Dead Man’s Fancy (19 page)

“Alone?”

“When we saw him he was alone.”

Ettinger asked where the man had camped, and they drove to a riverside site. A rectangle of blanched grass showed the footprint of the tent. No litter, no trash in the fire ring. He'd been a clean camper.

—

T
he question, now what? hung in the air as they drove back through the valley, Ettinger fingering her badge, another in a long line of what she called her “new bad habits.” She felt a pricking against her breast and realized the fly she'd won playing poker at the clubhouse was still in her shirt pocket. She fingered it out. It had gone through the wash, the dyed feathers leaving a reddish orange stain on the material.

“This is your fault, Sean,” she said, showing him the stain.

“Biggest fish I hooked in my life took that fly,” Stranahan said. “A steelhead in British Columbia, where I was commissioned for some paintings.” For a moment he was back on the Kispiox River on a run called Silver Bear, two thousand miles to the north.

“Sam told me whoever won the pot got to name it. I decided Dead Man's Fancy. In honor of Grady Cole. He wouldn't be dead if he hadn't got involved with a flame-haired woman.” She snapped her fingers. “Pull into the Blue Moon. Let's bat this thing around.”

“Drinking on the job, huh?”

“Who's drinking on the job? I'm hungry and they got a jukebox with ‘Crazy' on it. I just love Patsy Cline.”

They ordered, she got change for the jukebox and waited until the song finished, then tipped her iced tea back and smacked her lips. She'd carried the fly-rod case into the bar and pulled out the rolled-up topo map that Stranahan had seen on the wall in her home office.

“Something the wolfer said got me thinking. Help me pin down this map.”

Ettinger had drawn a red circle at the site of the dead elk, where the wrangler had met his fate, another on the slope farther up toward the headwall of the basin where they had found Martinelli's hat. She'd also marked the trail junction where Martinelli had left the organized saddle ride to go off on her own. The trails were marked in dotted lines.

“So what's visible from just about anywhere on this map?”

“Papoose Mountain?”

“You're warm.”

“I don't know, you tell me, Martha.”

“The sky, that's what's visible. And what do you see in the sky?”

“Clouds?”

“You see birds. Anybody hunts will tell you that you kill an elk, you don't have time to fill out your tag before you have ravens circling and whiskey jacks dancing on the branches. Wolves don't cover their kills. Anything they bring down draws birds.”

“Okay.”

“So let's back up to the afternoon Martinelli disappeared. Why did she leave the trail ride? I'm waiting for the shoe to drop.”

“She saw birds?”

Ettinger nodded. Their plates had arrived, buffalo burgers and fries. Ettinger took a bite.

“That's a good burger.” She wiped her mouth with her napkin.

“The birds were the trigger. She's a lobo lover, there are wolves in the basin that they've been hearing down at the ranch, she sees scavenger birds, it only makes sense they're circling a wolf kill. I'll go a step further and say it was probably the wrangler who saw them first and pointed them out.”

“That's speculation.”

“Then help me speculate.”

“Okay, if the wrangler spotted the birds, why didn't he report it in the nine-one-one?”

“Put yourself in his position. If he says she'd gone off looking for wolves and he was the one who told her where to find them, how's it make him look? No, he keeps that part to himself. Plus, when he called he was worried, he was in a rush to get up there, he didn't have time to go into detail. My gut tells me he couldn't have stopped her from going if he'd wanted to.” She nodded to herself. “All along I've been trying to figure out how the tracks of three different people ended up at the same spot on the mountain. If we assume Martinelli went to investigate what she thought was a wolf kill, and Grady Cole rode off trying to find her, it only makes sense he'd look where he'd seen the birds. That leaves the third track, and I know damned well it's Bucky's.”

“Which he denies.”

“Who else could have set the trap that Cole stepped into? Not Cole, not Martinelli. When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable—”

“—is the truth,” Stranahan finished. “You must have grown up reading Sherlock Holmes?”

“My dad gave me
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
for my tenth birthday. I aimed to become a consulting detective and that went sideways for a while. But I eventually hit pretty close to the mark, deerstalker hat notwithstanding.”

“It makes sense, I guess, but why couldn't the third track belong to Amorak? He was camped only a few miles away.”

“Because that
doesn't
make sense.”

Ettinger held up a finger. “Number one, the Culpepper Ranch is a closed community. How would he know she was going on a trail ride, or that she would break away and ride off alone? Number two,” she held up a second finger, “even if he did, how would he get there? It's a heck of a climb, and I don't see him having a horse.”

“That still leaves questions about what happened up there.”

“Of course it does. This isn't TV. In the real world, people lie and the truth comes out in dribs and drabs, not by divine intuition. One of the things I still don't understand is the hat. The logical conclusion is she was bucked from her horse where we found it. Maybe she was unconscious for a while, then stumbled down the hill when she saw that her horse had bolted. She would have been on a direct line to the carcass of the elk. It's possible there's another explanation. But one thing I'd bet my star on is that Bucky Anderson found Cole caught in the trap and pushed him onto the antler. He can smile all he wants, say therapy's changed him, I don't buy it. Bucky has violence in his heart.” She thumped the center of her chest. “He's face to face with a man who's hurt as a result of him setting an illegal trap. For wolves, no less. That's not going to wash with the little lady. Or with her brothers, who aren't in favor of the marriage to begin with. He has to remove the trap before the searchers find it—that's probably why he was hell bent on getting a jump start and left before we arrived that night—that and to make sure Grady Cole never talked.”

Stranahan ate his last french fry and reached for one of Martha's. “You're too busy talking to eat,” he said.

“I'm just thinking out loud. Harold said the smaller track was a running track. What that means to me is Martinelli came on the scene after Cole was dead, saw him impaled on the antler and fled. Possibly she witnessed Bucky killing him. Look at that night from her perspective. She's responsible for the wrangler setting out looking for her, so in her eyes she's responsible for everything that happens after that. Plus she might have witnessed a murder, or seen someone leaving the scene of one. It's a shock to the system, on top of the shock she received being thrown from the horse. The sister told you she was mentally unstable, didn't she?”

“I think the term she used was ‘subject to flights of fancy.'”

“One person's ‘flights of fancy' are another's old-fashioned crazy. Anyway, she panicked. I used to think the question was Where did she go? Now I'm thinking Who did she go to?”

“You're talking about Amorak. But how would she know where to find him?”

“If he was camped at the Palisades, then she might have seen him when she was guiding for Sam. Take a gander at Meslik's logbook and see how many times she floated that stretch of the river.”

She pushed away the glasses that were pinning down the map and rolled it up. She rolled down the cuffs of the jean jacket Stranahan had lent her and took it off.

“I ought to get out in plain clothes more often.”

T
he moon was over Sam Meslik's fly shop by the time Stranahan dropped Ettinger in Norris and made the return trip over the pass. Sam came to the door chewing a stick of jerky, working a finger into a hole in a “Master Baiter” T-shirt featuring a derelict fly fisherman digging for worms.

“You don't see me all summer except to drop the dog off and now you darken my door,” he said. “What gives?”

“I'd like to look at your logbook.”

“Want to know all Uncle Sam's secrets, huh? What they're bitin' on?”

“I'm trying to figure out what dates Nicki guided and where she floated.”

Sam raised one eyebrow. Stranahan didn't respond.

“Yeah, yeah, police business, leave old Sam in the cold.” He slapped Stranahan on the shoulder and dug his fingers in until Sean winced. “Come on. You want a brew?”

Stranahan nodded. “Where's Asena? I didn't see her Bronco.”

“She goes out sometimes. I think she just drives down to the Papoose turnoff and stares at the mountain, but I learned not to ask. You know that look she gives you if you go too far? No? Well, it's the same look my sergeant gave me when we were clearing a palace in Kuwait and I had the audacity to use a gold-plated toilet.”

“You were in Desert Storm? How come I don't know that?”

“ 'Cause the less said the better.”

“Were you a grunt?”

“I was a fucking medic. Worst thing I ever saw over there had nada to do with the war, though. One of our bomb squad guys got bit by a saw-scaled viper. It's got a poison that keeps your blood from coagulating. This guy was bleeding out his nose, out his eyes, out his pecker,
every
fuckin' orifice. I shit you not.”

“And he lived?”

Sam shrugged. “He was evacced. My river log's in the shop.”

He led Stranahan around a glass case displaying fly reels to the gilded cash register he'd bought at a pawn shop. He lifted out the cash drawer and produced the log. Nicki had floated from the Palisades to McAtee Bridge seven times over the summer, the last time only two days before her disappearance. It was conceivable she'd never seen the man camped on the riverbank a quarter mile below the boat launch, but she had to have seen his tent. The tent the bow hunters had described matched the description of the tent Asena said Nicki had used for gatherings of the Clan of the Three-Clawed Wolf, which Amorak had presumably appropriated. No, she could not have mistaken the tent.

“You see what you needed to see?” Sam said.

Sean's expression was noncommittal.

“Be that way. Sam's got things to do. Put it back where it belongs when you're done.”

When Sean walked outside, Sam was sitting before his fly-tying vise.

“I miss the old times, bro,” he said. “Shooting pool at the inn, talking cowgirls out of their paisleys and petticoats—ah man, what happened?”

“You bought this place and I got commissions that took me away from the river. I'm having a hard time recalling the petticoats.”

“You really think you can outlast a Montana winter in that tipi?”

“I don't see why not. I've got fire and I've got a dog to keep me warm.”

“That's the problemo, Kimosabe. You got one dog, but come December, you got three dog nights settin' in. Am I right? What do you say we have a drink? Client gave me some twenty-year-old single malt—Glen-fuckless or something.”

—

A
t the turnoff to his property, Stranahan set the parking brake and checked his mailbox rock, stooping to retrieve a piece of paper stuck under the edge. He held the note up to the headlights.

Cell phones don't work unless you turn them on. Call Katie Sparrow. M.E.

He got a flashlight from the tipi and decided to walk Choti the two miles down to the county road, where the canyon opened and he'd be able to pick up a bar. Give him some time to figure out how to say hello. Katie had been embarrassed when he'd left her place the last time. For more than a year she'd brazenly flirted with him, told him with her body and her eyes that he was welcome in her bed anytime, and then when he'd finally taken up the offer on the pretense of helping her bake dog biscuits, they had actually baked dog biscuits and he had wound up sleeping on the couch.

“I don't know what's wrong with me,” she'd told him. “I can troll someone home from a bar, but a man I really like, how I like you, I put up a wall. It's been eight fucking years; you'd think I could get past him.”

“Him” was her fiancé, Colin, the backcountry skier who'd been swallowed by an avalanche in the Bridger Mountains. It was watching the search dogs work the chute that persuaded her to become a handler.

“It's okay, Katie,” Sean had said, and meant it. He'd been relieved that he wouldn't carry the guilt of cheating on Martinique, ghost that she'd become.

“No,” she said, “it isn't. Goddamnit, I want a life.” And he'd stayed up half the night with her, listening to a mystery radio show and talking.

Stranahan reached the end of the road and punched Katie's number.

“We ID'd the girl in the hot pot,” she said without preamble. “Carrie Harding. Her old roommate came forward yesterday, and we showed her pictures. Turns out Harding was a park employee from Missouri who worked the entrance gate here in West. The reason it took so long is she'd quit the week before, so the park didn't put her down as absent. Her roommate figured it might be her from the description in the newspaper, but the roommate's boyfriend was visiting from out of state and she didn't want to spoil their time together, so she didn't call in and then she thought Carrie must have gone back to Missouri. Then I guess she finally started getting worried because she hadn't heard from her in like a month. I got the impression they weren't on the best terms.”

“So it was you who talked to the roommate?”

“On the phone. I told her someone from county would be down in the morning. Martha said it would be you.”

“Thanks, Katie.”

“Let me get you the address.” She got it. “You want company? I work afternoon shift.”

Stranahan thought a moment. “No, I think maybe one person would be better.”

“Yeah, you're good with the women. I'm sorry about . . . what happened.” He could hear the bitterness across the line. “What should have happened and didn't, let's face it. You deserve some kind of medal.”

“Hey, we talked about this. You're a beautiful woman, and this phase will pass.”

“I'm not doomed to listening to mystery radio with dogs all my life?” The Katie he knew was back in her voice. “We had a good time making the biscuits. You did, didn't you?”

“I sure did. I'll see you, Katie.”

Halfway back to the tipi, Choti, a few feet ahead of Sean, stiffened and growled very deep in her throat.

“You out there, lion?” Stranahan said.

He switched on his headlamp, noting the beam had dimmed since the last time he'd used it. He shone the light into the tree shadows that lay sabered across the road. He switched it off to conserve the battery and they continued forward, Choti at his side now, so close his pant leg brushed against her.

“Just a man walking his dog here,” Stranahan said to the blackness. He wasn't afraid. Instead, he seemed to hover over his body, as if looking from the wings at an actor in a play. It wasn't courage. Courage was something summoned against the will. Whatever it was, it took him away for a few moments and then he again switched on the headlamp and swept the beam in a circle. Instantly, the light caught two orbs of emerald, blazing as if from out of a seam of coal.

“Good kitty.” The voice wasn't exactly his. He tried again. “Good kitty cat.”

The reflection of the eyes was so bright as to appear radioactive. The cat was abreast of him, thirty or forty feet to the left of the road. Stranahan took the next step, aware that stopping or, worse, bolting like a deer could trigger a response. “Stay with me, Choti,” he said in a firm voice. It was the dog that worried him, or rather he worried about the dog. Another step. How far to the tipi? A quarter mile? Too late now to worry about not changing the batteries in the headlamp. Why hadn't he brought the Carnivore tracking light he'd won playing poker? It was sitting on his cot in the tipi. “Dumb,” he said to himself.

A whistler all his life, Stranahan tried a note and found his mouth was dry. A hiss of air escaped his lips. He had to smile. He tried again, the theme from the old Andy Griffith show. Better. He whistled, the dog followed, Opie skipped his stone.

The light grew dimmer. He swept it and the cat was still abreast, but its eyes were dying now. Ahead, he could barely make out the pyramid of the tipi. “Almost there, Choti.” The dog had been silent for a long time, but he could feel the quiver in her body when he reached his hand down to reassure her. The headlamp beam made a hazy circle at his feet. It sputtered and went out, like a candlewick in a pool of wax. He counted his steps. Fifty. Sixty. They were there. He bent to remove the sticks that secured the tipi flap. His hands were shaking. He laughed. The laugh was his. It was a story now; he could hear himself telling Sam and Martha about it.

He stepped inside and found his bear spray and the Carnivore tracking light. Switching on the light, he cast the beam in a circle outside the tipi. The lion was gone but his hands were still shaking. They were not shaking from fear. They were shaking from excitement. Something had happened a few minutes before, just as the headlamp beam died and the cat's eyes had glittered for the last time. Stranahan had envisioned another set of eyes looking at him, not an animal's eyes, but the eyes of a human. They were bloodshot eyes, irritated from wearing contact lenses. In that instant, Stranahan had flashed on the face behind those eyes.