Page 9 of Midnight Ride

“You can’t guess at anything in a murder investigation, Harlan. A friend from Minnesota could have picked up his buddies in Idaho and they all drove here together. Can’t rule any small shit out.”

“Yeah, I get it. No jumping to conclusions.”

South of Oilmont.

After poking around the Milk River area and not finding the guys we were looking for, me and Billy took the dogs back to the crime scene for a snoop around.

By the time we got there, Billy was done walking for the day and stayed with the squad. I took Max and Sarge and ran across the field with them and into the woods where we’d found the body.

Sun was going down and it would be dark soon. I let the dogs sniff all around the body dump site and then the campsite about a hundred feet away and they didn’t come up with anything.

“Good boys.” I gave them both biscuits out of my pocket and we ran back to the truck.

“Anything?” asked Billy.

“Nope. I think they cleaned up pretty good.”

“Yeah, I thought so the first time I was in there.”

Sheriff’s Office. Coyote Creek.

When we got back to the station, it was almost quitting time. Molly had made a lot of phone calls and she’d spoken to Steve Oliver’s widow in Idaho and got a list of who had gone hunting with her husband.

“Along with Steve Oliver’s twin sons—Dan and Van—was their next-door neighbor, Roger Prentice. In the other truck belonging to Phil Dyson, was Willy Lindstrom, Chad Palliser, and Dick Morgan.”

“So, there were eight of them to start,” said Travis. “Billy was right about the three tents. There might even be four.”

“We never saw a camp that big today,” said Virgil.

“Mrs. Oliver can’t understand why her boys didn’t come back home the minute this happened,” said Molly. “Her twins boys didn’t call her, and she’s confused by their behavior. Now she thinks something might have happened to her sons that prevented them from calling about their father, and she’s more frantic than ever.”

“You gotta admit, it’s strange behavior if the boys had nothing to do with their father’s death,” said Travis. “But not strange at all if those boys had a part in killing their old man and dumping his body in the bush.”

“Oh, my,” said Molly. “This is turning into a regular Agatha Christie mystery.”

“Tomorrow we keep looking for the hunters. To start the day, we have an eight a.m. meeting with the new game warden covering our county. We’ll talk to her before we go out searching for hunt camps.”

Wild Stallion Ranch.

While we worked at the barn, Virge and I tossed the murder case around and came up with no good ideas. “The game warden might be able to help us,” I said. “But with hundreds of hunters in Montana and thousands of acres to hunt on, it’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack to find the men we want.”

“How do we know they set up a new camp in our county?” asked Virgil. “If they didn’t, then we’ll never find them. No way we could.”

“You’re right about that. If they had a bright one in the bunch, they might have trigged into that fact. The sheriff in this county—Travis—would only be looking on his own turf. If they were smart enough, they would’ve moved to the next county and started hunting there.”

“Did Travis alert the neighboring counties?” asked Virgil.

“Molly did. That’s her job and she does it right away.”

“Good.”

At dinner Travis talked a little about the new game warden none of us had met. “I met her once when she first got hired,” said Travis. “Joe brought her around and introduced her. Her name is Linda Tucker.”

“What’s she look like?” asked Virge. “Maybe we can fix Billy up with a little personal law enforcement.” The boys both laughed.

Travis smirked. “Yeah, I can see Billy getting into that a little bit.”

“A lady game warden?” asked Tammy. “She gonna be okay by herself with a bunch of drunk hunters if she gets into big trouble way back in the woods?”

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