He and Parmer got out and walked to the girl.
“Hello, Anna. Remember me?”
She eyed him intently and nodded. “You’re the man Daddy helped look for your wife.”
“That’s right.”
“Did you find her?”
“No, I didn’t.”
She studied his face in the twilight. “Are you sad?” Her own face seemed prepared to be sad with him.
“Sometimes I am, Anna. But mostly I’m puzzled right now, and I need to talk to your father.”
“He’s in the back with my mom.” She pointed toward the yard behind the house.
“Is this your horse?” Parmer asked the girl. The bay kept poking its nose between the slats of the fence to nuzzle Anna’s hand.
“Yes. His name is Brownie.”
“I have a horse, too,” Parmer said. “Her name is Lullabye.”
“Do you get to ride her?”
“Oh, yes. We ride a lot together.”
“Me and Brownie do, too, but only when my mom or dad can come. I can’t ride him alone.”
“You will someday,” Parmer said.
“When I’m bigger.”
“When you’re bigger,” Parmer agreed with a serious nod.
They left Anna and Brownie at the fence and walked to the backyard. They found Jon and Diane Rude staking out the contours of a large garden. A power tiller stood silent but ready. Rude carried a hammer and a bundle of wooden stakes. Diane had a big ball of string. When Rude spotted Cork, he dropped his bundle of stakes and came striding across the lawn. “My God, Cork. What a surprise.”
“Jon, this my friend Hugh Parmer. Hugh, Jon Rude. And the lovely vision with her hands full of string is his wife, Diane.”
Parmer shook hands with the couple and offered pleasantries.
Rude hung the hammer through a loop on the utility belt he wore. “Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?”
“Came up kind of quick, Jon,” Cork said.
“Are you hungry?” Diane asked. “There’s chicken and a good marinara sauce still warm in the kitchen.”
“As a matter of fact, I could eat,” Cork said. “Hugh, Diane’s an extraordinary cook.”
“Jon made dinner tonight,” she said. “A man of many talents, my husband.”
“Come on in,” Rude said, waving them toward the house. “And while you eat, we can talk about what brings you back to our neck of the woods. Pleasure, I hope.”
Cork said, “We’ll talk.”
Anna played in the living room with a bunch of her stuffed animals, carrying on her end of a lively conversation. In the dining room, over a plate of good food, Cork explained why he was there.
“Jesus,” Rude said when he’d heard it all. He sat back. “Jesus.” He looked from one man to the other. “You’re serious?”
“Never more so,” Cork said.
“You really believe that somebody posing as this Bodine flew the plane and landed it somewhere?”
“That’s what I believe.”
Diane poured Cork another cup of coffee. “Landed it where?” she asked.
“That’s what I’m hoping your husband can tell me.”
“Me?” Rude looked confused.
Cork spooned a little sugar into his coffee and stirred. “In Will Pope’s vision, the eagle landed in a long box and was covered by a white blanket. We figured it to be Baby’s Cradle. But what if it wasn’t? What if we interpreted the vision wrong?”
“You really believed old Will?”
“I believed him.”
“Truth is, so did I,” Rude confessed.
“Okay, so you know this country from the air as well as any man, I’d guess. Where else could you land a plane?”
“There are a few private airstrips.”
“Where would they be?”
“Let me get some maps.”
“First say good night to your daughter,” Diane told him. “I’m putting Anna to bed.”
The girl came in and kissed her father. She said a cordial good night to Cork and Parmer, and then followed her mother to the back of the house.
For the next half hour, Rude guided the two men along the topography east of the Wyoming Rockies, where the land was a pastiche of rugged buttes, alkali flats, dry gulches, grassy hills, and broad river valleys full of agriculture. He marked the airstrips he knew of but acknowledged they were dealing with a huge area and he probably didn’t know them all.
“How about this?” Cork suggested. “What if we drew a line created from two points? The first would be where the plane dropped off radar and the second where those snowmobilers reported hearing it fly overhead. We extend the line east and take a look at what the nearest strips along it would be.”
“As good as anything,” Rude agreed.
When they’d done this, they found the estimated line of flight would have taken the plane southeast of the Washakie Wilderness, well north of the Owl Creek Reservation and the town of Hot Springs, across the badlands south of the Bighorns, and, if it could have flown that far, well into the empty grasslands of Thunder Basin. There were three private airstrips that Rude had marked near enough to this line to make them of interest.
“Okay. Those are the airstrips we consider checking. Where else could that plane have landed?”
“For a safe landing with a turboprop like a King Air, you’d need a hard, flat surface at least twelve hundred feet long.”
“Any salt flats around here that might work?”
“No, but we’ve got some alkali flats east of Shoshoni that might fill the bill.” He put his finger on a spot well to the south of the line they’d drawn on the map.
Cork shook his head. “Doesn’t feel right. Too far to fly. What’s the land up here like?” He tapped the map east of the Washakie Wilderness.
“Some ranchland. Some gas and oil development. But if there’s a flat enough stretch with few enough rocks to land a King Air safely, I don’t know it.”
“What if they turned north?”
“Meeteetse and Cody up that way. Comparatively speaking, lots of folks.”
“South?”
“The Owl Creek Reservation. And almost no people to speak of.”
“Any private landing strips?”
“Only one that I know of. Belongs to Lame Nightwind.”
Cork saw the connection immediately and sat back. “Jesus.”
In that same moment, Rude had the same realization. His eyes narrowed in dark understanding, and he said, “Your Indian pilot.”
THIRTY-ONE
Let’s not rush to judgment,” Cork cautioned. In his years as a cop, he’d seen often enough the mess that could result from leaping to conclusions.
“But it fits,” Rude said.
“Okay, what’s his motive?”
