Dead Man’s Fancy (12 page)

T
he biology lab was a new addition to the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks complex. Julie McGregor, dressed in scrubs under a camo jacket, led Martha Ettinger through the Quonset hut past a row of confiscated game animals hanging from the rafters, their heavy odor coloring the air. McGregor spoke as she walked, sketching the story of the animals as they passed by.

“Spike bull. Hunter said he saw a brow tine. Funny how eyesight goes to hell when an elk's in range. Mule deer, uh-oh, wrong side of the fence. Landowner turned him in. Whitetail, guy told an interesting story. Said he was hunting from a tree stand. Drew on a buck and followed the blood trail to two dead deer. Near as he could figure, the arrow passed through the buck, must have glanced off the ground and nailed the doe, which he never saw 'til after.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Actually I know him. He's an ethical hunter and didn't have to turn himself in. He could have just kept packing venison and no one would have been the wiser. So yeah, I do.”

“You get many illegally shot wolves?”

“Not in archery season. Rifle season, a few.”

Inside the lab, Ettinger shrugged off her jacket and hung her utility belt from a hook.

“What are you packing, if you don't mind my asking?” the game biologist said. She was eyeing the handle of the revolver.

“Ruger Redhawk .357 magnum.”

“I have the LCR version.”

“I didn't think biologists carried sidearms.”

“It's up to us. I carry it in the field, not that I'm really afraid of anyone but it gives me gravity. Otherwise the hunters would just think here's some bitty girl who looks like a boy. Most guys think I'm a lesbian anyway. My hair, you know.” She ruffled her mannish-looking mop of dirty blond hair.

Ettinger nodded sympathetically. As a woman in a man's world, she knew only too well that authority came at a cost. She looked beyond McGregor to the woman sitting before the steel specimen table, arranging tools in a neat line. This time she was determined to get off on the right foot.

“Thanks for coming, Georgeanne,” she said.

The CSI turned and waved. Her eyes were like saucers behind her glasses. “Is it in there?”

Ettinger nodded. “It's just the one stool. I was hoping our tracker would find more, but this was all.”

“Oooh, goody.” A conspiratorial whisper: “Let's have a look.”

I'll get used to her
, Martha thought.

Ettinger gave Wilkerson the sealed evidence bag, noticing how small her hands were. Wilkerson teased the sample onto an examining plate while McGregor took photos and started a stool sample entry in her computer.

“Looks like a skinny yam,” Wilkerson said. “I've never seen wolf scat before.” She flipped the switch to her professional voice. “Julie, what are we looking at, besides the hair, which I'll tell you right now is human?”

“We have elk hair and some fish bones, probably trout. I'll have to dissect the stool to find out what else he's eaten.”

“Can you get the hair out intact?” Ettinger said.

McGregor shook her head. “The way a wolf's digestive system works, it wraps animal hair around the bone chunks the wolf swallows, so the sharp edges can't cut the intestinal lining. Pretty cool when you think about it.”

“Well, do the best you can.”

The next time McGregor looked up, nearly an hour had passed on the laboratory clock. She stretched her arms over her head. “People tell me I look at too much poop,” she said.

Wilkerson had sealed the human hairs that McGregor had isolated in an uncontaminated evidence bag. There were ten strands, one nearly a foot in length and four with intact follicles, probably enough for a nuclear DNA workup, Wilkerson thought. The stool on the examining plate was now in a dozen sections, several sections showing pink pieces of elk bone. What was of interest, McGregor addressed her comment to Ettinger, was what wasn't in the stool, which were any bone chips that looked human.

“Now if we had the actual wolf,” she said, “we could analyze the carcass. I could take a piece of wolf bone, trace the elements that compose it, which are derived from the protein of its prey, and I could tell you the exact makeup of the wolf's diet over the course of its life. What percent elk, what percent deer, what percent bird, human, you name it.”

“It's called stable isotope analysis,” Wilkerson added. “You are what you eat.”

“Fascinating.” Ettinger massaged her face with her right hand. “Let me ask you something. Can you tell me with absolute certainty that these human hairs passed through the gut system of a wolf? Wouldn't there be a measurement of decomposition you could use, or am I exhibiting my ignorance?”

McGregor shook her head. “That would be hard. What determines if you can digest food is whether or not you have a gut system that contains the specific enzymes necessary to digest that food. Hair is composed of keratin, same as hooves and toenails. Wolves don't have the proper enzymes, so it passes through the system undigested. Of course that's a good thing for mister wolf. If he digested the hair, then he wouldn't have anything to wrap around the bone chips to protect his intestines.”

Ettinger pursed her lips.

Wilkerson spoke up. “What you're asking is if someone could have planted the hairs in the stool.”

Ettinger nodded. “I have to eliminate the possibility.”

“To answer your question, the way Julie knows that the hairs were ingested by a wolf is the physical evidence conveyed by the stool. You noticed how intricately the human hairs were woven through all the elk hair. There's no way a person could have done that.”

Ettinger
tich-tich
ed out of the corner of her mouth. This was going to cause an uproar in the press. The wolf haters would have a field day. They were going to start forming posses.

“Thanks for making my day so much easier,” she said to the two women.

S
ean Stranahan picked up the
Bridger Mountain Star
that was rolled up in his cubby hole at the office of the cultural center and carried it up the flight of stairs to his studio. He plugged in an electric tea kettle and sat down at his fly-tying table. The story was front- page banner, above the fold.

Wolf Suspected in Missing Woman Case

by Gail Stocker/Star Reporter

The Region Three Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks laboratory has confirmed finding human hair in wolf scat discovered yesterday near the Palisades boat launch and campground on the Madison River. The ledges where the scat was deposited are about five miles from Papoose Basin, where Nanika Martinelli, 25, disappeared during a trail ride from the Culpepper Guest Ranch September 14th.

Sheriff Martha Ettinger said the hair will be analyzed by the state crime lab to determine if it came from the missing woman.

“It's too early to conclude a connection to Miss Martinelli,” Ettinger said.

Martinelli disappeared the same night that Grady Cole, 23, a wrangler at the Culpepper Ranch was found dead in the backcountry, impaled on an elk antler. The coroner's office is holding an inquest to determine if it was an accident.

A signpost, said Jacob Thorn, the University of Montana graduate student who discovered the scat during a routine. . . .

Stranahan's desk phone rang.

“You still want to fish the Kootenai?” It was Carter Monroe, the Lincoln County sheriff.

“I do.” Stranahan poured hot water over some loose leaf Darjeeling second flush, one of his few indulgences. “Next time I promise not to smell like Love Potion Twenty-nine,” he said.

Monroe laughed. “I sent you a package yesterday. Did you get it?”

“Not yet, but I haven't gone down for the mail. It usually doesn't come until about ten o'clock.”

“I went through Martinelli's desk at the cabin. There was a hidden drawer with some of the old man's journals. They're written in French. Maybe you can find someone to translate. Of course this may be moot now that you have the hair. What's the background on that?”

They talked a few minutes about the discovery at the Palisades. Stranahan hesitated when the conversation wound down, then briefly sketched his meeting with Asena Martinelli. He didn't want to betray her confidence, but wondered how much Monroe knew about Nicki's involvement in the Clan of the Three-Clawed Wolf and whether mention of its charismatic leader had reached his ears.

The singing silence in the line was palpable.

“It's interesting you brought this up,” Monroe said at length. “We did look at a man for the letter writing. One of my deputies questioned him, but he was never brought into the office and there would have been nothing to hold him on. But there's something else—”

“What letters?”

“The sister didn't tell you? Some game rangers, elk outfitters, hunting guides, other people involved in the wolf controversy—there were about twenty in all—received threatening letters. Old man Martinelli got one. Nothing ever stemmed from the letters, but they were ominous in tone. I can't remember the exact wording. The reason they were brought to my attention is they were written in blood. It was human blood.”

“No, I hadn't heard.”

“Well, like I said, nothing came of them. They were postmarked in Missoula, so that means they could have been sent from anywhere in the western part of the state. Not much help. A town drunk copped to it after it was in the newspaper, but he's copped to half the crimes in the county. Would you like me to see if we still have one filed away?”

“Yes.” Stranahan wondered why Asena hadn't brought up the topic of the letters, but then she'd stayed in Canada. Unless Nicki told her, she'd never have known.

“If I find one, I'll scan it and attach it to an e-mail. What's your address?”

“I don't have one.”

“You don't own a computer?”

“Yes, it has a satellite connection for the Internet, but it doesn't work half the time.”

“Do you have a smart phone?”

“I had a flip phone, but I threw it in the lake.”

“I guess you must be one of those retro detectives. Gun in a shoulder holster, bottle in the desk drawer.”

“I don't own a gun, but I do have a fifth of The Famous Grouse and you're spot-on about the desk drawer. Lower right hand. Can I still be a detective?”

“I like it,” Monroe said. “Shades of Phillip Marlowe. But I don't see how you get anything done.”

Stranahan gave Monroe Ettinger's personal e-mail address to send the letter to, in case he found one to scan.

“The other reason I called,” Monroe said, “well, two reasons. We found pillowcases on a clothesline in the backyard. They had bloodstains but had been washed, probably in the creek, so the DNA is degraded. Big thing was we dug the slugs out of the cellar—.45 caliber pistol bullets. We found five. You're a lucky man.”

“I know I am.”

“Since they're evidence of a homicide attempt, I can't send them to you without an official transfer request.”

“I understand. I still think it was a woman's voice I heard that night.”

Monroe's “possibly” was unencouraging. “Like I said, I don't know if this helps.”

Stranahan thanked him and was putting down the receiver when a question occurred to him, but Monroe had hung up. He dialed him back.

“What was the guy's real name? Asena Martinelli said Nicki called him Amorak. Or that was what the man told her to call him.”

Stranahan could hear the air escaping Monroe's lungs.

“I was afraid that might be the question. I looked back through the log and we dropped the ball. The deputy who questioned him about the letters asked for his ID and he said it was in the tent where he was staying, at a campground on Lake Koocanusa. He said his name was F-something, Fencer or Fercer, something like that. F-something Amorak. That's what the deputy recalls. He was busy and the guy said he'd stop by the office with his driver's license. He didn't, and we didn't follow up because the drunk copped to the letters and the deputy was new and didn't know the drunk's history. But that's no excuse.”

They promised to fish the Kootenai soon and Stranahan replaced the receiver on the phone. His tea was cold. He drank it and pondered what to do with the day. The only reason he'd driven into Bridger was to keep an appointment with Asena Martinelli, whom he'd met at the ranch yesterday after his visit to the Palisades. By the time he got there, Ettinger had already called him to confirm that the hair was human. Asena had greeted him at her cabin with her arms folded and listened impassively as he related the story of finding it in the wolf scat. She'd erected a wall around herself; it had been there from hello and he didn't know what to make of it. It wasn't exactly denial, but rather as if she were the victim of personal injustice. It didn't seem to be so much about her sister.

Then she'd done something odd. They'd been talking on the porch of the cabin when, midsentence, she had turned a circle on the heel of her cowboy boot. It was spontaneous, something a young girl might do to flare out her skirt. When she was facing him again, a different facet of her personality emerged. The vulnerable person he'd seen only glimpses of was standing before him, trembling with emotion. Her eyes were bright and her words tumbled out in a rush.

“I have to think she's alive, I just have to.” She took his right hand with both of hers and brought it to her chest, squeezing it so hard that the blood ran to his fingertips. “In here. I can feel it. We were so close, I would know it if she was dead and I don't, I don't know that. When I close my eyes I can still see her, I can hear her in my head, I can feel her in my heart. Will you help me? Oh, you must help me.”

“There now,” Stranahan said, and immediately regretted the remark. It was something you'd say to a child, and the woman pressing his hand against the soft swell of her breast was far from a child. But when she stepped away from him, a crispness came back into her voice. “I want to hire you.” The girl who'd wheeled on her heel was no longer before him. She'd been replaced by a woman with both feet on the ground. “I checked my bank statements and I can hire you for a week, once you're free from your obligation to the county.”

“Why don't we wait until the hair is matched to your sister's, if it's matched? There's no sense throwing your money away.”

“I don't believe I would be doing that. This Amorak, if he's back and he's taken her, I don't know what he'll do with her. I think he'd kill her if she resisted him. As you told me yesterday, time isn't on her side.” Stranahan had reluctantly agreed to acept her as a client and they were to meet at his office at ten this morning.

It was ten.

Stranahan went down the stairs to retrieve his mail and found the package Monroe had sent. He carried it up to his office, and she was standing outside his door. She must have come in from the south entrance. He saw her looking at the lettering etched into the glass.

BLUE RIBBON WATERCOLORS
Private Investigations

“I keep meaning to have that last bit removed,” Stranahan said.

“Are you a licensed detective?”

“As of this year I'm officially licensed as a private investigator in the Treasure State. Much to the dismay of Sheriff Ettinger, I'm afraid.”

“Do you two have a thing going on? I sensed something.”

“Define ‘thing.'” He opened the door and ushered her in. “I'll have you sign a standard contract, but only because you insist. I won't charge you a dime if it's proven that your sister was killed by a wolf.”

She opened her purse and produced a wad of bills wrapped in a rubber band. “That's for the week and there's another thousand for expenses. I actually do make money, even if it's Canadian money. I want your full attention. Are you still working for the county?”

“As of this morning, no. The focus of the investigation has shifted to the wolf. There will be a hunt now, but it won't be a manhunt.”

“Yes, I understand that.”

She shifted her attention from him to take in the studio, her eyes stopping on a nude study in muted shades of gray that looked out of place among the angling art.

“The subject was a woman I did a job for in Boston,” Stranahan said. “The client who bought it traded it back to me for a watercolor. He said his wife told him he could stare at all the fish he wanted, but she didn't like him looking at another woman's body every day. The strange thing about being an artist is you sell your children and never see more than a few of them ever again. I was glad to get this one back.”

“You're a very good artist.”

“A critic once called me the ‘poor man's Ogden Pleissner.'”

“Don't sell yourself short,” Asena said seriously. “When this is over, when we get Nicki back, I'd like you to paint her. She's so beautiful and . . .” Her voice broke. “And I have so little to . . .”

She came into his arms and he held her, feeling the whole front of her press up against him.

“I'm okay,” she said. “I'm so sorry.” Her lashes brushed his cheek, but when she stepped back her eyes were dry and didn't seem to be able to focus. It was the second time she'd sought the security of his embrace. In the tipi, when she'd said how relieved she was he hadn't been shot, her arms reaching for him had seemed the most natural thing in the world. And when she'd brought his hand to her chest at the ranch, the yielding push of her breast against his skin, he had not read anything sexual into the gesture. But this felt like a seduction. She'd pressed against him as a woman presses against a man, not as someone grieving for a loved one.

He glanced over her shoulder at the package on the desk. He'd meant to open it in her presence; now that he puzzled over her motives, he was hesitant. He forestalled his decision by asking when she was heading back to British Columbia.

“I packed up my things from the ranch. But I'm not going home until we find her. They can get someone to fill in for a couple weeks where I work. Your friend Sam offered to let me stay in his barn, the room where Nicki lived. It's a way of being close to her.”

Stranahan remembered the letters, the ones signed in blood, and wondered again if she had known about them. He decided to wait and see if Monroe sent one before broaching the subject.

“I'm not leaving this room until I see you put the money into your safe,” she said.

Without a word, Stranahan took the stack of bills to the squat black safe in the corner of the room. He'd picked it up at a garage sale and the combination was three-zero-zero-six, like the popular rifle cartridge called the thirty-aught-six. It was the first combination any thief in the state would try.

“What's this?” Asena said, picking up the package on Stranahan's fly-tying table and making at least that decision easy for him.

“I was hoping you might tell me,” he said.