Page 70 of River Ride

I figured Dad was thinking the same way and that’s why he was so pissed off.

Sheriff’s Office. Coyote Creek. Montana.

“Billy, were you able to find anything out from Mrs. Kollard when you did the notification?”

“No, she’s devastated, Travis. We’ll have to go back or talk to her after the funeral. Give her time. She wasn’t in any shape to answer questions.”

“Must have been a shock for her,” said Travis, “and I feel sorry for her. I know it was mind-blowing for me—for all of us. We have to get a handle on this as soon as we can because there’s a fucking maniac out there someplace.”

“You don’t think Jed Carpenter killed Kody?” asked Ted.

“Nope, I don’t. But you and Billy drive down to Eagle Pass anyway and brace that piece of shit hard. We have to nail him at least with manslaughter for killing Wayne Treadway.”

“Copy that,” said Billy. “Come on, Ted. The gloves are coming off.”

That made Ted smile.

“I’ll take the boys upriver from Carny’s bait store and see if wecan find ourselves a crime scene. Get the dogs, Virgil.”

“Copy that.”

Milk River. South of Ethridge. Montana.

I drove back to the bait store we’d been at the day before. Dad rode shotgun and Virge sat in the back with the dogs.

“When the current carried Kody’s body past the bait store and Carny saw him, he was already bloated with water and that could mean two things,” said Travis.

“Like what?” asked Virge. “He’d been in the water for a long time?”

“That’s a given,” said Travis, “but for two different reasons, son. First, would be the distance he floated from upriver—how long that took from where he drowned to float by the bait shop.”

“What’s second?”

“Second, Kody drowned, or drowned with help, and his body got caught up on weeds or a log and he stayed in the same place for long enough to take on all that water.”

“Did Doctor Olsen say what day he drowned?” I asked. “That would help us.”

“It would, but the autopsy ain’t done,” said Travis.

“Let’s find where he drowned,” I said. “There must be evidence still there, if there was a fight with fishermen or like that.”

“That’s our best hope, Harlan,” said Travis. “We need to find a spot like that. Fight, struggle, a lot of footprints…signs of humans.”

The river road wound around following the bank, and we came to a heavily treed section with no visible fishing camps or cottages. I pulled over and parked.

“You want to start here, son?”

“Yeah, let’s take the dogs through the trees to the river and search the bank both ways. We can do it in sections, mark it offand move on.”

“Good plan, Harlan. Let’s get started.”

Dad took Max and went one way. Virge and I took Sarge and went the other. All we needed to find was evidence humans had been there in the past couple of days. That would be a start.

We’d been in that area with our eyes down for half an hour when Dad gave us a shout out. “Down here, boys.”

Virge and I ran back to where Dad was, and he had found a spot where a couple of tree branches were broken and there were footprints all smudged up on the damp bank.

“Get some pictures of the footprints, Virge. We’ll widen the search from here. Harlan, push into the trees behind us with the dogs and see what they find.”

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