Back of Beyond

He reined to a stop to take it all in. The glacier loomed above him like a dimly lit billboard. The bench was solid rock but puckered in places where shallow pools of water gathered from recent rains. Straight ahead of him, toward the face of the mountain, full-grown pine trees that had found purchase in cracks of the rock were knocked down. He could see where they’d been snapped off because the jagged trunks stood like a line of fence poles.

Snow was everywhere on the ground but it wasn’t cold, and he dismounted. His boots thumped on the solid rock, and he led his horse to the side where the snow was thickest, where it was caught in short grass.

He clicked on his headlamp and squatted down. The headlamp pointed wherever he looked, and he reached out to touch the snow.

Scraps of paper. Thousands of them. None bigger than a square inch. It was the same material that had been used to construct the bird’s nest. He grasped the largest scrap he could find and lifted it into the pool of light. A pair of hooded and wise eyes stared back from the scrap. He recognized the eyes, and said, “Ben Franklin.”

He stood, still holding the scrap between his thumb and forefinger. With his other hand, he reached up and twisted the lens of his headlamp to make the beam sharper.

At the far end of the bench, beyond the sheared-off trees, looking like the last glimpse of a whale sounding off the coast, the V-shaped tail of the airplane stuck straight up out of a crevice where it had fallen after crashing the winter before.

41

“What is that out there in that field?” Mitchell grumbled. “An elk? It’s almost gettin’ too dark to see.”

Cody looked up and squinted. Ahead of them, to the left of the trail in a moon-splashed clearing, was a horizontal dark form elevated above the grass. The form had been still as they approached but now it moved a few feet to the right. The figure was hard to make out because it was dark against a green-black wall of pine trees.

“Damn if it isn’t another stray horse,” Mitchell said. The string of docile horses was behind him. “But it looks like there’s something on it.”

Cody held his satellite phone up to his ear and was talking with Edna at dispatch in Helena. He was glad she was on duty and he’d ignored her pleas to tell her where he was and what had happened since she’d seen him last. When she took a breath, he said, “Edna, send a car up to Larry’s house in Marysville. I was talking to him ten minutes ago and I got cut off. I think something happened to him.”

She repeated, “Something happened to him? What?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve called back four times since and he won’t pick up. Edna, send whoever you can as fast as you can and warn them there may be someone else in Larry’s house. Tell them to nail the guy and hold him. Go!”

“Cody-”

“Go!” Cody barked, and punched off.

* * *

Mitchell and Cody rode up to the stray horse. Mitchell said, “Be calm, Hoyt. Don’t rush it or charge it or you’ll make it panic and run away. Don’t bark out Go! anymore.”

Cody hung slightly back and let Mitchell walk his gelding to the horse.

There was something on its back. Cody’s first thought was it was a roll of carpet or a set of slim panniers the way it hung over on both sides of the horse. He could see the horse didn’t have a halter or bridle.

“Easy now,” Mitchell cooed to the horse.

It was a bay and it took a few unsteady steps forward as Mitchell approached. Cody said, “He’s lame.”

“Yup,” Mitchell said, slipping off his mount and walking patiently toward the bay. With a movement as quick as it was gentle, he slipped a rope over the bay’s neck to keep it in place. The horse seemed docile but Cody could see white on the edges of its eyes. It wouldn’t take much to set it off.

“Oh, no,” Mitchell said with what sounded like genuine sadness. “We’ve got a woman this time.”

With that, he turned the bay and walked it a few steps into the moonlight.

Her body was draped over the back of the horse facedown. Long brown hair hung limply, obscuring her face and ears. Her hands had been tied under the belly of the bay to her boots to keep the body secure.

Cody gritted his teeth, and said, “Shit.”

“Look at this,” Mitchell said, pointing to a thin gash on the bay’s haunch that glistened with fresh blood. “They tied the body on and gave the horse a prod to get it running away.”

Mitchell looked up. “Do you know who she is?”

“I think so.”

“Want to make sure?”

Cody tried to swallow, but couldn’t. He nodded.

Mitchell gently grasped her hair with one hand and cupped her chin in the other and lifted her face up into the light.

Cody could see the gaping wound across her throat and he tasted bile in his mouth.

“Her name was Dakota Hill,” Cody said, his voice dry. “And we’re going to go find who killed her before there’s no one left.”

* * *

They approached the camp cautiously, even though Cody’s inclination was to storm it like Vikings. He could see a fire going, but only four people around it. Justin wasn’t one of them. Rachel Mina and Jed were gone as well.