The Divide (48 page)

“Freddie, you’re amazing.”

“I know. That’ll be two thousand dollars.”

“You got it.”

For the next two hours, with his heart racing, Josh rummaged through the files. There was a lot that meant nothing to him, but plenty more that did. File upon file of names and addresses and phone numbers; details of companies, their individual depots and warehouses, lumber-yards, and laboratories; notes that seemed to be based on observation about security and phone and power lines; and, most intriguing of all, tucked away in an alphabetical contacts file under C for
cops,
a list of about two dozen names and numbers. He tried to access Rolf’s e-mail filing cabinet but found himself blocked by another password.

He would have gone on, but it was coming up to six o’clock and he ought to be heading back. Abbie and Ty would be getting worried about him. The only thing he still wanted to do was make a copy of what he’d seen. In case the computer got lost or broken or stolen. Without turning it off, he hurried back to the mall and bought a flash drive no bigger than his thumb and copied as much as it would take.

It was past eight o’clock and getting dark when he drove into Choteau. The gas gauge was almost on empty, so he pulled into the station on Main Street and filled up. When he went inside to pay, his hands were so cold that he dropped a whole lot of coins on the floor and they ran everywhere. The girl behind the counter kindly came and knelt beside him and helped him gather them all up.

“Not the best night to be out,” she said.

“No, unless you’re a polar bear.”

She laughed. As he paid, she asked him if he was just passing through and he said he was and for some ridiculous reason added that he had just driven down from Canada and was on his way to see his dad. When he came back out to the truck, the wind had dropped and it was starting to snow.

The snow was freezing hard too and on the road out to the mountains he skidded twice on patches of ice and was glad when the surface turned to gravel. Once, coming too fast around a corner, he almost plowed into a herd of deer and then he took a wrong turn and had to backtrack, cursing himself all the while for leaving his return so late. By now they’d be halfway up the walls with worry. As he drove past the ranch house and the barns, the land opened before him, transformed to white.

A mile farther, when he got to the place where the road came to an end, he was surprised to see a car parked under the trees where he’d been intending to park Ty’s truck. Josh pulled up behind it and got out to have a look. There was nobody inside and nothing to show whose it might be. He searched for a flashlight in the truck but there didn’t seem to be one. It seemed dumb to carry all the supplies he had bought up to the cabin only to have to haul them down again tomorrow, so he left it all, along with the computer, in the truck and locked the doors. It was snowing steadily now and very cold. He pulled the hood of his new jacket over his head and set off up the trail.

He looked for footprints but it was too dark to see and if there were any they were probably already covered by the snow. He kept wondering whose car it might be. It didn’t look like a police car and if it was the cops, surely there’d be a whole bunch of them, wouldn’t there? Maybe it was a neighbor who’d dropped by or someone who’d gotten lost. Or maybe Ty’s friend Jesse had come back. That had to be it. It was only when he reached the top of the climb and the cabin came into view that Josh got the feeling something was seriously wrong. Someone was shouting. Then a figure crossed the window. And it was neither Abbie nor Ty.

 

 

 

He was pacing to and fro across the cabin, the flames of the candles ducking as he passed and throwing jagged shadows on the bare wood walls. The two of them sat at the table as he’d told them to, watching him warily. Ty looked calmer than she knew he must be. Abbie was still in shock.

“How dare you? How fucking
dare
you?”

“Listen,” Ty said. “I’ve said I’m sorry. When he comes back, you can have it. Just take it and go.”

“Don’t you fucking tell me what to do.”

Rolf looked at his watch again then peered out the window where all there was to see was the steady windless falling of the snow. The sight of him walking out of the twilight when they were leading the horses into the corral had almost made her faint. How he could possibly have found them, she still didn’t know and was too afraid to ask. The look in his eyes shattered at once any fond hope that the baby might have changed things. She must have been out of her mind to imagine it might make him want to give himself up.

If only Ty hadn’t been so goddamn pigheaded about what was on the laptop. She could still barely believe what he’d done, sending Josh off with it like that to call Freddie, without even mentioning it to her until they were out on the ride and it was too late to stop it. He’d been trying to convince Rolf that it was all quite innocent, that the computer just happened to be in the truck and that he could have it as soon as Josh got back. But Abbie could see that Rolf wasn’t buying it. The first sight of Ty had sent him into a rage and the missing laptop had given him an excuse to stoke it to a full-blown fury. He hadn’t hurt anyone yet, but the promise of violence was in his every word and action.

“Where the fuck is he?”

“It’ll be the snow,” Ty said. “Maybe the roads are blocked.”

Rolf looked out of the window again and in that same moment Ty darted another quick glance toward the foot of the bed and only now did Abbie understand why. It was where he kept the loaded shotgun. You could just see the protruding ribbed end of the butt. She glared at him. For the love of God, surely he wouldn’t be so dumb?

“Okay, that’s it,” Rolf said. “Put your coat on.”

“What?” Abbie said.

“I said put your coat on. We’re getting out of here.”

“No way,” Ty said, standing up.

“Was I talking to you? You just stay where you are. Sit down and shut up.”

Rolf snatched Abbie’s red ski jacket from the back of the door and threw it at her.

“Put it on!”

“Listen,” Ty said. “Can we just be reasonable here—”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“You’re not taking her anywhere.”

Ty took a step toward him and Rolf turned to face him.

“If you don’t sit down, I’ll fucking kill you.”

Abbie hurriedly put on the jacket.

“It’s okay, Ty. I’ll go. We’ll see Josh on the road and he can have his computer and go.”

“There’s no way I’m letting you go with him. He’s done you enough harm already.”

“Why don’t you tell your little cowboy hero here to mind his own fucking business?”

He swung open the door and grabbed Abbie by the shoulder to steer her out. Ty made a lunge but Rolf saw it coming and hit him hard in the stomach then gave him a shove that sent him sprawling across the room, crashing into the table and knocking it over and the candle with it. Abbie screamed. Ty was badly winded but was getting to his feet again.

“For God’s sake!” Abbie yelled. “I’ll go. Just stop!”

The door was open now, the falling snow silently framed against the black of the night. Ty was moving sideways toward the bed.

“Ty, no!”

She shouldn’t have cried out because Rolf’s eyes at once scanned across to the bed and he saw the butt of the shotgun. In the same instant Ty dived for it and Rolf leapt at him and grabbed him around the hips and managed to drag him away before he could reach it. Dear God, she thought, please, not again. They were both on the floor now, trying to punch and grab each other’s necks and hair and Abbie just stood there by the doorway, screaming like a woman possessed for them to stop. But Rolf had tucked his knees up now and he jerked backward and kicked Ty hard in the chest then made a grab for the shotgun and got hold of it and started to pull it out from under the bed.

When the snowy figure burst past her through the doorway, it took her a moment to realize who it was. Josh flung himself on top of Rolf and got his arms around his neck and wrenched back his head.

“Abbie, go!” Ty shouted. “Just get out of here!
Go!
”

She didn’t need telling again. To watch three men she loved trying to tear each other to pieces was more than she could bear. She turned and ran out into the snow and around the side of the cabin and saw the horses still tethered to the rail where they’d left them when Rolf arrived, an inch of snow on their saddles. She untied hers and swung herself up and onto him and reined him hard around and jabbed him with her heels and he launched himself like a racehorse from the starting gate, up the trail and into the trees.

She didn’t know where she was going and didn’t care and, even if she had, her eyes were too blurred by snow and desolation to see more than a dim impression of the trail ahead. She kept her head low, her cheek against the horse’s snowy mane, and simply let him run. She knew the broad lay of the land by now but not at night or shrouded as it was by snow. As he galloped ever on and upward, the stems of lodgepole strobing darkly past, she heard beneath the thud and scuffle of his feet a deeper, sharper sound and then a rolling echo and she knew the shotgun had been fired and she cried out and in her anguish heeled the horse yet faster.

The trail veered to the left and down and suddenly they were splashing through a stream then leaping and jerking up the bank beyond, the horse stalling and skewing and scrambling, rocks clacking and clattering loose beneath his hooves. And now they were running again, the slope steeper than before, much steeper, the horse’s breath rasping and coughing like an engine choked with rust.

They were out of the trees now and high and the land was leveling out. Below her, to her right, all she could see behind the swirl of snow was a chasmic black and she realized that they must be on some kind of spine or ridge. And a second after the thought occurred they were suddenly on rock or ice or both and the horse’s hooves were skidding from under him and he lurched and squealed and she felt herself being launched like a missile from the stirrups into the darkness then hitting the slope and falling, tumbling, twisting, cartwheeling down and down, the snow flying and fluffing all around her and into her mouth and eyes. There was a sudden splintering shock of pain in her leg and a crunch in her shoulder and then her head hit something hard and the world went whiter than the snow and slower and she was sliding, slipping, gliding down. And her last sensations of the night and of the world were a long and weightless drop, like the twirl of a broken feather, and the icy embrace of water bubbling and closing above her.

T
hey had been hearing the elk bugling all morning but not until now had they seen them. There was a herd of about twenty females down below them along the creek in the shadow of the valley and a big old bull with a fine rack of antlers standing watch. Sheriff Charlie Riggs gently reined his horse to a standstill on the ridge and Lucy, following on her cute little paint with its fine new saddle, came alongside and did the same. Charlie pointed down the slope and handed her the binoculars.

“There you go,” he said. “See ’em?”

The sun was in her eyes and he took off his hat and used it as a visor for her.

“Yeah. Wow, he’s big.”

“Yep, he’s your main man, for sure.”

“How many points on those antlers?”

“You’re the one with the eyesight.”

“Seven, I’d say.”

They had been out for nearly three hours now and as the valley slowly filled with shadow you could feel the air growing cooler. They were making their way down to the trailhead where they’d left the trailer. Working weekends was one of the reasons things had gone wrong with Sheryl, so when he’d picked up Lucy that morning he’d thought it best not to mention that they were going to ride up around Goat Creek. Anyway, it didn’t feel like work and Lucy certainly didn’t see it that way. She knew, for sure, as everybody around these parts knew, about the girl’s body being found back in the early spring. But that was six months ago and nobody talked about it much anymore. What his daughter didn’t know—and Charlie wasn’t about to tell her—was that the elk were grazing the very spot where they’d cut Abbie Cooper from the ice.

When the creek unfroze at the end of April they’d combed it for clues but found nothing. And ever since, all through the spring and summer, Charlie had come up here again and again. Sometimes he rode, either with Lucy or alone, and sometimes he just hiked around. How many hundred miles he’d covered he had no idea but he must have walked or ridden every trail there was in a twenty-mile radius as well as a lot of untrailed land besides, scanning the ground for anything that might have been left or dropped or hidden. But in all those miles and hours he hadn’t found a single darned thing to cast a glimmer of light on how the poor kid might have died.

His obsession with the case had become something of a joke around the office. He could see the look on some of the deputies’ faces when he asked them to follow up on some tenuous line of inquiry or hunch he might have had. Even the folks down at the Grizzly Grill, where Charlie ate supper when he got bored of reading alone at home or had forgotten to get food in, had started teasing him about it, asking if he’d caught his killer yet.
No,
he’d say.
Not yet. But I’m on your case, buddy.
The truth was, he didn’t have either the time or the resources for such a case and should probably have handed it over months ago to the state DCI guys down in Helena.

“So why does one male have all those females?” Lucy asked.

“What makes you think it’s that way around? Maybe they’re holding him hostage.”

“Da-ad.”

“Have they taught you about genes and all that stuff at school yet?”

“Of course they have.”

“Okay, well. As I understand it, the male’s role is to spread his genes as far and wide as possible, so the strongest one tries to stop all the other guys from getting to the females.”