“This is a daunting task, Renz. I would have never known there were this many styles of brands let alone animals to put them on. It’s unbelievable.”
“And we aren’t finding what we’re looking for either.” Renz leaned back, stretched, and checked the time. “We’ve been at this for two hours and just reached the thirty-second county.”
I huffed. “And if we intend to look at the antique brands, we’ll be doing this for days.” I stood, checked the mini fridge for drinks, then closed the door.
“Nothing to your liking?”
“Sure, but I’d rather have a drink at a real bar and get my money’s worth.”
Renz laughed. “Our daily stipend is paying for it, not us.”
I nodded. “I know, but honestly, I just need a break. I don’t think we’re going to find anything looking through brands. Say we find the right one and it’s an antique from some other state from the eighteen hundreds. How in the hell would that help us now?”
“It wouldn’t.”
“Exactly. I guess I was hoping for the right brand to lead us to the right person who’s the killer.” I plopped down in my chair and stared out the window at the distant mountains.
“How many cases do you recall that were easy?”
I stuck out my lower lip. “None. I’ll admit, the way the killer disposes of the bodies is genius. He’s mobile and cunning, and that makes him even more slippery. All we need to do is find that damn ranch. If only—”
“Wait! You forgot to check your emails from Dr. Kingston, the Kansas ME.”
“That’s right. I was so focused on the damn brands, I haven’t looked to see if he emailed us the order of decomp. From the killer’s starting point in Montana, it’ll tell us his route and maybe the day-to-day cattle auctions he hit.” I clicked on my emails, and a message from the doctor had come in. I opened it and read it aloud. Basically, the route was nothing like we’d thought. The killer had gone from Montana to Nebraska then to Missouri, Kansas, Utah, and we’d assumed back to Montana.
“So we pictured counterclockwise because that’s the way we went, but he went absolutely the opposite way.” I highlighted his route on the interactive map and stared at it. “I don’t want to create more work than we need to by checking every auction and dates in those other states. We need something easy.”
“So think like the killer?”
“Or just follow the map through his last victim’s dump site. We know he started in Montana, so logically, he’d return to Montana when his run was over. Green River, Utah, was his last dump site, then he’d go north from there. So what is the most direct route north?”
Renz looked at the map. “I-15 to Butte and Whitehall is where the first body was discovered. Do you think he lives in that area?”
“Not sure, but I bet wherever he lives, it isn’t far from there.”
“Humph.”
I frowned. “What?”
“I’m just remembering what Jeff said.”
“Which part?”
“The part about most of the cattle ranches being closer to the central part of the state. We also saw that cluster of auction houses and stockyards east of Butte.”
“True enough. We’ll have to give the central area a closer look.” A new thought popped into my mind. “It isn’t physically possible to have an entire trailer filled with cattle to take to auction and still be able to offload dead bodies throughout the drive. Either the trailer is retrofitted with a hidden compartment separate from where the cattle are or—”
“Or what?”
“Or he’s a buyer, dumps the bodies along the outbound route, and doesn’t hit the auction houses until his drive home.”
“Not a bad theory, Jade, but it still doesn’t give us the area where he lives. There’s a lot of open country in this state.”
We studied the map even more intensely. I pointed at the spot where US 41 veered off I-15 in a northeasterly direction. “Highway 41 runs with Highway 56 into Montana, and look where it ends up.” I tapped Whitehall on the screen. “Maybe dumping the first body outside Whitehall was just a diversion.”
“Possibly.”
With his finger, Renz traced Interstate 90 east of Whitehall and, after giving that route a closer look, said there were three highways that went north off I-90, and all ended in wide-open areas where ranching would likely be popular. From Livingston, going north on US 89 would take us to White Sulphur Springs. From Big Timber, the northern route on US 191 would take us to Harlowton, and from Billings, the route heading north would end in Roundup, all towns on US 12.
“Each northbound highway off I-90 ends up in a town on US 12 that also runs parallel to I-90. Those roads are just routes that skirt around mountain ranges, and that’s something to keep in mind. We might be focusing too much on the interstate areas because the auction houses are near them, but there are plenty of US highways that make traveling to the central parts of the state easy,” I said.
Renz noted that US 12 ran right out of Helena and traveled east. “Maybe after we talk to Jeff again in the morning, we can take a drive east and have a look at the area. He’d probably know where most of the wide-open spaces are and where ranching is popular.”
I agreed that was a great idea, and from what the map showed us, most of the flat land was east of White Sulphur Springs. “Wow. I just noticed the most logical route the killer would have taken to Nebraska.”
Renz shook his head. “Yep, go figure. We’re familiar with those roads. That’s for damn sure.”
From Billings, Montana, the killer would likely go through Gillette, Wyoming, and Rapid City, South Dakota, two cities we’d been through several times when trying to capture Leon Brady and Gary Rhodes, the criminals who snatched teenaged girls to sell to traffickers. Leon ended up dead, and eventually, we caught up with Gary and apprehended him in Colorado.
“Now that we have a plan for tomorrow, what about the orphanages and adoption agencies from years gone by? Are we checking into that, or is the team taking care of it?”
Renz said that Maureen and the other agents had already begun the process, so we would leave it at that. She knew the right contacts and could cut through the red tape to find out exactly what she needed. She said she would keep us posted.
“Can we stop looking at brands? At least for tonight? My eyes are going blurry.”
Renz laughed. “Yeah, sure. The names we get from Jeff might be more useful anyway, and there’s the possibility of getting that same information from auction houses in the other states the killer passed through. That way, we can look for repetition of any names of customers at auction houses in Utah, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska if we have to.”
“That’s a great idea. Now, as long as we’re done for the night, let’s go have that drink.”