‘Cancel,’ Sloan snapped. He slipped him a five and headed out into the rainy night. Knowing Hatcher, Sloan knew it could be weeks before he heard from him again. He went back to his office and tracked down Zabriski. Zabriski could find anybody. Besides, he was sure Hatcher was traveling under his own name. Hell, he hadn’t changed it so far. Besides, Hatcher wasn’t dodging Sloan, he was ignoring him. Sloan would get a line on him, just to show the son of a bitch.
The next morning he had his report.
‘He flew into Billings, Montana, on an Eastern flight last night, stayed at the Palace Hotel, checked out early this morning and caught a local feeder to Shelby,’ Zabriski reported.
‘Montana! What the hell could he be doing in Montana?’
‘I dunno, sir. But that’s where he went.’
‘Where the hell’s Shelby?’
‘About two giant steps south of the Canadian border,’ the agent answered. ‘There’s nothing there, Colonel, it’s been snowed under for three months. It’s where God lost his snowshoes.’
Montana? Sloan pulled out the Murphy file and went back over it, reading every line, looking for some reference to Shelby, Montana. But he found nothing. Well, hell, Sloan thought, where can he go from Shelby? He assigned Zabriski to take the next flight to Billings, wait for Hatcher to show up and follow him.
‘And, Zabriski, this guy’s slippery, got it? He’s got tricks you haven’t heard of yet.’
‘Do we bust him?’ Zabriski asked.
‘Hell, no, he hasn’t done anything wrong,’ Sloan said. ‘I just want to know what the hell he’s up to.’
Maybe, thought Sloan, he’s doing a double-back. Maybe he’s checking
The twin-engine De Havilland snaked its way through the narrow lane the blowers had trenched through the snow. On either side of the plane, high-piled snow banks loomed above the fuselage, snow that had been collecting for months. The airport terminal was a small one-story building almost hidden in the white drifts. There was a hangar nearby, barely peeking over the snow, with a tattered windsock flapping straight out from its warped pole in the subfreezing wind. That was all there was to the airport. Hatcher’s boots squeaked and his breath left trails of steam in his wake as he hurried across the snow-packed tarmac toward the warmth of the tiny terminal, which was barely the size of a large living room.
On one side of the room was an airline counter operated by a skinny young man who looked half asleep; facing it on the other side of the room was a food -dispensing machine and a combination taxi and rental car service, both operated by the same person, a grizzled man in need of a shave, wearing a fur cap and three layers of wool shirts. The arrival of the flight hardly stirred much activity in the terminal. There were only two other passengers on the small feeder line.
Hatcher drew a cup of coffee from the machine and waited until one of the passengers had gone through the drill of renting a car. When he left, Hatcher approached the fur-capped old man, who was leaning over the rental form, completing it with a stub of a pencil.
‘How long’s it take to get to Cut Bank?’ Hatcher’s frazzled voice asked.
The old man kept working on his form. ‘Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘Time a year. Summertime, takes about forty-five minutes.’
‘Well, how about in the winter, like right now, for instance?’
‘Two hours, if you know the road.’
‘Know how far it is up to the government hay station?’ Hatcher growled.
The old fellow kept writing and said, still without looking up, ‘Thirty-seven miles, more or less, most of it uphill. You ain’t used to driving in snow, forget it. They won’t even find you until spring.’
‘You the cabdriver, too?’
‘Yep.’
‘How much to run me up there?’
‘Son, you make it sound like a bike ride in the park,’ he said, still concentrating on the form.
Hatcher slid a hundred-dollar bill under his nose. ‘There’s another one just like that when we get back,’ he said in his chafing whisper. ‘I shouldn’t be up there more than an hour.’
The old fellow stared down at Ben Franklin’s cryptic grin for a few moments, then looked up. ‘You must be a government fella,’ he said.
‘You want a biography, it’ll cost you that Ben Franklin,’ Hatcher’s frazzled voice answered as he nodded toward the hundred.
‘Nuff said,’ the old man said, folding the bill and tucking it in one of his shirt pockets. ‘Last plane back to Billings is at four.’ He looked at his ‘watch. ‘Gives us six hours.’
‘How about Spokane?’
‘One flight a day. Two-thirty.’
‘Let’s aim for that,’ Hatcher said in his grating voice.
‘Uh-huh,’ the old fellow said and stuck out his hand. ‘Name’s Rufus Eskew.’
‘Chris,’ Hatcher said, shaking a hand tormented with calluses.
