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Montana. He’d better alert the desk
soon so they could pass it to somebody.
    Maybe there was something out on this. The keys clicked
on Reed’s computer keyboard as he called up the newswires, entering terms like
“Montana”, “girl” and “missing” in the search mode. In seconds, one story
appeared on his screen. A short one slugged LOST GIRL. It just moved out of Kalispell,
Montana.
    KALISPELL, MT--Searchers began combing the Rocky
Mountain foothills of Glacier National Park for a 10-year-old girl whose
parents reported her missing to park authorities earlier today.
    The girl’s family told park rangers that she had
wandered from their backcountry campsite along the Grizzly Tooth Trail several
miles deep into the park’s rugged northern sector, near the Canadian border.
    She was last seen some 24 hours prior to the time her
father alerted authorities after hiking alone out of the trail. The isolated
area where she is lost is known as the Devil’s Grasp.
    The girl, whose name has not yet been released, is
believed to be from California.
    Reed’s investigative juices stirred. The wire item was
the first take on the case so far. No mention of San Francisco or suspicions.
Maybe he had a bit of a scoop. The story moved minutes ago. She’d been lost for
at least twenty-four hours, which meant she’d spent a night in the high
country. Reed thought of Zach, nearly the same age. Not much time before it got
critical for her. Reed grew up in Great Falls. He was no backcountry hiker but
he’d visited the Rockies enough to know that getting lost up there could be
fatal.
    Reed rubbed his chin. Aside from the elements, police
had suspicions. Routine police procedure to check out the nearest and dearest
in such cases. But all this other stuff about going full. Flying San Francisco cops to the mountains? Was that all just Inspector Harry Lance, or was there
something to this? Why should Reed care? His vacation started in a few hours.
    What if she was already dead?
    Reed remembered one late night long ago sitting with
some of the old Homicide bulls in Room 450 at the Hall of Justice. They were in
an unusually friendly mood giving him their thoughts on the perfect murder.
Some suggested “a wilderness accident”. You push them off a cliff, and whoops !
A fall. No witnesses. Not likely any physical or trace evidence. Just the
killer’s conscience. Maybe motive, but you cannot be convicted on that. And we
don’t have a body for a while. Decomposition and animals make an autopsy
useless. Killer wins; justice loses. The deceased is not avenged.
    A wilderness accident. Reed chewed on that.
    “Tom, you’ve got that look in your eye,” Molly Wilson,
the reporter who sat next to him, returned from interviewing a fingerprint
expert for a feature. Her bracelets clinking as she typed. “What gives?”
    Wilson was Reed’s partner at the
paper. Surviving the Keller case together and Reed’s marital strain had
strengthened their relationship. They had become better friends. She was an
astounding writer, a superb reporter. With a brilliant sunrise smile and auburn
hair, she boasted a figure that turned heads, especially in Copland.
    “Pal, she is so easy on the eyes,” a recently-divorced
FBI agent told Reed. The reporter had to burst his bubble, telling him Molly
was sorta-kinda dating Manny Lewis, a heavy-hitter with GQ looks at the D.A.’s
office.
    “You home? Care to tell me what’s on your mind, usher
boy?”
    Reed told her everything and Wilson immediately logged
in to the Star’s computerized data files. “Suspicious wilderness
accident. That sort of thing has happened. There was that case not long ago in Wyoming.” Molly’s keyboard was clicking.
    “Here it is, a story we ran from from the Casper
Star-Tribune --a dad was hiking with his five-year-old daughter. He reports
she fell or was lost near a gorge in Yellowstone. Rangers search for days. Dad
slips away. When they find her body, an autopsy shows she had