Craig Johnson: As the crow flies

The crows and the eagle continued to flirt with them, pinwheeling and passing away from each other, circling, and using the rising thermals and gusts of wind for lift.

There was a rapid movement that pulled me from my trance-a little pygmy rattler swiveled from a small outcropping to my left-probably after the lizards. I picked up a small rock and tossed it toward him to let him know he should keep going away from us, and he obliged by disappearing.

I could see where Audrey had gone over the edge, and where she’d desperately attempted to hold back the inevitable with one hand-must have been the one that was missing fingernails. There was another area of disturbance in the rocks right in front of me, possibly where she had tripped or possibly where there could’ve been some sort of struggle.

I shot a look back at Chief Long and pointed to the edge. “Do you see that?”

She stood her ten feet back and made no effort to move. “What?”

“The marks in the rocks.”

She glanced over my shoulder. “Yeah.”

“You can see it better from over here.”

She adjusted the strap of the crime scene bag on her shoulder. “I can see fine.”

I took another series of shots, the rocks crumbling and shifting under my boots. Catching my balance, I took the few steps back to where she stood like a pole. “You okay?”

“Yes.” It was a quick answer and was meant to cut off any more conversation on the subject-the kind of response I’d learned to ignore.

“What’s up?”

She gave me the full kaleidoscope eyes, and I felt like I’d been kicked.

“I don’t like heights.”

I gazed back at the cliff and gestured toward it. “Well, it’s only natural, considering…”

“That’s not it.”

I tipped my hat back and studied her; she really was beautiful, and I could see the complexity of conflicting thoughts as they played across her face. I raised a hand toward her. “What then?”

She swallowed and retreated from the edge and my touch. “I… I have this urge to jump.”

Shrugging a shoulder, I stepped past her toward the main part of the grass-covered trail. “That’s normal, too. It can be categorized as a risk impulse; it’s the subjective aspect of our natures that makes rodeo riders strap themselves to Brahma bulls or skydivers jump out of perfectly good airplanes. Freud called that kind of risk-taking behavior the ‘death drive’ and associated it with gambling, sex and, well, a lot of other things.”

She stayed put and kept looking for signs in the passing clouds. “He connected everything with sex, didn’t he?”

“Pretty much.”

She turned and looked at me as her radio crackled. She lifted it out of her belt and looked at the road below. “Roger that, unit 1. We’re at the top, but we’ll be right down.”

I walked back toward the cliff and could see a white Yukon, a black Expedition, and a highway patrol cruiser. “Looks like they didn’t get lost after all.”

“Yeah.” She didn’t move after reholstering the two-way.

“You want to go down and meet them?”

She nodded and reset her jaw. “Are we through up here?”

“With the limited resources we have, yes.”

She still didn’t move, and I could tell there was a lot more she wanted to say. “Look…”

I waited, but she didn’t say anything else. Then she cleared her throat and coughed up a few words. “I’m… I’m new to this stuff, but I don’t feel like being railroaded by the… I mean, maybe I’m a lousy cop, but I’d like to find out on my own.” She stopped and turned to look at me. “Before we go down there, I’d like to make sure we’re on the same page.”

“Meaning?”

“I know more about this case than you or they do; I know the people involved, and I’m not buying it.” Her eyes came down to the edge of the cliff and studied the surface-fractured and dangerous. “It’s not that high.”

“Most suicides are from approximately five hundred feet-high enough to kill, but low enough to not last too long.” The wind gusted, and I was reminded that this was no longer a good place. “You’re not buying what?”

Lolo Long stood there like a sentinel. “There’s no way a woman walks out to the edge of a cliff like this with her child in her arms.”

Bingo.

I smiled and studied her in a professorial manner. “Maybe you’re not such a lousy cop after all.”

Her eyes flared and she looked directly at me, and I thought for a moment that she might try and throw me off the cliff. She took a step and turned to the right toward the direct path down, then called over her shoulder. “There’s another reason.”

I followed along behind her. “Reason for what?”

I barely heard the words as they drifted back with the breeze that continued to stiffen. “For jumping: just to have it all over with.”

The Feds were already setting up camp on the same ridge where we’d parked, and a blond-haired young man, who looked like one of the agents, and a highway patrolman were the first to reach us. The FBI agent, in a short-sleeved shirt, held out a hand to me.

“Bo Benth. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sheriff. I’ve heard and read a lot about you.”

I shook his hand and introduced Lolo. “This is Chief Long.” I went ahead and threw in the next, just so there wouldn’t be any confusion. “She’ll be the primary investigator.”

Agent Benth smiled as Long studied her ropers. He glanced up at the cliff. “We understood it was pretty cut and dry.”

“No, actually, it’s not. There’s a survivor, and a friend of mine and I actually witnessed the fall. Chief Long and I have already done the preliminary crime scene work, here and above.”

He looked at the gathering thunderclouds building over the cliffs. “Good, ’cause I’ve got a feeling we’re about to get pissed on.” They started past toward the deceased. “As to whose responsibility this is, you can take that up with the new agent in charge.”

“Where’s he?”

Benth threw a thumb over his shoulder and gave me a strange smirk. “Trying to get reception on his mobile back in the vehicle. You’re gonna love him.”

As we walked down the hill, Officer Long hooked her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans. “Great.”

“What?”

“A new AIC; just what I need.”

I nodded. “Did you know the last one?”

“Only over the phone; I was lucky.” She glanced back at Painted Warrior. “I guess my luck ran out.”

We passed a few more crime lab infantry, but not my good friend Bill McDermott, who must’ve been working another part of the state.

The white Fed Yukon, which was the AIC vehicle, was parked the farthest away, and a tall man with a goatee and wild-looking hair dressed in a pink shirt and blue blazer hung an arm over the sill of the open door. He held his cell phone at the other arm’s length and was looking at it with an expression of disgust, his sunglasses perched on his forehead.

Lolo Long glanced back at me. “I’ll handle it this time.”

The federal agent tossed the mobile into the backseat of the Yukon. “Is there any cell reception in fucking Montana?” He glanced at me. “I mean, I know there isn’t any in fucking Wyoming, but fucking Montana, too?”

He turned to study Chief Long. “Hey, things are looking up.”

Long ignored the remark, adjusted the crime scene pack strap on her shoulder, and held out her hand. “Lolo Long, Cheyenne tribal chief of police. I’m the primary investigator on this case.”

He kicked his face sideways and smirked with even more enthusiasm than had the younger agent-evidently it was a bureau thing. He looked at her hand but didn’t shake it. “You don’t say?”

She was showing remarkable patience and ignored that remark, too-but her voice was now carrying that edge. “I am intimate with the subjects involved and have information that may lead to an early arrest.”