Neil McMahon - Dead Silver

"So what about the sheriff?" she said.

"It's kind of a good news-bad news situation. Gary doesn't think you should stay here alone anymore."

Her eyes changed and her mouth opened. "Are you serious?"

"He doesn't want you to be scared. Just careful."

"I'll only be here two more days."

"I can just about hear him say, 'Humor an old cop.' I'd feel better, too, Renee."

Her mouth twitched. "I hope that's the bad news."

"It's both. The good is, he agrees there's a chance your father wasn't guilty, and the real guy's still out there."

She stayed quiet for a moment, absorbing that-and probably thinking again about how she'd shown off the earring.

"I have another favor to ask you," she said. "I guess I should say, 'yet another.'"

"For this kind of whiskey, I'm all yours."

"I'd like to see the place where-this is hard to say. Where Astrid was killed. Her cabin. I've never been there, never wanted to go. But now I feel like I have to."

That idea hadn't even occurred to me. But I was curious, too. "Sure, that's no problem," I said. "I could take you now, if you know where it is."

"I don't, dammit. I was hoping you would."

I shook my head. "Just the general area."

"Well, no big deal," she said. "I'll try to find out tomorrow." She smiled, but I could tell she was disappointed.

"Let me try Madbird," I said. "He just might have a line on it." He possessed an astonishing amount of that kind of information, and if he didn't know something, he usually knew somebody who did.

I went into the house and called him. He said he'd never been there, either, but his girlfriend, Hannah, had worked in that area.

"She just come home, hang on." Half a minute later, he was back. "She ain't ever seen the cabin; it's in from the road. But she's driven by there plenty of times. When you want to go?"

"Actually, now would be good."

"Well, hell, let's call it a road trip," Madbird said. "We'll come by and get you."

Madbird and Hannah arrived about half an hour later in Hannah's ride, a late 1980s Dodge Ram that she'd bought used through her job. A lot of government rigs got beaten to death in the backcountry, but this one had stayed in good condition. She'd had it painted a deep metal-flake blue and redone the interior herself. It was a sharp ride, and held the four of us comfortably.

Like Darcy, Hannah was a Blackfeet reservation girl, but a contrast to Darcy's brassiness and high visibility-petite, beautiful in a way that bypassed pretty, and possessing a sultriness the more powerful because it was contained. She was quiet but very tough-the proof of that being that she held her own with Madbird-and very smart. She'd made her way in the white world, going to college at Montana State, then advancing up the ranks in the Forest Service.

It was just about an hour's drive to the Phosphor County line, and Hannah said Astrid's property wasn't far from there. The landscape started feeling lonelier and wilder soon after we left Helena, and as the evening deepened, so did the sense of being at a dreamlike remove from everyday time and space. The road was narrow but mostly bare except for occasional sunless curves where patches of black ice lurked. Madbird was driving and spotting them was second nature to him, but they racked up a fair number of victims every year, usually unwary folks in SUVs who thought that going into four-wheel drive meant they were flying on a magic carpet.

"Any word from Darcy?" I asked.

"Nah, she'll still be pouting," Madbird said. "We figure just leave her alone for now. But that Fraker. You know what you told me about him being on that island and a woman drowned?"

Renee gave me a curious glance. I hadn't mentioned any of this to her.

"Yeah?" I said.

"Hannah started asking around about him. Tell them, baby."

Working in local government circles, Hannah was privy to a lot of gossip-a much richer source of information than the Internet.

"People say he's always played around on his wife," she said. "It's an open secret. A couple of the women ended up afraid of him. I guess he can be a mean drunk."

"Yeah, that fancy gin will do that to you," Madbird said with a humorless grin.

I explained the circumstances quickly to Renee, and then the conversation moved on. But Hannah's news left an unsavory little residue.

The last daylight was fading as we got to the town of Phosphor-with several hundred residents, the metropolis of a large area that was mostly rugged timberland. There probably weren't more than a couple thousand people in all of Phosphor County. The far-apart paved highways were narrow two-laners like the one we were on, and gravel roads tended to dead-end or loop back rather than go anywhere else. That eerie quality seemed concentrated here, fitting our purpose of visiting the site of a double homicide.

The town's main drag was a three-quarter-mile stretch lined by a dozen stores, a couple of gas stations, and several bars. Then we drove on into rural solitude again, punctuated by occasional lights and plumes of smoke from woodstoves. I'd grown up with that piney fragrance and loved it, but here, tonight, it didn't offer its usual comfort. Road signs were shot up and mailboxes bashed in, the sport of young men out drinking and letting off steam.

Abruptly, Renee swiveled to point at a mailbox mounted on a sagging fir post, beside a forlorn dirt track leading into the trees.

"Oh my God," she breathed. Madbird hit the brakes and backed up so we could see it in the headlights.

The name scrawled in crude black letters above the box number read: A SINNER.

I had no trouble believing that a private purgatory lay at the end of that gloomy lane.

The entrance to Astrid's property was unmarked, with no tire tracks or other signs of activity. The gate was closed with a lock and chain so we couldn't drive in, and Renee didn't have any real outdoor clothing, just her expensive street boots and the shearling coat that Evvie and Lon Jessup had given her. But at this altitude, the snow was frozen hard enough so that walking wasn't bad. We climbed the fence and started in on foot, Madbird leading with a flashlight.

The cabin was a quarter-mile farther, nicely situated on a rise overlooking a vista of pristine forest. But I could tell as soon as it came into sight that there was something wrong with its shape. The reason became clear when we got there. About two-thirds of the roof was gone, rafters and all, leaving a big gap open to the sky. Apparently somebody had started tearing it off, then quit. The remainder, without the support of the ridge, had collapsed under snowloads into a ragged-edged pile of cedar shakes and sheathing. The door and windows were also gone, now just dark rectangles that gave the look of a discarded jack-o'-lantern.

We followed Madbird inside and walked around, our footsteps crunching on the snow-crusted floor. It was large and nicely constructed, with walls of thick, uniform, squared fir logs that had carefully dovetailed corners. A big masonry fireplace was obviously the work of a real craftsman. Cabins built for function, like my own, were much rougher-often the work of one man with occasional help, using crude tools and smaller, easily handled timber. But Astrid's family had never lacked for money.

The last room we came to, though empty of furniture like the rest, had to have been the bedroom-the exact spot where Astrid and her lover had spent their last minutes of life. We stood in the doorway while Madbird shined the flashlight around. Its beam found nothing but barren walls and the empty socket of a large window overlooking the pretty meadow sloping down to the creek. I turned away without stepping inside the room or speaking. So did everybody else. As we walked back outside, Renee stayed a little ways off to herself.