Neil McMahon - Dead Silver

He didn't have or make any money of his own-it all came from Evvie's inherited wealth-but he'd set up at least two corporate entities. They were clearly fronts which didn't conduct any tangible commerce; it appeared that he used them mainly as conduits to sock away large chunks that he drained from her, no doubt into bank accounts that would be difficult or impossible to trace. Through them, he also leased vehicles, with frequent turnover-enumerating them and getting their descriptions was another paper trail the cops would have a hell of a time unraveling-and a network of storage units, where he maybe kept some of them and Lord knew what else.

By all indications so far, Evvie was being honest about what she knew, although it was possible that this was an act she'd long been rehearsing.

According to her, Lon Jessup had first come to Montana about fifteen years ago to visit Astrid and Professor Callister. Astrid introduced him to her longtime friend Evvie-in her thirties, unmarried with no suitors, but rich-and romance bloomed.

The romance part didn't last long, but it wasn't one of those sordid situations that descended into abuse and despair. Lon simply wasn't interested in her. She and her money were a convenience, and he made it clear that he intended to use them as he pleased and do what he wanted. It took her a while to accept that, as it would anyone, but he was very effective at getting it across. He didn't use violence or outright menace. He was the kind of man who didn't have to.

Once that was settled, they got along quite well. He was outwardly solid and decent, and above all he was a husband, rescuing her from spinsterhood and giving her that societal credential. If there was a hole in Evvie Jessup's heart, she had plenty of things to fill it up with that most other people didn't.

But it had never occurred to her that he might be an entirely different person than he claimed.

He had never been a suspect in Astrid's murder. Besides his being a good friend of the Callisters and a respectable citizen, with no hint of a motive, Evvie remembered distinctly that he had been out of town when it occurred and had hurried home to offer his support to the family. But that was an alibi almost certain to fall apart under new police scrutiny.

What the motive might have been was still unknown. But an intriguing connection had surfaced. Lon had occasionally let something drop to Evvie that indicated military training-as a Navy SEAL, she thought. However, he had insisted that she never mention anything about it.

The fact that he didn't want that known inclined me perversely to believe there was something to it. I'd never met a man who denied that kind of credential, and I'd run into several who claimed it when it wasn't true. It was a measure of how seriously Lon Jessup wanted his background erased.

Further, before coming to Montana, he'd been living in Colorado-the home of the phantom ex-Special Forces ranger who supposedly had led Astrid on a raid to shoot up a gyppo logging camp.

And who Astrid had counted on to blow up the Dead Silver Mine.

I remembered Buddy Pertwee's story about her sudden emotional upset and change of attitude not long before her death, as if something had gone very wrong.

Was Lon Jessup the commando? Did he and Astrid have a falling-out, maybe involving the demolition plan? Something that angered or threatened him enough to drive him to murder her?

Such as fear that the past he'd worked so hard to conceal might be exposed?

Then, just after three o'clock that afternoon, one of Gary's deputies stuck his head out the courthouse door and yelled at Madbird and me to get our ass inside.

A helicopter had spotted a woman with long dark hair in the mountains around the old mining town of Basin. She had run from the cover of trees out into a clearing, frantically waving her arms to flag them down.

The woman was Darcy, and the copter was able to land and get her on board. The immediate report was that she was cold, shaken, and scratched up, but otherwise unharmed.

The cops at the courthouse whooped and cheered and everybody exchanged high fives. Madbird got a big hug from Faith, and even Gary Varna and I gripped each other around the shoulders for a quick, awkward embrace.

They estimated that it would take another forty minutes or so to fly Darcy to the Helena airport and drive her here to the courthouse. Madbird called Hannah to tell her the news, then walked outside again. I went with him, assuming we were going to wait out front for Darcy to arrive, but he strode on to his parked van.

He went into the gear he carried in the back and got out a favorite Puma hunting knife and a whetstone. Then he sat inside the open rear doors and honed the knife, drawing the blade carefully across the stone in even, precisely angled strokes. He kept its edge like a straight razor anyway. After this attention, it would literally split hairs.

He paid no attention to me and didn't speak a word. I decided to leave him alone.

Madbird finished the task to his satisfaction, set the knife aside, and dug out a pair of insulated hunting boots. He laced those on and was rummaging around through his other stuff when the sheriff's cruiser carrying Darcy pulled into the parking lot.

She jumped out of the car, rushed to Madbird, and clung to him, sobbing, face buried in his chest.

"Okay, baby girl, okay," he muttered, patting her back gruffly. "Hannah's on her way here. She's bringing some burgers, you must be starving."

The deputies gently pried her loose from him, to take her inside and continue debriefing her. This time Madbird went with them. I stayed out of the way again and pieced together information as it was filtered to me.

The upshot was that while Lon Jessup had covered his bases with extraordinary cunning, he hadn't counted on the savvy and courage of a Blackfeet girl who'd grown up on the wild northern rez.

Early this morning, before dawn-Darcy remembered glimpsing her bedside clock reading 5:47-she had awakened to find a man beside her bed, holding a gun to her face.

When the police showed her a photo of Lon Jessup, she identified him positively, although he had shaved his beard and abandoned his tinted spectacles.

He had spoken to her soothingly, assuring her that he didn't intend harm, only wanted to have some fun. But he also warned her not to resist or cry out, and Darcy knew enough about weapons to realize that his pistol was small-caliber, probably a.22, with a sound suppressor on the muzzle; a shot would make less noise than the snap of a mousetrap. That, along with his chilling sense of authority, convinced her that he wouldn't hesitate to use it.

He ordered her to get dressed-and to go into her laundry hamper and give him the panties she had worn yesterday. Then they walked quietly out to his vehicle, where he had her crouch down on the floor of the passenger seat. She obeyed, assuming through her haze of fear and confusion that this would turn into a kinky sexual assault.

They went to a storage unit with a different vehicle parked inside it. He tied her up with an efficiency that made it clear he knew what he was doing, then zipped her into a mummy sleeping bag. Before he closed it over her face, he gripped several strands of her hair and yanked them from her head. He warned her again to stay quiet, and they took off on a longer drive.

This time, they paused along the way for several minutes-probably while Jessup broke into Seth Fraker's pickup truck to plant her hair and the nylon scrap from her panties.

After that they drove for most of an hour. She couldn't see anything, but the first and longest stretch was fast and relatively smooth-the highway to Basin. Then they turned off onto a slower, rougher road up into the mountains.