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?”
