James Patterson - Double Cross

The drive from Kalispell to Babb took us straight through Glacier National Park. I’d always wanted to see Glacier, and it didn’t disappoint. The switchbacks on the Going-to-the-Sun Road had us alternately hugging a mountain wall, then looking straight down one. It was kind of humbling, actually, as well as beautiful, and would have been romantic-if Bree and I had any time for that on this trip. At one point, she did look over at me and say, “Where there’s a will!”

We got to Babb just after noon on Saturday. Deputy Steve Mills kindly agreed to drive up from the sheriff’s office in Cut Bank, saving us about seventy-five miles on twisting country roads, more than an hour’s trip.

Mills was loose and amiable, and answered our very first question without being asked.

“Met my wife while I was on holiday here from Manchester. Fishing trip, of all things. Twelve years ago, and never looked back,” he said in his proper English. “Once this place grabs hold of you, it doesn’t let go. You’ll see, I’m quite sure. I used to call myself Stephen , not Steve.”

We followed Mills south on 89, past the Blackfeet Reservation, to the tip of Lower St. Mary Lake.

From there, he took an unmarked dirt road for another mile and a half, until we came to a mostly overgrown track on the right.

The side road was partitioned with two police sawhorses, one of them thrown over on its side. I wondered how effective these had been against the likes of CNN and God only knew who else had wanted to visit.

High wheatgrass brushed against the sides of the car as we drove back several hundred yards, then onto a cleared acre or more of land.

Tyler Bell’s cabin certainly wasn’t deluxe, but it was no Unabomber shack either. He had sided it with natural red cedar that blended nicely into the landscape. It was small and nestled in the crook of a west-flowing river, with a gorgeous view of the mountains in the distance.

I could certainly see why someone would choose this place to settle-so long as they had no need for human contact, and maybe murdered people for a living.

THE FRONT DOOR to the cabin had no lock. Deputy Mills waited for us outside, and once we entered, we smelled why. Some combination of food and garbage had been rotting in here, possibly for months. It was beyond putrid.

“So much for this being a little slice of heaven on earth,” Bree said, putting a handkerchief over her nose as if this were a homicide scene. Maybe it was .

The main room was a kitchen/dining/living area-a picture window at the back looked onto the river. All along the sidewall, Bell had a workbench littered with tools and several dozen fishing flies in various stages of completion. A small collection of rods hung on the wall.

Other than two leather easy chairs, the furniture seemed to have been made by Tyler Bell himself, including a pair of pine bookcases.

“You can tell a lot about a man by his books,” Mills said, finally deciding to join us. He stood in front of them, scanning the lot. “Biography, biography. Cosmology. All nonfiction. That say anything to you?”

“Whose biographies? That would be my first question,” I said, and came over to look for myself.

There were several volumes on American presidents-Truman, Lincoln, Clinton, Reagan, and Bushes forty-one and forty-three. Other world leaders too: Emperor Hirohito, Margaret Thatcher, bin Laden, Ho Chi Minh, Churchill.

“Delusions of grandeur, maybe?” I said. “Fits the bill for DCAK. At least, what we think we know about him.”

“You don’t sound too confident about your intel,” huffed Mills, who was a huffy sort.

“I’m not. He’s been messing with us from the start. He’s a game player.”

Bell ’s bedroom was smaller and darker-dank, actually. He had a toilet and sink right in the room, partitioned off with another bookcase. I didn’t see a tub or shower, unless you counted the river. In fact it reminded me of a prison cell-and that made me think of Kyle Craig again. What the hell did Kyle have to do with all this ?

The only decorations were three framed photos on the wall, in a vertical stack that reminded me of the new Web site. The top one was an old black-and-white wedding portrait, presumably Mom and Dad. The middle was a picture of two golden retrievers.

And then a shot of five adults standing in front of the same red pickup that now sat abandoned outside.

I recognized three of them right away, and that gave me a start: Tyler Bell, Michael Bell, and Marti Lowenstein-Bell, who would eventually be killed by her husband. The other two, a man and a woman, weren’t familiar to me. One woman held two fingers up in a V behind Tyler ’s head. So, she thought he was the devil ?

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” Bree said. “They actually look happy. Don’t you think so?”

“Maybe they were. Hell, maybe he still is.”

Finally, after hours of poring over every inch of the bedroom, we went back out to the main room to tackle the kitchen area, which we had saved for last. There was no sense opening that fridge any sooner than we had to. It was a propane appliance and had obviously run down a long time ago. The shelves were half stocked. Most of the food looked like bulk purchases-grains and beans in plastic bags alongside other unrecognizable produce mush.

“He sure likes mustard,” Bree said. There were several kinds in the door. “And milk.” He had two half gallons, one of them unopened. I leaned in closer to look.

“Milk doesn’t keep,” I said.

“Milk’s not alone.” Bree had the handkerchief up over her mouth and nose again.

“No, I mean one of these is dated one day after anyone saw him around here.” I stood up and closed the refrigerator door. “The other carton’s dated nine days after that. Why would he buy more milk if he was getting ready to disappear?”

“And,” Bree said, “why would he need to disappear so suddenly ? He seemed pretty safe and secure here. Who would bother him?”

“Right. That’s the other angle to figure out. So which one do we follow?”

But the question was almost immediately moot. As soon as I’d posed it, my phone rang, and everything changed all over again.

I LOOKED AT MY CALLER ID. “Probably the kids,” I told Bree, and picked up. “Hello from Big Sky Country!” I said.

Instead, I heard, “Alex, it’s me. It’s Nana.”

The tension in Nana’s voice created waves of dread that traveled up and down my spine. “What’s going on? The kids okay?” I asked automatically. “Damon?”

“The children are fine. It’s -” She let out a quavering sigh. “It’s Sampson, Alex. John has gone missing. No one’s heard from him all day.”

The words hit me like icy water. I’d been half expecting the kids’ cheerful voices when I answered. Hi, Daddy. When are you coming home? Will you bring me something ?

But instead, it was this.

“Alex, are you there?”

“I’m here.” The scene around me came back into focus. Bree was watching intently, wondering what was going on. Then her cell went off, and she took the call.

I had a feeling that we were hearing the same story, just from different sources.

“Davies,” Bree mouthed. The superintendent of detectives was on her line. “Yes, sir, I’m listening.”

“Nana, hold for a second,” I said.

“Sampson went to the gym around lunchtime.” Bree gave me a running commentary on her call from Davies. “They just found his car. But not him. They found some blood in the car, Alex.”

“He’s alive,” I told her. “If he was dead, we’d have heard from DCAK already. He’s going to want an audience again .”