Heaven's Keep (10 page)

“My name is Cork O’Connor. This is my son, Stephen. We’re here to see Deputy Dewey Quinn.”

“Need to see some ID,” came the voice from the other side.

Cork took out his driver’s license and dropped it in the trough beneath the glass, where a couple of fingers drew it in from the other side. A minute passed, then the license came back. “Have a seat,” the tired, disembodied voice said.

They sat in a couple of uncomfortable black plastic chairs in the waiting area and didn’t talk. Cork kept eyeing his watch and couldn’t believe how slowly the minutes passed. All he could think of was how close they were to the search and how much precious time was being wasted.

Finally the Authorized Personnel Only door opened, and a man in a deputy’s khaki uniform came out. He was of medium height, with dark brown hair in a crew cut. You could see in the deep tan of his face and the taut draw of the skin around his eyes and mouth that he spent a lot of time in the sun. Cork pegged Quinn at somewhere in his early thirties.

“Dewey?”

The deputy didn’t appear happy to see him. “I wish you’d have let me know you were coming, Cork.”

“Would it have made a difference?”

“I’d probably have tried to talk you out of it.” He turned his attention to Cork’s son. “Stephen?”

“Yeah. I mean, yes, sir.”

He shook hands with them both.

“We’re not here to cause you problems, Dewey,” Cork said.

“I know. Doesn’t mean you won’t.” He looked past them, out the front door, and said, “Oh, shit.”

Cork glanced there, too, and saw a pretty blonde in jeans and an expensive-looking shearling coat sweeping toward the door from the parking lot.

“Quick,” Quinn said, “follow me.”

He hustled them to the door he’d come through, and they followed him inside.

Cork found himself in familiar territory. The Owl Creek County Sheriff’s Department was not that different from the sheriff’s department in Minnesota. There was a large common area and, along the perimeter, doors that led to other rooms and offices. To the right was the contact desk, currently staffed by a stout-looking deputy with a buzz cut and his sleeves rolled back. Beyond him was the dispatch desk and radio. The smell of fresh coffee filled the place.

“Who were you avoiding?” Cork asked.

“Felicia Gray. TV newswoman out of Casper. We’re lucky because most of the media is up in Cody, where the Civil Air Patrol is coordinating the air search. Not as many reporters on this as there were at first. That standoff thing with the religious nut in Kansas seems to have grabbed everyone’s attention.”

Cork understood. A few missing Indians wouldn’t be news for long.

“But we’ve got Ms. Gray,” Quinn went on. “She’s the one who broke the story about the pilot’s drinking. She gets hold of you two, your nuts are deep-fried. She’ll harass the hell out of you, believe you me. Probably can’t avoid her forever, but you might as well delay it as
long as possible. Bolger,” he called to the deputy at the contact desk, and said by way of introduction, “the O’Connors. Miss Kiss-My-Pulitzer questions you about these two, you don’t know anything, got that?”

“Ten-four, Dewey.” He gave a two-fingered salute, then used the same gesture as a greeting to Cork and Stephen.

“Come with me.” Quinn turned and walked briskly down a narrow hallway to a southwest-facing conference room where sunshine flooded through a long window. Beyond the glass, the streets of Hot Springs, lined with small houses and bared trees, ran toward the distant mountains. The conference table dead center was cluttered with maps and papers. A large topographic map hung on the wall opposite the window. It was studded with pins of various colors and lined with corridors crudely drawn with neon highlighters. There was a portable dispatch radio on a table against another wall. Several chairs were scattered about, all unoccupied at the moment.

“Like I said, the air search is being coordinated up in Cody by the Wyoming wing of the Civil Air Patrol,” Quinn said. “Commander Nickleson of the Cody unit is in charge, and she’s being assisted by units out of Big Horn and Jackson. We’re in constant communication. This is where we’ve been handling things on our end.” He swept his hand across the room. “When I say ‘we,’ I mean ‘I.’ We’re a small department and we’re stretched to the max. Cork, I swear to you, we’re doing the best we can.”

“Where’s the sheriff?”

“Out on a domestic disturbance call. We still have our regular duties to see to. If he comes in, he probably won’t say much. Just give you a look that’d scare a grizzly bear. Have a seat and I’ll bring you up to date.”

Cork took one of the chairs and Stephen another. Quinn walked to the map on the wall. He pointed to a black pin near the top of the map. The other pins and the highlighted corridors spread out south of it.

“This is where radar contact was lost.” He moved his finger down a few inches. “This is where the snowmobilers reported hearing a plane fly low overhead. Now, normally a plane is going to follow certain flight lines, or vectors, dictated by the FAA. This is way off any
vector. But if the plane was in trouble and if the snowmobilers were right, then the plane may have turned back and been trying to clear the mountains and find a flat place to land. Maybe the pilot hoped to make it to Casper. We just don’t know.”

Cork leaned his arms on the table and studied the map, which showed all of Owl Creek County and portions of the adjacent counties as well. “Have you sent planes over the area to the east, between the mountains and Casper?”

“Yes.” Quinn studied the map and shook his head. “We’ve checked most of the logical locations, but it’s a lot of country to cover and most of it’s deep in snow.”

Cork waved toward the window. “But there’s not much snow here.”

“Sometimes the mountain ranges—the Absarokas, the Bighorns, and the Wind River Range—divide the big storms and they end up sliding north or south of us. Creates a little microclimate here in the basin that’s often quite moderate in the winter.” He went back to the map. “We have nearly a dozen planes involved, CAP volunteers and a few pilots and aircraft on loan from the Air National Guard out of Cheyenne. And there’s Rude’s chopper. Several of the pilots are scanning the High Plains east of here, the rest are over the Absarokas. The mountains in the Washakie Wilderness area here”—he pointed toward one of the highlighted corridors—“are promising if you’re thinking a plane might try an emergency landing. There are some very high, relatively barren plateaus where it might have a chance of coming down safely. We’re looking particularly hard in that area. But there are two basic problems. One is the snow, of course. It’s fallen so deep at the high elevations that it’s covered everything.” He kept his eyes on the map and hesitated.

“And the other problem?” Cork said.

He shot out a frustrated breath. “We’re not at all certain that we’re searching in the right places, Cork. Except for the report of the snowmobilers, we have nothing to go on after the plane dropped off radar. The pilot could have proceeded northwest along the same vector, hoping to poke through the storm. Commander Nickleson has planes searching that vector. He could have swung north toward the
airport at Cody or southeast toward the one at Riverton. CAP planes are flying those areas, too. See, we just don’t know.”

Cork looked at the map and felt the weight on his shoulders grow heavier. “Even with a dozen planes it seems like a lot of area to cover.”

“Believe me, it is,” Quinn said.

“We saw a woman on CNN, the wife of one of the passengers, an Arapaho woman, I believe. She said her people were involved in the search.”

“Ellyn Grant.” Quinn didn’t sound happy. “Yes, they’re involved. They have one plane in the air. It’s flying a search grid over this area. The Teton Wilderness.” Quinn pointed southwest of the black pin where radar contact had been lost. “It’s not a flight pattern that any pilot would logically follow, but she claims one of her people has had a vision of the plane coming down there. So that’s where they’re looking. She’s not happy that we’re concentrating on the Washakie and east.” He sat down across from them at the table. “Okay, what did you have in mind?”

“I’m not sure,” Cork said. He looked at Stephen. “We were kind of hoping we could go up in one of the planes.”

“How about a helicopter instead?”

“Sure,” Stephen jumped in.

“Our chopper pilot, Jon Rude, had a mechanical problem this morning. Delayed him a little. He’s scheduled to take off in about an hour. I’ll contact him, ask him to take you along. If he’s willing. It’ll be his call. Fair enough?”

“More than,” Cork said.

“Where are you staying?”

“We haven’t decided.”

“The hotel that’s on the grounds of the hot springs is excellent. A fine little place that’s on the National Register of Historic Places. This time of year you should have no problem getting a room.”

“Thanks, Dewey.”

“Wait here. Let me give Jon a call.”

He left the room.

“What do you think?” Cork said to Stephen.

“We’re here and that’s good. We’re going up in a helicopter and that’s good. And Deputy Quinn is really nice and that’s really good.”

The deputy had been gone only a few minutes when another officer entered the room. He was tall and bulky, and he fixed Cork and Stephen with the eye of a hunter.

“Who are you?” he said.

Cork stood up to introduce himself. “Cork O’Connor. And this is my son, Stephen.”

The man made no move toward them to shake hands. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for Deputy Quinn.”

“He brought you back?”

“That’s right.”

“Briefed you?”

“Yes.”

“Do what he says, clear?”

“Crystal.”

“All right then.” He turned and left.

“Who was that?”

“Sheriff Kosmo would be my guess.”

“Not very talkative.”

“You got his message, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah.”

“’Nuff said.”

A few more minutes, then Deputy Quinn returned. “Okay, we’re all set. We’ll meet Jon at the airfield in fifteen minutes. Did you see Sheriff Kosmo?”

“He stopped in to have a word,” Cork said.

“One word, period,” Stephen added.

Quinn laughed. “If Jim likes you, Stephen, you sometimes get two. All set?”

“Yes.” Stephen leaped to his feet.

“Then let’s go.”

As they passed the contact desk, Quinn said to the deputy there, “Kiss-My-Pulitzer still around, Bolger?”

“Nope. I stonewalled her and she split.”

“I’m ten-seven for the next hour, unless something new develops with the air search.”

“I copy. Good luck, O’Connors,” Bolger said.

“Thanks,” Stephen threw back and gave him a wave.

Outside, the mountains to the west were blue-white under an azure sky. “The airfield’s up there,” Quinn said, pointing toward a massive ridge rising beyond the outskirts of Hot Springs in the direction of the mountains. “Just follow me.”

He got into a departmental TrailBlazer. Cork and Stephen hurried to their Wrangler and followed the deputy out of the lot. They took a street called Carson that cut due west before winding its way up the ridge Quinn had indicated. They passed the town’s water tower and what looked like a small, abandoned mining operation. At the crest of the ridge, the road divided. A sign pointed to the right and read,
OWL CREEK GOLF COURSE—PUBLIC WELCOME
. Quinn took the left fork, and Cork spotted the airfield immediately, a fenced area with several hangars and a couple of other small buildings beside a single runway. The gate was open, and they rolled through. Cork followed the TrailBlazer to the far side of one of the hangars, where they found the chopper and its pilot waiting.

Jon Rude’s face was all about friendliness, from the laugh lines and the big smile to the wry glint of his eyes. He was Cork’s height, just under six feet, and had a handshake that was firm without over-doing it.

“Thanks for letting us ride along,” Cork said.

“No problem. Ever been in a chopper before?”

“A few occasions doing S and R back in Minnesota.”

“That’s right,” Rude said. “Dewey told me you were in law enforcement for a while. What about you, Stephen?”

“I never have.”

“You do okay on roller coasters?”

“Heck, yes.”

“Then you’ll be fine. We’d best be off. Got a lot of territory to cover.” He addressed Quinn. “Any word from the others?”

“Nothing new.”

“Okay, then. Stephen, you want to ride shotgun?”

“Sure.”

“You’ll need eagle eyes.”

“I got ’em.”

“Hop aboard and let’s see what we can see.”

T
hat’s my place down there,” Rude said. He banked the chopper in order for Cork and Stephen to have a better view.

They were flying low over a flat valley that was threaded down the middle by a stream lined with cottonwoods. The floor of the valley was covered with irrigated fields, mostly alfalfa. Rude’s place consisted of a small ranch house, a barn, a corral, and a few outbuildings. From the air, it looked nice and neat. The nearest neighbor was a good half mile distant.

“I call her the Chopping R.” Rude grinned.

“Do you ranch?” Cork spoke into the microphone attached to the flight helmet he wore. Rude had given flight helmets to both him and Stephen. Without them, the noise inside the cabin would have made verbal communication almost impossible.

“Yeah, but I can’t make a living at it. Truth is, around here it’s hard to make a decent living at much of anything, so I do just about everything. In winter, I fly skiers who like the extreme stuff up to remote slopes. In fall, I fly hunters. In summer, I do some crop dusting. Most of the rest of the time I contract out my services to BHPC.”

“BHPC?”

“Big Horn Power Co-op. I fly their power lines doing inspection or giving a hand with repairs when they need me. My wife’s taking classes down in Riverton to be a teacher. Soon as she’s finished and gets herself a position at a school, things’ll ease up a lot. I’ll be able to spend more time with the ranch.”

“Kids?” Cork asked.