Neil McMahon - Dead Silver

Over several minutes of watching Evvie's office, I didn't seen any sign of Lon. He might have been in the back, but I decided to move on and take a look at their home.

I remembered Renee describing the place as being off old Highway 282 near Montana City, a few miles south. Much of that area was former ranch land that had been carved up and developed fairly recently, and there was a maze of spur roads looping in and out.

But I didn't have to cruise long to find the Jesssups' mailbox; it was right on the highway, although they didn't sacrifice any privacy on that count. The property was pristine, meadowland in front that merged into timber, at least a couple dozen acres and maybe more. Their house was set so far back in the trees I could only see flashes of its blue sheet metal roof.

I wasn't about to go driving in there and risk Lon spotting me, but half a mile farther along, a gravel road turned off that side of the highway and led several miles into National Forest land. I'd driven it when I was a teenager, along with pretty much every other back road in this part of the state; I didn't remember it well, but it had to roughly skirt the Jessups' property.

I made my way along it, orienting myself by occasional glimpses of the blue roof, and found a suitable place to pull off into the woods. I rummaged through the assorted baggage I carried in the truck and dug out an old Bushnell rifle scope that I used for glassing game on hunting trips. If anybody came along and saw me, I'd shove the scope in my jacket and act like I'd stopped to take a leak. But that didn't seem likely, particularly in this dank weather; the landscape was deserted to the point of looking forlorn.

A short hike later, I came to a copse of aspen that offered a good view and I settled down with the scope. Now I could see that the house was a beauty, a big prow-fronted cedar home with a huge deck that included a covered hot tub. The interior was probably close to five thousand square feet. The going rate for something like that ran well over a hundred dollars per square foot. Depending on how much land there was, the overall property had to be worth a couple of million and maybe several. Evvie came from money and maybe Lon did, too. For sure, they weren't paying for this with a desultory real estate business.

There were no signs of Lon here, either, or any other life-no lights or flicker of a TV screen showing through the windows, no vehicles parked around, no dogs or cats. The rail fence that fronted the highway was built for looks more than function; there didn't appear to be any livestock to contain. The scene could have been the kind of sterile advertisement you saw in glossy magazines that sold the West.

Back from the highway, the rail fence gave way to older barbed wire, probably part of the original ranch. I got to my feet and followed it, maintaining a good distance and staying in the trees-curious as to how far the property extended and what else might be on it. There were no outbuildings or other structures that I could see. After about a mile, the fence ended in a little coulee.

Before I turned back, I stopped and spent a minute peering through the scope-and glimpsed what looked like fresh tire tracks across a patch of bare muddy earth.

They were hard to follow; most of the ground was thick with pine duff. But I picked up a couple more traces, running from the direction of the house toward the swale.

Well, there was nothing unusual about someone driving a vehicle on their property. Lon might have been cutting firewood, hunting varmints, or doing something else perfectly ordinary.

But I was far out of sight of their house by now and there still hadn't been a whisper of human presence anywhere around. I couldn't see any reason why it would hurt to take a closer look, so I kept on walking.

The coulee was only ten or fifteen feet deep, choked with brush and deadfall. There was no way to drive through it for as far as I could see, certainly not in the area that the tire tracks seemed to lead toward. But I noticed a big clump of debris in there, much thicker than the surroundings. Duff was piled on top of the brush in a way that didn't look like it had fallen there naturally.

Kind of like a giant pack rat nest.

I put the scope to my eye again. Inside the clump, I could just make out a few bits of metal, gleaming dully in the cold gray morning light.

I shoved the scope into my pocket and trotted the couple hundred yards to the spot.

Son of a bitch if the metal didn't belong to a dark blue, mid-'90s Ford Explorer, just like the SUV that had been watching Renee's house.

Madbird's attempts to educate me were bearing fruit. I'd started to learn that everybody had something to hide.

I drove back to Helena as fast as I could make it, ripped up between adrenaline about Lon Jessup and worry about Darcy.

Finding the SUV was far from conclusive, but it fit in well. The immediate surmise was that Lon had seen Renee and me come chasing after the SUV, and he'd hidden it because he knew that connecting that vehicle to him would be enough to start investigators looking harder. He was already worried on other counts. Although the cache we'd found in the study was wiped clean of fingerprints, forensic technology now was so sophisticated that a single hair from head or body, a fleck of skin, or a bit of dried saliva could identify him. And this time he wasn't dealing with backwoods sheriffs who weren't interested in pressing the case-he'd have Gary Varna on his ass, along with shrewd, determined Renee.

Madbird was pacing in front of the courthouse when I arrived.

"Is Gary here?" I said.

"Yeah, him and his people are talking to Fraker."

"They getting anywhere?"

"I ain't heard much yet, but no surprises. He swears the last time he saw Darce was when they had that fight a couple nights ago. Says the drowning story's bullshit, he was just trying to scare her." Madbird's eyes narrowed into his scrutinizing gaze. "What's going on? You look all amped up."

I felt almost ashamed for intruding on the concern about Darcy, but there was nothing else to be done.

"I've got news," I said. "Come on, I'll tell you both."

We went inside and I managed to convince Faith, the kindly but tough lady desk sergeant, to pull Gary from the interrogation.

"I wish there was a better time to tell you this," I said when he came out. "It's about Astrid. Did anybody ever look at Lon Jessup?"

Gary frowned. "Lon Jessup. I know who he is, but I don't recall him ever being in trouble. And no, his name never came up in any of the case records I saw."

"I got a wild hair," I said. "Started putting things together and drove out to his place. I found that SUV, covered up with brush."

Gary's jaw tightened so hard it looked like he was going to break teeth. I assumed he was pissed because I'd overstepped my bounds by going out on my own.

But what he said was "Well now, that changes everything, don't it?"

At the same time, Madbird's eyes widened in sudden comprehension. Then they turned to slits.

"Guess we're looking at the wrong motherfucker," he said. "I already figured Fraker's a dead end," Gary said. "He's babbling as fast as his mouth will move. The kicker is, we asked to search his truck and he shoved the keys at us. There was a clump of long black hair and a scrap of cloth caught on a door hinge-nylon and elastic, like it was torn from a woman's underwear. Right there in front of God and everybody."

I blinked in surprise. "That's the kicker that he's innocent? How do you figure?"

"He ain't that stupid. If he'd struggled with her, he'd know it would leave traces, and he'd have stalled us."

"Maybe he was just running too scared to notice it," I said.

Both men skewered me with impatient glares.