end of the road, Leland Hurley waited with Ash’s knife. Mila pointed the truck up the mountains, kept her foot on the gas. Wondered if Hurley would know who she was when he saw her. Wondered if he would know why she’d come.
62
Leland Hurley was up the mountain a ways when he heard the engine in the distance. He maintained a trapline in the valley, augmenting Big Al’s meager grocery offerings with food he could catch—and kill—himself. Hurley wasn’t choosy. He ate whatever he found in his traps, from red fox to snowshoe hare to the occasional deer, and on one memorable occasion, a bobcat.
Some hunters caught wolves, but Hurley never had. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he did catch one. He felt a kinship with the animals, wild and cunning, pariahs on their native land. The gray wolf was a hated species in Montana, hunted by everyone from farmers and ranchers to sportsmen who wanted to shoot elk and couldn’t stand the competition. But the wolf was an intelligent predator; it thrived in the mountains despite civilization’s best efforts. Hurley figured the parallels were obvious.
There were no wolves in Hurley’s traps today, only a couple of rabbits and an unlucky red fox. But Hurley wasn’t thinking about catching wolves at the moment. He was listening to the sound of an engine, a diesel, chugging its way up the valley.
Hurley tensed instinctively. The truck was still miles away, far down the grade, but it would arrive at the cabin eventually. There was nowhere else for it to go. And that meant trouble.
Hurley could count on one hand the visitors he received to his patch of mountain in the span of a year. Strange faces just didn’t come out this far; anyone who knew this land existed knew, also, that it belonged to Leland Hurley. And that was usually enough to keep people away, Montanans being nothing if not respectful of one another’s desire for privacy.
At times, the odd warden would trek up the valley, though rarely in the winter. And somehow, Hurley knew this wasn’t a game warden making the climb.
Slinging his catch over his shoulder, he turned back down the trail. Hurried through the woods on snowshoes, the engine a constant now, chug-chug-chugging ever louder, breaking the stillness. Hurley walked through the forest until he reached his snowmobile, parked at the side of a trail he’d cut through the mountain, painstakingly, over the span of three summers. He’d wanted an escape route from the cabin, a back way through the mountains. The trail was nowhere near finished, but it provided him comfort all the same.
Hurley stowed his catch on the back of his snowmobile and stood in the clearing, listening to the engine approach. It would be a mile out now, maybe even less. The driver would beat him to the cabin quite easily. They could break in, if they wanted. They could search the cabin. They could find his box of souvenirs, if they knew where to look.
Hurley strapped on his snowshoes, left the snowmobile behind. Shouldered his rifle, an autoloading Browning Safari .30-06 with a sniper scope and a five-round capacity. He’d bought the weapon to hunt, but he’d always suspected he might need it for home defense someday as well. Maybe today was the day.
The visitor was close now, the engine note reverberating through the forest. Let him come, Hurley thought, setting out toward the cabin on foot. Let him look around, even.
Let him try to run, if he means to do me harm.
63
Mila crashed the truck a few hundred yards from the end of the road. She misjudged her speed heading into a switchback, hit the brakes too hard and locked the tires, lost her steering. Plowed straight ahead into a thick stand of pine trees, branches everywhere, rocky terrain and deep snow. She swore and shifted into reverse, trying to back the truck out. She couldn’t. The rear wheels spun, the truck rocked, the engine revved. But the big Dodge didn’t go anywhere. Damn it.
Mila punched the steering wheel. Looked around. She could see the logging road in the rearview, winding back down the mountain. She was near the summit, she could tell, had been watching the odometer and knew she’d
gone nearly ten miles into the forest. Knew Hurley’s camp had to be close.
Close or not, the Dodge was stuck, and Mila didn’t know enough about trucks to get it unstuck. She would have to climb the last couple switchbacks on foot.
At least you’ll surprise him. He won’t hear you coming.
Then she thought, Yeah, but what happens when you have to get out of here?
Never mind. She would steal Hurley’s truck. Or she would call for help. Or she would hike out. She would sort that out when she needed to. Until then, she needed to find evidence to tie Hurley to the murders.
Mila climbed out of the Dodge and dropped into the snow. Shoved the meat tenderizer in her pocket with her little folding knife, closed the cab door, and left the truck where she’d marooned it. Waded back to the logging road and resumed the climb.
The road was steep here. If Mila looked back, she could see the Trail Valley spread out before her, a vast, empty carpet of tiny green trees, the mountains rising on either side like guards. She couldn’t see Anchor Falls; it was hidden by the southern wall of the valley. Even the highway and the train tracks were invisible. She was completely alone out here. She pushed that thought from her mind.
The climb was intense. Her boots slipped in the snow, and she nearly fell, twice. She was panting, heart racing, and she stopped at another hairpin switchback to catch her breath. Looked up the road and saw the clearing.
The road had been zigzagging up the side of the mountain, north and south. Now it turned east, climbed over one last rise, and then leveled out. The lane between the trees widened. Slowly, the scene revealed itself. The trees fell back and the road petered out into a wide, empty space, the mountain falling back on three sides. Directly ahead of Mila, on the far side of the clearing, the forest closed in again and the mountain continued to rise, high into the clouds. But Mila was finished climbing. She didn’t need to go higher. Because at the edge of the clearing, nestled into the trees, was a cabin.
It was small and simple, made of thick logs, rough-hewn. A tidy porch and a couple of picture windows that looked out on the clearing and the valley beyond. Mila stuck close to the trees, hid herself in the shadows. Surveyed the house, the outbuildings behind.
The windows were dark. Nothing moved. There weren’t any vehicles parked where she could see, though the clearing was crisscrossed with tire tracks and some of them led around behind the cabin.
Mila watched the cabin until she was sure nobody had seen her. Then she crept across the clearing, as stealthily as she could, toward the front porch.
64
Finley hauled ass up Route 93. Windermere rode shotgun, relaying instructions to Mathers through her cell phone.
“I need you in touch with the Bureau’s resident agency in Kalispell,” she told her boyfriend. “Get every available agent up to Anchor Falls, now. Tactical teams, a helicopter if they have one. This is a serial killer and his potential next victim. You call them and you tell them to move.”
She listened. Heard nothing. Took her phone from her ear and checked the screen. Shit. Call dropped. No freaking service.
“For God’s sake, partner,” she said, twisting in her seat toward Stevens. “We might as well be on the dark side of the moon.”
Stevens gave her a look of commiseration, not that his sympathy did any good. There was no telling how much Mathers had heard, no way to know if Kalispell would get the message. The Bureau office was thirty miles south; even if Mathers did manage to muster the troops, the backup would need time to get to the scene.
“We need more men,” Windermere told Finley, who was swinging her SUV off the highway and onto the rough surface of the Trail Valley logging road. “I don’t care who you have to call, but we need everybody. And they’d all better bring guns.”
Finley reached down with her right hand, unhooked her radio. Handed it to Windermere. “You can put out a call, but I can’t guarantee you’ll reach anyone,” she said. “Unless you want me to slow down and wait until we can muster a raiding party.”
“No chance.” Windermere watched the forest fly by, the truck bumping and jostling over uneven terrain. “We can’t afford to waste time.”
“Then I hate to say it, but it might be just us,” Finley told her. “Until those Flathead deputies get up here, anyway.” Then she exhaled, eyes up the road. “Although maybe they’ll catch up to us after all.”
Windermere felt the truck slowing. “What are you doing? Why are we stopping?”
“Don’t have a choice,” Finley said, gesturing out through the windshield. “I can’t exactly drive this rig through a train.”
Windermere followed her eyes. Muttered a curse under her breath, then another, then a whole string of them. They’d reached the Northwestern main line, the end of the passing siding where Leland Hurley would have climbed off his train after attacking Pam Moody, and wouldn’t you know it, there was a train at the crossing, a long, slow string of coal cars, lumbering along at no more than ten miles per hour.
Windermere peered up the track. Saw the engines in the distance, disappearing around a corner. Looked the other way and saw an endless stretch of coal cars emerging from the trees.
“Hell,” Stevens said. “We could be here a while. These coal trains tend to be about a hundred cars long.”
Windermere watched the train slowly pass. Pictured Mila Scott on the other side, up the mountain somewhere, driving straight into Leland Hurley’s hands.
“Come on, train,” she said, drumming her fingers on the dash. “Some of us have places to be.”
65
The sound of the engine was gone.
Hurley had listened to it grow louder as he trekked through the forest, heard the big diesel rev higher as it struggled to mount the grade. The driver was inexperienced, he could tell, attacked the mountain without rhythm, as if he wasn’t sure how much power he needed to make the climb. The engine roared, then diminished, then roared again. Hurley wondered how the driver had made it this far.
Then the engine revved three or four times, in quick succession, before it went silent. Hurley stopped walking, stood still on his snowshoes. Listened for any sound through the trees.
He heard nothing. He might have heard a door close, but he couldn’t be sure. Regardless, the truck had stopped. The engine had cut out. The driver was close.
Hurley hurried to meet him.
66
The cabin was unlocked.
Mila pushed the door open slowly. The air was quiet up here, eerily so. It was even more muted inside.
The cabin was dark. The light from the picture windows seemed to die on the glass. The rest of the little building was all shadows and hanging dust. It was a single room, a bed and a table and a kitchen in the corner. A heavy rug by the bed, worn, its colors faded. The cabin was empty.
Leland Hurley wasn’t here, but Mila felt his presence nonetheless, as if he remained in the air and the dust particles, the clothes in the wardrobe and the covers on the bed. He was here, all around her, an evil so palpable that Mila looked back into the clearing to make sure he wasn’t behind her.
But he wasn’t there. The clearing was empty, and so was the cabin. Mila crept inside, closed the door softly behind her. She relaxed her grip on the meat tenderizer. Set about searching the place.
She hoped to find Ash’s knife. That was her first objective, even if she suspected that Hurley still had it with him, on his belt. But Ash’s knife wouldn’t prove that Hurley had killed anyone; at best, it was circumstantial evidence. Mila knew she needed to find something else, something better.
She started with the wardrobe by the bed. Pulled open both doors and rifled through the shirts and sweaters that hung within. Found nothing incriminating, nothing but a man’s musty old clothes.
Nor was he hiding anything in the kitchen, though Mila did swipe a carving knife from the block on the counter. The bl
ade was long and wicked sharp, much scarier than her little pocketknife. She could do damage with this blade if she needed to. She really, really hoped she wouldn’t need to.
There was nothing unusual in the cabin. Nothing at all, that Mila could find. The man was an outdoorsman. He had heavy winter clothes, boots and coats and army surplus sweaters and hats. He had four or five books, nonfiction. Survival techniques, mountain guides. Dry reading, education, not entertainment. He didn’t even have any pictures on his walls.
Hurley didn’t have any tools, either, not even an axe, though there was a woodstove along the far wall. The man lived out here in the wilderness; he would have to be self-sufficient. So where was the rest of his stuff?
Through the kitchen window at the back of the cabin, Mila could see an outhouse, Hurley’s Suburban, and another building in the trees. A storage shed, it looked like. Hurley would keep his equipment in there, the electric generator. Maybe that’s where she would find evidence.
Mila crossed from the kitchen area toward the front door, already buttoning her coat again. As she passed the bed, her path took her over the rug on the floor, and as she stepped in the center, she felt something give. Not a lot, just slightly, but enough that she noticed. Enough that she started to think.
Mila stepped off of the rug. Pulled it away from the bed. Saw nothing but rough wood floorboards, same as the rest of the cabin. She walked to about the middle again. Stepped down and felt a board move.
One of the floorboards was loose. A small one, only a couple feet long. Mila bent over and pried it up from the floor. Looked in at the darkness below and knew she’d found what she’d been looking for.
The Forgotten Girls Page 18
