Dead Man’s Fancy (23 page)

“I didn't know you were letting her guide?”

“She insisted. Said floating the river might give some insight into Nicki. It's like she woke up and crawled out of her shell. Ever since she went out on the lake with you and you talked about God knows what. What did you talk about?”

The answer was the man on the motorcycle in the Lamar Valley, the first hard evidence that Amorak was in the vicinity.

“Where's she taking out?” he said, avoiding the question.

“The West Madison access site, upriver from McAtee Bridge.”

“I'll meet her there.”

“Then I'm going to ask you to do the shuttle. Save me the gas. But what do you want to talk to her about?”

“I'd like to tell her first.”

“Okay, just don't drop any bombs until she collects the tip. The client only owns half the chili joints in Texas. Chilly Billy's. You think about how much methane comes out of those bathrooms, you could fire a chimp into outer space.”

—

W
illiam Weston, aka “Chilly Billy” Weston, did not look like a chili baron, or any kind of baron unless barons grew noses like Roman Polanski's and came slim as cigarillos. But he did have an accent full of West Texas twang, and the tented bills his fingers ferreted into the breast pocket of Asena's shirt had Benjamin Franklin's face on them.

“I think I've just been violated,” Asena said, after Weston had disappeared in his rental Lexus. She flashed a quick smile that under other circumstances Stranahan would have been encouraged to see.

“Look, I'm just going to say it. I found Amorak. His real name's Todd McCready. Or was. He had it changed.” He hesitated.

“Is this something I'm supposed to sit down for? I'm a big girl. Just tell me.”

He did, the evening falling and the sound of the current coming up before he was finished. It was cold and they sat in the Land Cruiser with Stranahan cranking up the heater intermittently.

“I don't know what else to say,” he said. “It's a murder investigation now, at least it will be if the DNA on the hair in the dumpster matches your sister's.”

“At least he'll be arrested. It will never be enough, but he'll pay for my sister's death. What?”

Sean knew she'd seen the change in his expression.

“I'd like to tell you he will be, but I have to be honest. The evidence against him is circumstantial. There's no body and no witness who can place Fen and Nicki together within the past two years, at least not yet. DAs running for reelection don't like to prosecute cases where shitheads walk free, as the sheriff likes to say.”

“So he won't pay.” It was a statement.

The silence was Stranahan's answer.

“How do they get the meat?” She wasn't looking at the river but at the mountains to the east, where shadows were climbing the gold face of Papoose Peak.

“Amorak said it's donated by hunters. Sometimes he collects it in the field, sometimes it's brought to the center by the people who shot the game.”

Stranahan saw her shoulders sag.

“I always knew she might be dead,” she said. “I just convinced myself there was a chance she wasn't.”

“There still is a chance.”

“But if he kidnapped her or she was planning to run away with him, then what's he doing living with the other girl?”

“I don't know. He could be holding Nicki captive somewhere.”

“That seems a stretch. No, I have to face the fact that she's gone. But how can you put something like this behind you, knowing your sister's killer is walking around free? You tell me.” She sighed. When she spoke again the life had gone out of her voice. She sounded resigned. “Sooner or later I have to go back to Libby and straighten out my father's estate. I suppose that's the thing to do. Sell the house, then there's some property in B.C. up around Kamloops to dispose of. I'll go back to work. As a counselor I always tell people work is medicine for forgetting. See if it really is true.”

“If you can think of anything to help us build a case . . .”

“You don't think I'd tell you if I did?”

“That's not what I meant.”

“You're right, I'm sorry. It's just a lot to take in.”

She was silent on the drive down the valley, except once to comment on the moon, rising over the teeth of the Gravellys to the east. “It's the Hunter's Moon,” she said. “One day off, maybe. Daddy always hunted moose on the Hunter's Moon. He said it was like the ocean tides, except that it pulled blood through the veins instead of water onto land. He thought he was a better hunter for that one day of the year.”

“Did he get his moose?”

“Nicki and I grew up on moose. And fish. You always know someone's from coastal B.C. because they never order salmon in a restaurant.”

They were turning into Sam's drive.

“Do you want me to stay awhile?”

“No, just drop me.” Her voice sounded far away. She was somewhere now where Stranahan couldn't follow. “He killed her forever,” she said to herself.

The Land Cruiser's headlights lit up the shop.

Stranahan said, “If you don't mind walking, I think I'll turn around here. Sam will want to talk and I don't feel up to it.”

“You either? I can't blame you. Sometimes there's nothing more to say at the end of the day. You try to be someone who knows how to cope and do what you have to to keep going.”

She leaned across the space between the seats and kissed him on the cheek. Her lips were as cold as the river. Then she was gone.

T
he feather streamer Stranahan had christened the Vegas showgirl and loop-knotted to Willoughby's leader flashed its tinsel charms in a deep run of the Madison several miles below the junction pool, where the Firehole and Gibbon rivers bled together. The first rainbow came undone at the jump, the second showed its size, then bore down and suddenly pulled much harder than it should have had the muscle for. As the line arrowed toward a log sweeper, Willoughby looked at Stranahan and raised his eyes behind his thick glasses. Sean smiled as the “trout” climbed onto the log. He'd known that an otter had taken possession of the fish directly after the jump, having lost a good brown to the thief in the same pool earlier in the fall.

“What do I do?” Willoughby said. “The manual did not address this situation.”

“You break him off.”

Willoughby did and hobbled out of the river, his wading staff probing the streambed ahead of him. They sat on the bank and watched the otter rip orange flesh from the trout.

“If we keep fishing, he'll just follow us and take anything you hook,” Stranahan said.

“You overestimate my ambition.” Willoughby removed his tweed hat and examined the flies in a sheepskin patch pinned to the brim. “Sean,” he said, “I have made much of my living finding the weaknesses in men's characters and in the political systems to which they profess their loyalty. I find reading a man's face is similar to reading a map, a matter of deciphering contour lines to envision a country, or if you are a naval intelligence officer as I was, to see beneath the surface of the sea. Your face tells me you're somewhere else this morning. At the risk of intrusion, might I ask where?”

“It's that obvious?”

“Quite so, I'm afraid.”

“I'm not sure I can talk about an active investigation.”

“We're sitting on federal soil. I assure you my clearance level in matters of state is adequate to permit our conversation, but if you feel uncomfortable talking about events that have happened outside park borders, present me with a theoretical scenario. Names are unimportant.”

As Stranahan talked, clouds of steam rose about the men's heads. Willoughby's unruly eyebrows rose twice, first when Sean spoke of the girl who had been burned in the hot pot and again at his suspicion that the man responsible for that was the same person who had fed Nicki's hair to wolves.

“Are you intimating this man is a serial killer, that he seduces impressionable young women only to discard them in a fatal and quite sensational manner when they fail to meet his standard?”

“Doesn't it strike you as a possibility?”

Willoughby seriously considered the question. “Profiling is a science, Sean,” he said at length. “It is a better one now than when I was more active in the field, but I do know something of these matters from a military perspective.” His eyes met Stranahan's. “If I may be so bold as to offer an opinion?”

“Anything that would help put this man behind bars, I'd appreciate it.”

“That I can't promise. What I will say is the person you describe runs up flags suggesting a psychopathic disorder. He is egocentric, remorseless, lacks empathy and he is a nonconformist. This wolf hierarchy he imposes on the young women is typical of psychopaths who are at heart narcissists, and who shun social and legal mores by establishing their own set of rules. And”—Willoughby raised a forefinger pink from cold—“he can be charming when the need arises. He can put on what psychiatrists refer to as a ‘mask of sanity.' These are all traits of the classic psychopath. But, and this is important”—Willoughby wagged his finger—“scratch a serial killer and you often uncover a psychopath. But scratch a psychopath—?”

“And you don't necessarily uncover a serial killer,” finished Stranahan.

“You anticipate me. The defining characteristic of most serials, note that I did not say all, is their inability to form human attachments. Isolation. Serials are literally stranded in the cold. You may characterize the relationships this man has with women as controlling, even abusive, but they
are
attachments. In the case of the woman who is missing, the attachment has become obsessive. It is entirely conceivable he killed her in order to possess her, to take that which would not be given, but if that's the case, her murder falls into a different category of crime from the majority perpetrated by serials, who wish to exert control over a category of people rather than an individual. Have you noticed that it's snowing? What induced me to come to Montana in such an uncivilized season?”

Stranahan was working his toes in his wading boots to keep the blood circulating. “You've given me a lot to mull over. And I think we've given the otter enough time to get bored. Let's walk upstream. If a hatch of blue-winged olives trickles off, as I think it will, we'll have some fishing.”

—

T
wo hours and two trout later, notably a three-pound, prespawn brown that sipped in Willoughby's dry fly as delicately as a doe clipping a wildflower, they resumed the conversation. Willoughby had treated Sean to lunch in the bar inside the Old Faithful Inn, where they sat under a cut-glass window etched with a cartoon bear that was conducting an orchestra of cubs.

Stranahan sipped at an Irish coffee. “I noticed the look on your face when I mentioned the girl burned in the hot pot. What were you thinking, Patrick? Do you think it could have been an accident?”

“An accident? Only in that it's likely she was frightened and tripped. I'm just uncertain about the identity of the frightener. What you omitted in your recitation was of great interest.” He hailed the waitress. “Would you be so kind as to bring us another round? Doctors orders. Medicine for the heart, you see.”

He looked off for a moment, then the eyes snapped into focus. He tapped the faux leather covering the tabletop. “You never once mentioned that this man you are investigating exhibited uneasiness, quite the opposite. If I chased someone into boiling water and she survived, I would have a worm in my gut. What will she say when she recovers from the coma? The fact that your man has not left the area leads me to believe that he is unworried. Either there is nothing for him to worry about, or he is so confident in his authority that he believes she won't point the finger at him. I think the former more likely.”

“Then who is responsible?”

“The roommate mentioned that the victim hitched around the park. Perhaps she got a ride with the hot pot watcher who is credited with finding her. Perhaps he offered to show her a secret thermal area.” He let the thought hang in the air as his caterpillar eyebrows climbed into inverted Vs. “Anyone who spends his life sitting beside a pool of water and has no family to go home to. . . . Frankly, I'm surprised your sheriff hasn't looked into this man's history, but then I suppose there are jurisdictional issues.”

“It's an accident as far as the Park Service is concerned. There's no evidence to suggest otherwise.”

“Yes, I understand that. But the professional wrestler, this Madman from Minnetonka . . . I would think a search engine might provoke several hits on a name so distinctive.”

Willoughby nodded to the waitress for the check.

“Have you ever seen an eruption of Old Faithful?”

Stranahan admitted he hadn't.

“Nor have I. I suppose such a trite display of shock and awe should be beneath us, we being anglers in the age of irony and so forth, but I rather feel a child's compulsion to stand in simple wonder of nature. Shall we?”

—

R
obert Knudson, aka Geyser Bob, aka the Madman of Minnetonka, had been a featured performer in the North Country All-Star Wrestlers from 1975 through 1984, with a professional record of 27–395, including losses to such luminaries of the sport as Bruno Sammartino, Chief White Owl, and Rowdy Roddy Piper. His most memorable victory was over fellow heel George “the Animal” Steele, in what the
Milwaukee Standard
, in a retrospective of wrestling superstars, called “The Slobberfest of the Century,” both men being notable for copious drooling as they stalked their opponents around the ring. The story went on to report that both Knudson and Steele had enjoyed reputations as erudite giants who had careers as high school teachers and coaches, with a notable difference. Knudson, in April 1997, had been issued a restraining order after repeated, unwanted advances on a female student. He'd lost his job as a result, although criminal charges had not been filed.

Willoughby, who was reading the story out loud in his motel room at the Three Bears, pursed his lips as he continued to search the name on his laptop.

Knudson's name popped up again in an archived story in the
Green Bay Herald
headlined “Smelt Fisherman Saves Wrestling Icon.” The story was dated April 16, 1999.

A local fisherman rescued an unconscious man he found floating naked in the icy Menominee River on Thursday night, the Green Bay County sheriff's office reported. Andrew Larkenoff, 33, was smelt fishing when he spotted the body and waded into chest-deep water to pull the victim to shore. The fisherman said he called 911 and tried to warm the unconscious man until an ambulance arrived.

The victim was identified as Robert Knudson, 49, a former professional wrestling star known as the “Madman of Minnetonka.” He was listed in fair condition at Superior Benefice Hospital.

“I used my own body warmth to try to keep him alive,” said Larkenoff. “But he was so big and I was so cold myself I think he helped me more than I helped him.”

The World Wrestling Almanac listed Knudson at 6' 7” and 330 pounds.

Capt. James Cummings of the Green Bay County Sheriff's Office said Knudson's car was found parked near the Johnsonville Bridge, about a mile upriver from where he was rescued. Cummings could not confirm that Knudson had jumped from the bridge.

Knudson's involvement with a young woman when he had been a teacher at . . .

Willoughby finished the story, which contributed no further details about the restraining order, but added that Knudson had been separated from his wife, who still lived in Minnetonka. The former wrestler had been employed in Green Bay as a construction worker and substitute high school teacher at the time of the incident.

“It's a slim thread, but a thread all the same,” he said. “I hope the Park Service investigates the man.”

“I'll check with a ranger friend,” Stranahan said. “She'll pass the information to someone reliable.”

“What will you do now?” Willoughby asked.

“I don't know. I found the man I was paid to find. Now we'll see how the judicial system responds. I'm not optimistic.”

“No, I mean tonight. It's too far to drive back to Bridger. You could bunk here with me.”

“Thanks, I might take you up on it. In fact I will. But I want to check the campground, make certain my buddy hasn't bailed to parts unknown.”

“Is that wise? Won't he become suspicious if you keep dropping by?”

“Maybe you're right. I'll just park near the wildlife center and make sure he's on shift, then see if he drives away toward the campground afterward. I won't follow him.”

“Your Land Rover—”

“Land Cruiser.”

“I was going to say it's rather conspicuous. Take my rental. That way you can tail him as you see fit. I'd offer to accompany you, but the cold water seems to have played havoc on my arthritic legs.”

They agreed to meet for pizza at seven. The Rocky Mountain Pizza Company was a short walk from the motel.

“If you fail to show by seven thirty, I'll call for reinforcements.”

“Wait until eight, Mother,” Stranahan said, closing the door behind him.

Willoughby waited until a little after nine o'clock before ringing the Hyalite County Sheriff's Department from the pizzeria.