Dead Man’s Fancy

ALSO BY
KEITH M
C
CAFFERTY

The Royal Wulff Murders

The Gray Ghost Murders

VIKING

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014

Copyright © 2014 by Keith McCafferty

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

McCafferty, Keith.

Dead man's fancy : a Sean Stranahan mystery / Keith McCafferty.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-101-61452-5

1. Private investigators—Fiction. 2. Policewomen—Fiction. 3. Fly fishing—Fiction. 4. Fishing guides—Fiction. 5. Missing persons—Fiction. 6. Animal rights activists—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3613.C334D43 2014

813'.6—dc23

2013036804

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

For my brother, Kevin

“All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.”

—Margaret Atwood,
The Blind Assassin

“If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?”

—Jodi Picoult,
My Sister's Keeper

L
ike many who toil in the murky profession of building words into books or, as writers may privately dare to think of it, turning lead into gold, I work in the dark. Much as I'd like to be able to consult Charles Dickens regarding a plot twist or summon F. Scott Fitzgerald's advice about a turn of phrase, it's just me shining the light, digging with the pick. Some nights, many nights, the gold I mine is fool's gold that floats to the surface and is washed away the next morning; other nights, better nights, it glitters from the bedrock upon which the story is built.

In this manner of working I have never flattered myself as being much different from anyone else. The acknowledgment sections of a few novels to the contrary—so many mentions that one would believe producing a book is a collaboration requiring the manpower of the Normandy Invasion—writing remains a solitary, constantly humbling affair that comes down to one person aspiring to unearth fundamental human truths, or at least tell a compelling story, while stringing together lies summoned from the ether. There's a measure of irony in the fact that one shuts the door on his fellow man in order to write about him, but recognizing the predicament you have put yourself in doesn't seem to alleviate the difficulties.

Those who are truly important in a writer's development belong to a short list indeed, at the top of which is the person who bestows upon him or her the magic of the written word. In my case that is my mother, Beverly McCafferty, whose voice, as she read aloud to me a children's book about a little snake titled
Slim Green
, is among my very first memories. Then came the writers whose books first compelled me to turn the pages myself. They include Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Jim Corbett. I was nine years old when our car broke down and I found myself with two hours to read in a Denver public library, where I chose a story called “The Talla Des Man-eater” in
The Temple Tiger and More Man-eaters of Kumaon
. I opened the book wanting to lead a life of adventure. I closed it wanting to write about it. Rounding out the most important influences are those people who provide the necessary support for the realization of the writer's dream, and so are not among the well-wishers from afar (nice as it is to have them), but loved ones who not only share the infrequent celebration, but far too often suffer the doubts and fear of failure that plague all writers. My wife, Gail Schontzler, who also is my first and most trusted editor, deserves all the credit for keeping body and soul together.

On the professional side of the ledger, I wish to recognize my literary agent, Dominick Abel, as well as the team at Viking/Penguin who help me polish, publish and promote the final effort. They include Kathryn Court, Tara Singh, Scott Cohen, Beena Kamlani, Mary-Margaret Callahan and Rebecca Lang. Independent bookstore owners remain crucial to bringing writers to the attention of the reading public. None has been more helpful to me than Barbara Peters at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Ariana Paliobagis at the Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, Montana. I'd also like to thank Hurricane Isaac, which caused an electrical outage in New Orleans that led to Nevada Barr picking up my second novel,
The Gray Ghost Murders
, to while away a few powerless hours. For her irreverence and encouragement, both personally and professionally, I'm grateful.
Dead Man's Fancy
demanded I have a thorough understanding of the wolf reintroduction effort in the Rockies and its ramifications for those who live among these great predators. Many thanks to all those I have interviewed over the past several years, on both sides of this controversial issue. In particular I'd like to recognize Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologists Julie Cunningham, Justin Gude and Ken Hamlin, and wolf specialist Mike Ross. Special thanks to Robert Millage.

There are winter days in Montana when the office feels cold even with a wood fire and I need more warmth than Rhett, my adopted feral cat, can provide. On these mornings I bicycle through the snow on studded tires to Wild Joe's Coffee Shop, where baristas Marissa Grinestaff, Jenalyn Lorilla, Adam Golder, Corissa Hannemann and Melissa Hoard, along with writer pal Sarah Grigg, make me feel at home, and a little less lonely in a lonely line of work.

Finally, there are the remarkable individuals who inspire my best effort simply because I look up to them in life and don't dare let them down. These include my children, Jessie and Thomas McCafferty, my brother, Kevin McCafferty, and my life-long friend, Karen Basil. And my aunt Jackie Bailie—matchmaker, dog boarder, and doctor of dubious mail-order degrees—who mended spiritually broken children with a wave of her fairy godmother wand, or, when the body needed more succor than a seventy-year-old woman wearing a prom dress and face glitter could provide, passed herself off as a physician and cajoled specialists into seeing patients they otherwise would never have seen.

“You're just whirring away in there, aren't you?” Jackie once told a little boy whose thoughts were so jumbled he found it hard to talk. “Some day you'll be a writer, and I will say I knew you when.”

A
t the sound, Martha Ettinger glanced from the trail, the brim of her hat rising to uncover the early stars. In the foredistance loomed the indigo silhouette of Papoose Mountain. Crooked fingers of pines groped toward the peaks and it was from one of those forests the howl had risen, a deep, sustained note haunted by a higher harmonic that now stirred to song other voices, the lament of the pack dying away to leave her in silence, feeling the beating of her heart.

“What was that, Marth?”

“What do you think it was?” She touched Petal's ribs and pulled alongside her deputy's mount, a gelded chestnut walker that had her Appaloosa by four hands.

“I thought I heard wolves.”

“In the Madison Valley? What are the odds?”

“Actually they're pretty fair, you listen to the ranchers' bellyaching.”

Ettinger switched off her headlamp. “It's called irony, Walt. Of course there are wolves in Montana. Anybody has ears can tell you that.”

“Well, I never heard one before.”

“Really?”

“Not that I could be sure of.”

Martha was asking herself how you could mistake a wolf's howl when three drawn-out notes drifted down from the basin, the first wolf joined by one whose voice was pitched higher, the third higher yet, the chorus recalling to Martha the Inuit folktale of a mother who couldn't find food to feed her children, her wailing becoming howls until she turned into a wolf herself. She told Walt while the horses blew from the climb.

He made a sound like
puh
. “That story don't make no sense 't all,” he said.

“That's why it's called folklore. Come on, we're here for a reason if you haven't forgot.”

“I haven't, but you ask me, that young woman isn't missing because her horse bolted and stranded her on the mountain, she's missing 'cause she swapped the saddle for the pommel. Mark my words, she'll show up tomorrow with a bowlegged walk account a' too much cowboy lovin'.”

“I'd agree with you if it wasn't for the likeliest cowboy calling our number.”

“You want to bet a dinner on it? Bison meat loaf at Ted's Montana Grill if she's shacked with a fella, frog food at Cafe Provence she turns up lost.”

“I don't bet when a person's life could be at stake, but if I had a mind to that's one I'd hope to lose. I wouldn't want to be up there with those lobos serenading my tender flesh.” She clucked to Petal, just one side of her mouth moving, and the horses clopped up the trail into the basin.

—

T
he call had come in three hours after Judy Woodruff took over the second-shift dispatch. Sunset seemed premature to call out the troops for a dude-ranch naturalist slash fly-fishing guide who'd failed to show for a planning meeting with the activities director only an hour before, but the wrangler telling the story of the woman's disappearance was telling it priority backward. When he mentioned that her absence at the meeting prompted him to check the paddock where he found her horse standing outside the rails, riderless and sweated through its blanket, Judy didn't wait for elaboration but immediately patched him through to Sheriff's Sergeant Warren Jarrett. Jarrett reached Martha Ettinger at her home.

“You call up the hasty team?” she said.

“Sure. She's hurt serious, you don't want to lose time on something like this. My guess is she got bucked and they'll find her before we mount up. The wrangler's heading up there to backtrack the trail she was taking. He'll have an hour start on us. No reason for you to come, but I've known you long enough to know you might rather.”

Ettinger stuck her head outside her back door and whistled sharply to round up Goldie, her Australian shepherd. She said, “That's the Culpepper place on Papoose, right? Do they have a sign? I seem to remember making a wrong turn six, seven years ago when old Ollie tickled his tonsils with the barrel of his Winchester.”

“Yeah, well the widow's got it clear marked. A gate big enough for Paul Bunyan to yoke his ox. But just in case you don't pick it up in the headlights, I'll drop off a traffic cone with a reflective strip.”

Martha had picked up Walter Hess in town and filled him in on the drive up the valley. The missing woman—she was twenty-five, named Nanika Martinelli—had taken advantage of ranch policy encouraging the help to participate in trail rides if there was a mount available, and being midway through September, there had been. The wrangler had led his party of yahoos on a standard afternoon outing, a twelve-mile loop trail skirting Lionhead Mountain, when Martinelli pulled alongside to say she was taking the long way back on a branch trail that cupped the headwall of Papoose Basin. The trail added six miles and would get her back to the ranch in about an hour and half. Martinelli being an experienced horsewoman who had soloed before, the wrangler just reminded her to check Boregard's shoes for rocks before sponging and brushing him down.

It struck Ettinger as careless to allow someone to ride off into the wilderness alone, no matter how competent she was sitting saddle. A dude outfit like the Culpepper's held its breath anytime a guest hung a fingernail or hooked himself with a trout fly. Even if Martinelli had signed on the dotted line of the liability clause, it opened the barn door for a lawsuit about as wide as you could push it. But without details it was hard to speculate.

Jason Kent, the incident commander of search and rescue, sat at the communications desk he'd set up in a corner of one of the ranch's unoccupied guest cabins. “Martha, Walt.” No handshakes, the big sandy-haired man with the farmer's tan glanced up at them—Walter Hess, thin, hawk faced, about five ten, Ettinger an inch shorter, solidly built with curly auburn hair, startling blue eyes that were spider-veined from strain and a broad face that was handsome rather than pretty. Kent indicated to Ettinger to bring him a stick of kindling from the stack beside the stone fireplace. He took the stick in his left hand, the one with two missing fingers, swiveled his chair and tapped the topo map he'd pinned to the wall.

“This is the trail Martinelli said she was going to take after leaving the party. It switchbacks up the north side of the basin, contours under the headwall for a mile and a half, then switchbacks down the south side. We have riders going up both legs. The wrangler had an hour start on us, so if she went spurs over stirrups up there, he should have found her by now. But Bucky, Bucky Anderson's the ranch manager, said the young fella saddled up in a rush, went off half-cocked and has no way of contacting us or vice versa.”

Martha's smile was sour. “I know Bucky. We share blood on my father's side. Last I heard he was going to marry lady Culpepper herself, see ranch life from the top rung of the ladder.”

“Like my dad used to tell me,” Kent said. “Son, you can marry more money in five minutes than you can make in a lifetime.”

“Where is Bucky? I'd like to talk to him before Walt and I ride up there.”

Kent shook his head. “I told him you'd want a word, but he's bullheaded and couldn't wait. Reminds me of somebody else I know.” He briefly met Martha's eyes. “Anyway, Bucky knows that country better than anyone. He left a half hour ago, I put him up the south side, the wrangler went up the north. Warren Jarrett's coordinating the containment. We have riders here, here and here. As you can see, we drew the circle pretty big. Plus we have ATVs on the 26 A and B trails. If she's conscious, it would be darned hard for her not to know people are out looking. In case she tried to find her way back on foot, we're going to build bonfires at the trail junctions and shoot off strobes. She doesn't show by morning, Karl Radcliffe will take his Piper Cub up and I'll organize a ground search.”

“Where should Walt and I go?”

“By the time you get somebody to round up mounts . . .” He ran a hand through his crew cut. “Steep country, unfamiliar horses, riding in the dark, I don't have to tell you that's the paraplegic's trifecta.”

“I trailered Petal and Big Mike,” Martha said. “We can be saddled in fifteen minutes.”

“You buy another horse?”

“I'm pasturing Big Mike for a friend. He's bombproof and he's got good feet. Walt shouldn't have any trouble.”

“I can see it isn't worth arguing.” Kent stared at the map and nodded to himself. “You could do worse than go off trail”—he tapped the stick—“directly up the main fork of Papoose. Say that young woman got bucked up along the headwall; if she panicked, she might take a shortcut down through the bottom of the basin. Bucky says there's an elk trail skirts the south side of the creek. But you know elk trails, they go a ways and then they don't. You might get turned around a time or two. Find yourself in a jackpot, just build a fire and hunker down. I'm not drawing anyone off the search to look for a sheriff and a county mountie who ought to be able to take care of themselves.”

Martha grunted. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jase.”

Kent shrugged. He handed her a printout with the description of the missing woman and tapped a few keys on his laptop, inserting Martha and Walt's route into the search grid. “That's all,” he said without looking up. “Just leave a crumb trail and check back on the hour.”

—

“Y
ou sure you know where we are? I thought Jase said the south side of the creek.”

Reining Petal to a stop, Martha dug her GPS out of her jacket pocket and touched a button to illuminate the liquid crystal display. “We
are
on the south side. But we're on the north side of a creek, too. The problem is there's three forks, four if you count the intermittent. I can't be sure which one he was talking about.”

She raised her eyes to the triangle of timber that covered the basin. The gloom of the thickets, eerie under a haloed half moon, was fissured by darker lines marking the tributaries of Papoose Creek. Looking at the map, it seemed to Martha that they had the bases covered. But by god, the country was big. You could hide a herd of cattle in it.

“What's that, Walt?” She hadn't been listening.

“It's going to be blacker than a witch's snatch in there.”

Martha grunted. “And one would know that . . . how?”

“Just saying,” Walt said, “I don't know what we're going to accomplish riding around in the dark. Hell, we haven't even reached the trees and we're already lost.”

“Not lost, just considering the route. You don't have to consider with me. I know you're not as comfortable sitting on critters as I am.”

“No, if you think we're following the right path, I'm right behind you.”

As they climbed into the pines, it was the right path—Ettinger was sure of it. She was less so a half mile later, having to choose when the path forked, and forked again to cross the left-hand creek, the trees leaning in so that she and Walt had to dismount and attach rope leads to the halters. Martha saw immediately that Big Mike was head shy around Walt, who was decent enough with his boots in the stirrups, but leading a horse along an elk trail was a different matter. He was on the wrong side of the horse, for one thing. Martha coached him but Big Mike had Walt's number, and after balking changed tactics and started crowding him.

“Don't let him barge you,” Martha said. “When he gets too close, just push him on the shoulder.” Walt stepped closer and when the horse's left forefoot came down, it came down on the toe of Walt's buffalo hide Tony Lama.

“Jesus, son of Mary!” he shouted, going over backward. The horse snorted and reared. Martha jumped for the lead, got it before it tangled in the brush and, gripping the rope in her right fist, stuck her elbow into the horses' neck to keep it close. She held tight rein and stayed in Big Mike's face until he calmed. “We just about had ourselves a rodeo,” she said.

“I can hear it squishing, Marth.” Walt had pushed himself to a sitting position. “My god, it's like my foot's on fire.”

“Then you better get that boot off before it swells.” She waited for her heart rate to come down and blew out a long breath.

“This is my fault,” she said. “We had no business leading horses in here, even if you were the whisperer himself.”

The bloody sock gleamed in Walt's headlamp. “I shoulda' stayed in Chicago,” he said. “I'd a' been safer on the street.”

“And leave me with no one to insult? Nah, the county needs a man who knows the street. There's more of them in Montana than there used to be, you may have noticed.”

“This isn't the street. Jeez, do you think it's broke?”

“Can you wiggle it?”

Walt winced, the skin around his eyes fissuring in Martha's headlamp. He nodded. “I think he just got the tip. I bet I'll lose the nail, though.” After a moment of silence, he managed a wry smile. “‘I think I just got the tip.' That's something my ex-wife was fond of saying. She was a regular comedienne, Lydia was.”

“I'd say you were lucky enough. Big Mike only weighs about twelve hundred pounds . . .” She stopped, tilting her head to listen. She brought a hand up to worry her jaw.

“Is it the wolves again? I don't care what they say about 'em never attacking. Just thinking about Little Bo Peep out here wandering around in the dark. It gives me the willies. Why—”

“No. Ssshh. It sounded like a whinny.” She tapped at her GPS.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking to see if we're close enough to the headwall to hear one of the searcher's horses. We're,” she waited, “a mile, no, mile and a half from where the trail comes closest. In this timber, I don't think we'd hear a horse that far away.”

“Maybe it's that wrangler's horse. Maybe he saw something that took him off the trail.”

“Maybe. Let's just sit and listen.”