Craig Johnson - As the crow flies

The devil must be beating his wife.

I continued photographing.

The fingernails on her left hand were bloody and bent back, some even missing, but other than this and the indications of abuse, she appeared to have been a normal, healthy young woman. I noticed that there was even a small purse still trapped under her arm as I covered her with the plastic sheet from the case.

I was tempted to move her and go through the purse, but I assumed the Montana authorities would just as soon do it themselves, making sure to use special care not to disturb any trace evidence. It seemed odd that she had decided to walk the air with her child. I thought that, at that horrible moment when I’d seen her fall, her only concern had been something in her arms. I finished up and put the camera away. My work would be preliminary in comparison to the crime lab that would soon be here from either Hardin or Billings.

Besides, I had other resources.

I walked down the hill to the creek and found Chief Long tossing small pebbles into a pool a little downstream. A small, brown trout had risen from the depths but then disappeared under my shadow. “How you doing, troop?”

She turned, sheltering her eyes with a hand, and looked at me. “What’d you just call me?”

I crouched down beside her and watched the lazy water coat the rocks so that she wouldn’t be self-conscious about her red-ringed and still-damp eyes. “Troop. It’s a term my old boss used to use on me when I was starting out; I use it with my deputies.”

“Well, don’t use it with me.” She took a breath and tossed another pebble; this time the fish ignored it.

“We’re pretty much done down here.”

She looked at a simple Luminox wristwatch, the kind that Spec Ops used. “What the hell is taking them so long?”

I raised my eyes and looked at what now seemed desolate surroundings; as unlikely as it was that Cady would have gone for this site before, it was surely out of the question now. “Hopefully they didn’t get lost.”

“Yeah.”

“Looks like it’s still going to rain.” I studied her, judging whether now was a good time and figuring the basics wouldn’t hurt. “What’s her name?”

She didn’t move, and her voice might as well have been coming from the trees or the cliffs above. “Audrey Plain Feather; she was half Crow.”

Audrey. “And the child’s name-the boy?”

“Adrian.”

I nodded to myself and looked up the slope; there was a more manageable route to the west, an area where the ridge fell back-it would be easier to make the grade, especially at an angle. “I’m going up.”

“I’ll go with you.”

I placed a hand on her shoulder. “Somebody’s going to have to stay here and wait for the crime scene folks.”

She shrugged off my hand and stood, partially pulling the radio from her belt. “I’ve got this, and I figure they’ll be able to get close on their own. I can spot them on the main road easier from up on the ridge anyway.”

“Well then, can you do me a favor?”

“Depends.”

I sighed. “It’s going to take me a lot longer to get up this cliff than you, so I want a head start.” I smiled, but she didn’t smile back. “On the next ridge over there and toward the saddle?” I pointed to the area across the creek. “There’s another camera sitting in the grass where Henry and I dropped it when we saw Audrey fall; would you mind going to get it and bringing it with you or putting it in your vehicle?”

She took a second to respond. “All right.”

I looked up at the gathering gloom and then called after her. “You’re sure you want to go up there?”

“Yes.” She turned back and opened an ear stem of her sunglasses with her teeth, then carefully navigated them onto her face. “Besides, you’re still under arrest. Now get moving-I don’t want to have to wait for you.”

She started up the hill, her broad back and strong legs aiding her climb effortlessly.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The grade was indeed easier up to the right, and there was a gully to the left with trees in it to lean against; the older you get the more important things like that become.

The ground was soft where the earth had sloughed from the ridge above, and after a while I gathered a rhythm that seemed familiar and similar to the one that had carried me up Cloud Peak only two months ago. The thought of that adventure brought a chill, even though the ambient temperature lingered around ninety.

I removed my hat and took a breather about three-quarters of the way up. From this height I could see Lonnie’s crows harassing an eagle that was lazily circling in patterns along the valley. The crows probably had nests nearby and were protecting their young, or just getting their exercise before the thunderheads massed and we had a real frog strangler.

I inhaled and started up again still using the smaller trees as walking sticks, finally getting to the depression at the ridge. When I did, I looked to the right and could see Lolo Long making mincemeat of the more difficult direct route.

I would’ve yelled to her, but I didn’t have the breath.

There was a two-track dirt road that stretched in both directions just a little bit back from the precipice, so I turned right and worked my way along the ridge. After a few minutes, I noticed that the grass was flat and there were tread marks in the dirt; I stopped and kneeled down to look-someone had driven up here and back out and not long ago. My eyes followed the tracks where the vehicle had parked, made a two-point turn, and then gone out the way it had come. The depressions were deeper where the vehicle had sat for a period of time-there were even two small oil leaks with matching soot marks from where what I was assuming was a truck had been parked.

After a couple of hundred yards the grade leveled and the rounded surface of the rock fell away to the cliffs-a dangerous place. Lolo Long, looking out into the distance with her hands on her hips, stood about ten feet from the edge.

“Hey, Chief.”

“What?”

“Somebody drove a four-wheel-drive up here and not too long ago. There are two patches of differential fluid, and the tires are wide and the duel exhausts are set close-I’d say a Jeep, something like that.”

She turned to look at me. “How do you know where the exhaust was?”

I pointed. “The two soot marks from where it was restarted.” I stood. “They’re going to need a ring job before too long.” Something further back on the trail caught my eye, and I walked over to where it was lodged among the taller stalks of Johnson grass; it was a plastic bag, the kind you find at any grocery or convenience store. “Did she have a vehicle like that?”

Her lips tightened into a line, and the muscles in her jaw worked. “No, the guy she was shacking up with, Adrian’s father, does.”

I pulled the blue plastic sack from the weeds. It was full of crushed beer cans, a couple of empty chip bags, and some candy wrappers. There was a receipt in the bottom of the bag, soggy from the remnants draining from the containers.

I pulled the receipt out and held it up. Across the top were the words WHITE BUFFALO SINCLAIR and listed below were the items that were in the used bag, with the exception of the beer and a pack of cigarettes, as well as thirty-two dollars’ worth of regular gasoline; the date was today at 11:22 A.M.

Chief Long approached, and I handed the sack to her, along with the receipt; she read it, withdrew a couple of evidence bags, and carefully placed the slip of paper inside one, the blue plastic into the other.

I took out the camera and began taking pictures again, sucked in a breath, and trudged along to the precipice.

The surface was a loose scrabble of sedentary shale that looked like shattered terra-cotta in a wild cathedral floor; the footing was unstable, and a few lizards scrambled like ball bearings over the hard surface. I moved toward the edge and kneeled down to look at the disturbed rock shelves at the point where the woman had fallen. The wind picked up a little, nudging me from behind, as I allowed my eyes to drift toward the clouds again, some of them trailing low enough to almost reach out and touch.