Dead Man’s Fancy (15 page)

“Together with that woman? Probably not since early July. It was the morning the female alpha ran down a cow elk by the bend there opposite the cottonwoods. It's the last kill sighting we had for a while. Look, I really should get back.”

“You said ‘with that woman.' Have you seen this man with anyone else this summer?”

“No, but I left after the Fourth to set up a whale-watching tour in the San Juans.”

Stranahan looked at the lettering on the van. “How long has Simpson Wildlife Tours been bringing clients to the Lamar Valley?” he said.

“Since the reintroduction. My partner and I bought the operation from the original owners four years ago.”

“Then you may have seen this man in past years?” he prompted.

“A couple summers ago, and the summer before that. I don't recall seeing him at all last year.”

“Okay, thinking back a couple years, did you see him in the company of a woman who had long red hair?”

“I saw him with two or three young women, but you're talking about Nicki.”

Stranahan and Katie exchanged glances.

“How come I know her name and not the others? She wasn't like the rest. She was outgoing, very charming. Nicki's the only person I've ever seen who could draw your eye away from a wolf. One of my clients who's a children's book author said her hair was like spun gold that was struck with a match. Why?”

“She's missing,” Katie said. She gave him the short version. “It's been in the papers. You haven't heard?”

“I never knew her last name,” he said.

Katie handed the tour guide one of her cards. “If you see this man, whether he's alone, whatever, I want you to call me. Not after he's left, but as soon as you see him. It's important.”

“There isn't any reception here.”

“Then make an excuse and drive to the Yellowstone Institute. It can't be more than three miles. They'll contact me by radio.”

A woman wearing a perfectly knotted red neckerchief was striding over. “The beta just stood up,” she announced.

A
fter Stranahan picked up his rig at Katie's house—it had been a long day and their good-byes were perfunctory—he drove into West Yellowstone and ducked into Eagles, hoping for a chocolate malt. The soda fountain was closed for the season. Stranahan asked a cashier if he could borrow her phone.

“Ettinger.”

“Did you get the DNA test back?”

“Say ‘Did you get the DNA test back, please.'”

Silence. Then the sound of Martha Ettinger clearing her throat.

“Please,” Stranahan said.

“It's a positive match for Nanika Martinelli. I'm sorry if I sounded flippant. I'll read a statement for the cameras tomorrow afternoon.”

“You don't seem as concerned as I thought you'd be.”

“I am and I'm not. I'm worried because I don't know how the wolf Nazis are going to react, and I'm not because it's closure. We're no longer failing at finding a missing woman because there's no woman to be found. Now all I have to do is kill some wolves hiding out in a mountain range the size of Rhode Island and find out how a man got himself impaled on the antlers of an elk, which has sort of got lost in the shuffle.”

“You still like Bucky for that?”

“Setting aside my prejudice, he's the only one with both the opportunity and a possible motive. It could be that the wrangler's misfortune has nothing to do with the woman disappearing. I'm coming around to the possibility.”

“The reason I'm calling—”

“I know, the girl with the contact lenses.”

“I didn't know you were psychic, Martha.”

“I just got off the phone with Katie.”

“Well, if she told you about her, then she told you about the Lamar and the guy she was there with. It has to be the same man Asena Martinelli suspects of kidnapping her sister.”

“This isn't your concern, Sean.”

“Actually it is. I'm being paid to make it my concern.”

“Let me rephrase. It isn't your business because the park is federal property. Katie will alert the proper authorities of any suspicions she has and they'll take it from there. But surely you can't still think that Nicki is alive. You don't come out the back end of a wolf alive. My advice is give the sister her money back and help us find the wolf pack.

“That's the Martha I know.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Good luck wolf hunting,” Stranahan said, and hung up.

—

S
tranahan opened the south-facing door of Eagles and felt the warmth of the sun. He noticed the big sign to the Paws of Yellowstone Wildlife Center across the street. All he knew about it was what Katie had told him, that it was a glorified zoo where problem bears trapped in the wild and unwanted show business wolves were sent to entertain Yellowstone tourists, most of whom slept in too late to have much hope of a predator sighting in the park. So far, Stranahan wasn't doing much better, his wolf sightings consisting of one rear leg and the two wolves the tour guide had centered in his spotting scope, which he and Katie had observed before they left the Lamar. Magnified thirty times, they were miniature, shimmering figures that gave you a headache if you looked very long.

Stranahan unfolded a ten from his money clip and bought a day pass. The ticket taker told him that the wolves had their second feeding in twenty minutes. She was clearly bored behind her smile and went back to the fantasy novel she'd been reading. A slow day, a calm before the storm. He had a feeling the center would do gangbuster business tomorrow, after Ettinger's press conference.

Outside the back door of the building, Stranahan followed paw prints set in cement, the path winding between cyclone fences with bears to his right, wolves to his left, and ravens perched everywhere. The one bear in the enclosure was lying with the back of his head on the ground, his nose pointing to heaven. He looked as bored as the ticket taker. Two wolves on a hillock were also lying down, their heads resting on crossed paws. Besides being nearly all white, they didn't look much different than German shepherds, just with broader heads and longer legs. The larger of the two half opened its eyes to regard Stranahan, then both wolves abruptly swung around and bounded off. They poured themselves into a small doorway in a stucco building, and Sean heard the door clang shut.

Stranahan entered the public side of the building, which had a large Plexiglas window overlooking the paddock. A man wearing Wellington boots entered from a side door, rubbing a fist into one eye. He introduced himself to the gathered tourists as James, said he was the caretaker and apologized because the naturalist was sick. He said he'd do his best to answer their questions. They were in luck today, he said. It was fish day. Stranahan glanced at the others who shared his luck, a broad-beamed father with two teenage sons who were his spitting image and his wife, who wore overalls over a Hoosiers sweatshirt and would have been equally at home as her husband anchoring an offensive line.

James led them to the big window, on the other side of which wound a manmade stream complete with riffles, pools and boulders. He said that the trout swimming in the stream were donated brood stock from the hatchery outside Bridger. He lectured them a few minutes about wolf hierarchy and told them to keep their eye on the alpha female with the grizzled ruff that was half the size of the other wolves but much more adept at catching trout. He left by the same door he'd entered and a few seconds later Stranahan heard a clang. Six wolves bounded into the paddock and set upon the trout, splashing, plunging their heads, chopping the water into a froth and pouring over and under one another in a liquid ballet. Within a few seconds the little female caught a trout, dropped it flopping on the bank, went back and caught another, then another, not bothering to eat or even to kill them.

The man returned to explain that the wolves had been fed and weren't hungry, so even though they would eventually polish off the trout on the bank, the fishing was more of a game than anything else. Stranahan asked what the wolves had been fed and was surprised to hear that it was elk, and that their diets consisted almost entirely of game meat donated by hunters.

James was wrapping his hair into a ponytail with a rubber band. “Either they bring it here or we drive out to meet them in the field. In the winter, we'll haul whole elk carcasses into the enclosure so they can eat the way they would on a natural kill, but we can't do that until the grizzly bears have denned up. The smell would attract them into town.”

“Do you really think a wolf could have eaten that girl?” It was the woman in overalls. “When we heard it on the radio, some man said it would be the first person killed by a wolf in the United States. It's just horrible to think of, isn't it? But then a wolf has to eat, too. Nature's just cruel, that's all there is to it.” Her eyes were bright.

“You'll have to forgive my wife,” the man said. “Kathy's an . . . overly sensitive type.”

“Oh, I can't help it, you know that.” Now she was dabbing with a tissue. “Look at me. It's just the way the Lord made me.”

James the caretaker blinked his spider-veined eyes.

“Stories of man-eating wolves have been passed down by Native Americans for hundreds of years”—his voice had assumed a professorial tone—“but when they got guns the killing stopped. Wolves are very intelligent and know when man poses a danger and when he's fair game. The reason you read more about man-eating wolves in Europe is because the people had pens to write about it but not the guns to stop it, and so the history of wolves preying upon people overseas lasted much longer than it did here, into the early twentieth century. In the park where they are protected, the wolves are again losing their fear of humans.”

“But don't they hunt them in Montana?” the woman asked. “And use those awful leghold traps?”

“Yes, but the park acts as a reservoir and wolves are continually migrating outside the borders, so there is a transfusion of fearlessness. And it's justice, isn't it? We kill them. Why shouldn't they avenge their persecution?”

James said he had to go clean the bear paddock and told them to stay as long as they wanted to observe the wolves. When he'd gone, the woman brought her nose up to the window.

“They're so beautiful,” she said. “Oh, I just can't think about it.”

Stranahan thought about it, though. He thought about it as he walked back into town and he thought about it while he nursed a beer at the Wild West Pizzeria. By the time he entered the Book Peddler to order a coffee for the road he was thinking about something else. It was an hour and a half drive back to Bridger, but Katie's place on Cougar Creek was just eight miles up 191. He could stop there and offer to help bake dog biscuits. See where it led. He knew where it would lead.

Stranahan was a one-woman man. He'd never cheated on his wife, even after it became clear the marriage would fail. He'd not once thought about straying while under the spell of Vareda Beaudreux, and during the seven months he had lived with Martinique, right up until she left for veterinary school last February, well, he may have had the occasion to turn his eyes to follow the walk of another woman, but he'd remained firmly and happily monogamous. But the separations, the months that passed when Martinique was a voice on the telephone, and lately much less of that as she seemed to pull away, they wore on him. He wasn't made of the stone that made a mountain, and unlike a mountain he could not endure cold forever.

“You'll regret it,” he said out loud as he got behind the wheel of the Land Cruiser. “In the morning, you'll regret it.”

In the morning, Katie made buckwheat pancakes.

S
am Meslik was tightening the cinch straps on Stranahan's Adirondack Guideboat, securing it to the trailer, when Stranahan pulled up to the shop. He hadn't spoken to Asena Martinelli since the hairs had been positively identified as belonging to her sister and wasn't looking forward to breaking the news, if she hadn't yet heard from Ettinger.

“Kimosabe,” Sam said. “Long time no see.”

“Is Asena around?”

“She's been hibernating in the barn. I told her I'd take her to Wade Lake for a boat ride, see she got some sunshine. Then I got a call for a guide float, so now I'm torn between fishing for fun and fishing for my groceries. Maybe you can help me out of my predicament?”

Stranahan nodded. “Sure. I'll take her out.”

“You look a little unkempt. Hard night?” Sam smiled lasciviously.

“I stayed over in West.”

Sam worked a finger through a hole in a T-shirt that read Honey Badger Don't Care. He stirred his chest hair. “Who's the unlucky lady?”

“Nobody you know. Plus it's not what you think.”

“Martinique know about this nobody I know.”

“Martinique seems to be working her way out of the picture. Her choice, not mine.”

Sam grunted sympathetically. “She was the one, buddy. Don't let her get away.” He turned toward the barn door. “I'll rouse Sleeping Beauty. She's a half decent fly caster if you can get her to pick up a rod. Nothing like the Venus, but the woman can fish some.”

—

“S
am told me there was a story behind this boat, that you'd tell it better than he could.”

She was sitting in the stern, facing Stranahan as he swept the oars, the tapering blades flexing, adding impetus to the stroke. The lake was capped with froth-edged wavelets that the sleek craft cut like a knife, the pine bank where they had launched pulling away, the eagle they had been watching in a tree diminishing until all they could see was the white dot of its head. Stranahan was, had been, always would be a river fisherman, but he had come to appreciate the gifts of lake fishing. The gentle rocking of the boat acted as a soothing balm. You could feel your heart rate go down.

He cocked a forefinger.

“That hole under the gunwale is where a bullet went through. About a foot to the left and we wouldn't be having this discussion.” He began to relive the night on Quake Lake the summer before last, when two brothers had died and he had nearly joined them, losing four pints of blood when the blade of a custom-made hunting knife severed an artery in his shoulder. The story took them to the shoals at the far end of the lake.

“How did you come to own the boat?” Asena asked.

“Because it had been used in the commission of a crime, it became county property. The department held an auction of confiscated goods and I was high bidder.”

“Isn't it like reliving the nightmare every time you take it out?”

“On the contrary. It reminds me how precious life is. That's why I never got around to patching the hole.” He hesitated. “Asena, I hate to be the one who tells you—”

“You aren't. The sheriff called this morning, before she went on TV.”

“I'm sorry.”

He busied himself rigging a fluorocarbon leader onto a smoke-colored fly line. “When we get back to Sam's, I'm returning your money,” he said, speaking around the olive damselfly nymph pattern pinched between his lips. He tied the nymph to the tippet and handed Asena the fly rod. “You don't have to do this, go fishing, you know.”

“What should I be doing? Tell me what I should be doing.”

Stranahan had no answer.

“I didn't think this was the season for damselflies,” she said.

“It isn't. My hunch is the trout take it for a leech. Whatever they take it for, they take it.”

Stranahan had only to see Asena roll the line off the water and double haul once to know that it was an injustice for Sam to have called her a “half decent” caster. She was an excellent caster and quickly picked up the retrieve that imitates the undulating pulse and pause swimming motion of a damsel nymph.

“I didn't hire you just to find my sister. I hired you to find the man who hurt her, who made her . . . damaged goods. Did you find him?”

“Don't do this to yourself, Asena. Let it go.”

She cast again. There was steel in her voice. “I asked, ‘Did you find him?'”

“It won't bring her back.”

A trout cruising like a missile over the marl bottom took the fly and ran to the backing knot before Asena coaxed it to the net. Stranahan released it and turned to her.

“You're right, you're entitled to know.”

She put the rod down while Stranahan told her about his trip with Katie to the Lamar. Her body became rigid when she heard about the tour guide's history with the man who'd been seen with her sister the summer before last. He watched her pull back into herself and look away at something only she could see, or perhaps at nothing. When he was finished, she spoke, her voice flat, her face expressionless.

“I want you to find him,” she said. “I don't need you to believe that my sister is alive. It's enough that I believe it, and I don't care if that makes me look naive or unwilling to face reality. I have to know. A couple weeks salary is a small price to pay to know. Do you understand?”

For half an hour clouds had been building and Sean pointed them out. Though Adirondack Guideboats were stable craft—hunters used them to haul moose as far back as the late 1800s—Wade Lake was no place to be when the wind came up. Asena asked if she could row back and Stranahan was not surprised that she was as adept on the oars as she was with his six-weight. He relaxed while the guideboat bisected the waves over the graded depths, the water shading from green to deep blue that went black when the clouds covered the sun.

“This lake looks really deep,” she said.

“It is. But Cliff Lake, the one we saw driving down the hill, is deeper—one hundred twenty feet right off the boat ramp. The state record rainbow trout was caught there back in 1952. Twenty pounds.”

She whistled. Today's hat was an old fedora Sean had hung on a nail at Sam's fly shop as a wall decoration; it was pinned with rusty trout flies and she'd lined it with a bandana so it wouldn't fall off.

She caught him looking and apologized for not asking if was okay to wear it.

“I'm not looking at the hat,” he said. “I'm looking at the woman under the hat. I suppose you have to get used to people staring.”

She took the comment seriously.

“I never understood why men looked at me. It embarrassed me. Nicki had to tell me. My little sister, she was more worldly in that way, it was maybe the only way she was.”

Stranahan said. “I'm only looking at you because you cast a tight fly line.”

She dipped her head so that the hat obscured her face.

He reached over and lifted her chin with his forefinger. “Made you smile, didn't I?”

—

S
am was firing up the charcoal when they pulled up to the fly shack. A marinated loin of Kobe beef sweated blood on a platter on the side wing of the grill. He said it had been a tip from the client he'd fished that morning, squeezed Stranahan's shoulder by way of greeting, then removed the fedora Asena was wearing and kissed her on the top of the head. She put the hat back on and tilted the brim down, but not before Sean caught a glimpse of coppery hair. It was the first time he'd seen her without a hat and she looked younger and more vulnerable than the woman who'd fished from his boat. She excused herself to wash up. Killer jumped off the porch to follow her into the barn.

“Woman seems to have stolen my dog,” Sam said. “They've become damned near inseparable in, what's it been, one week? Lord help the man who steps in between them or looks at her the wrong way.”

He jutted his chin toward the cooler on the porch. “Beer me, Stranny.”

Sean rummaged in the cooler. “Shadow Caster or Clothing Optional Pale Ale?”