Lewis and clark County Montana Sheriffs Department Investigator Cassandra Dewell winced when a pair of headlights broke over a rise onto a long treeless bench in the foothills of the Big Belt Mountains north of Helena. She was on the worst assignment of her nascent career, and she hoped it would be a failure. If she was successful, her partner-a dark legend, her mentor, named Cody Hoyt-would likely lose his job and go to prison.
When the headlights appeared she was eating from a small box of chocolate-covered cake donuts, playing that stupid game she played with herself. One every hour, just to "keep her energy up." It had been three hours and the box of twelve was gone.
She was parked high on a windswept ridge. Her position gave her a sweeping view of the valley below, and a wide angle on the only two-track that led from the county road to the murder house. On the car seat next to the empty donut box was a departmental camera equipped with a telephoto night vision lens.
Cassie’s eyes burned with fatigue. She’d not seen her son in twelve hours and her mother was angry with her. But when she recognized the dark outline of the vehicle below as it switched off its lights and continued slowly down the road toward the house, she said, “Goddamn you, Cody.”
He drove slowly in the dark, squinting over the wheel of his departmental Ford Expedition, trying to see the two-track road, but he mostly drove by feel. When the front tires began to drift out of the ruts he nudged the wheel and put them back. Although it was cold outside, in the low thirties, he kept his driver’s side window down. He could smell pine and sage and dust from his wheels. The sky was clear, filled with stars, and there was enough of a moon that the twin tracks of the road appeared pale and chalky.
On the seat next to him was a wrinkled paper sack filled with items that warmed his heart.
He was working late to plant evidence that, he hoped, would lead to the arrest and conviction of a reprobate named Brantley “B. G.” Myers. Planting evidence required stealth, skill, and planning. Cody was up for the job. In fact, it was one of his specialties.
The road was in the open on the bench. To his right, the terrain rose up and out of view. To his left it maintained a plateau for a mile or so and then sloped off into a massive swale. There was a small lake reflecting the starlight and moonlight in the basin of the swale. A rim of ice framed the open water along the banks of the lake. Ducks and geese covered the lake like errant punctuation. To the right of a road leading down to the lake was the dark low-slung rectangle of a rambling log home—the crime scene he was about to disturb.
He crept along, hoping he wouldn’t hit a cow or an elk on the road, hoping he wouldn’t drive right off it and have to use his headlights to get back on.
Nestled in the trees on the top of the hill to his right, three-quarters of a mile away, were three cabins. Each was at least five hundred yards away from the other.