Dead Man’s Fancy (24 page)

S
tranahan scratched at his stubble. The truck was halfway up Targhee Pass and had a cockeyed headlight that made it easy to follow. Not that it would have been difficult otherwise. The van with the howling wolf logo on the side panel was the only vehicle Stranahan had seen since the lights of West Yellowstone twinkled out in the rearview mirror. He watched the headlight flare up into the pines and then disappear over the pass into Idaho. The next fork was the right turn to Henry's Lake, which became U.S. 87 before bending north back into Montana. Which way would the van turn? A better question—why was Amorak driving it in the first place?

When Stranahan had eased Willoughby's Camry into a parking spot on Yellowstone Avenue twenty minutes earlier, it was still light enough to see the motorcycle parked in the Paws of Yellowstone lot. Six o'clock came and went, the sky grew dark, the indoor lights of the center went dark and the Honda stood on its kickstand, a horse without a rider. He paid scant attention when the van backed out of the lot and would not have suspected Amorak was behind the wheel if it hadn't turned left to pass within ten feet. Had the man seen him? No, his face stared straight ahead. Sean had waited until the van was well down the street before making a U-turn to follow.

Now the van was turning toward the lake, and again Sean's hand went to his chin. The logical explanation for the excursion was that the center had received a call from an archery hunter who wanted to donate game. Amorak would have been directed to a rendezvous site, perhaps up a logging road or at a trailhead. If so, Sean saw nothing to gain by following. The tail could make Amorak suspicious, in a worst-case scenario flush him from the area for good. But what if he wasn't meeting a hunter? What if, instead, he'd waited until the other employees had gone home and borrowed the van for a different purpose, one that had something to do with Nicki Martinelli? If he was holding her captive somewhere, perhaps Amorak was transferring her to the van to take her somewhere else. It seemed improbable, starting with the fact that Amorak was living with another woman who had assumed the mantle of his mate. But Stranahan didn't take his foot off the accelerator.

Several miles after reentering Montana and turning north on 287, the van slowed, showed its left blinker and veered onto the gravel road that crossed Three Dollar Bridge. Stranahan had a moment's unease. A few washboardy miles beyond the bridge the road forked, the right-hand turn leading to Cliff and Wade lakes, the two largest in a chain of lakes that nestled like diamonds on a string in a deep geological fault. It had been less than a week since he'd fished Wade Lake with Asena. A coincidence? Possibly, though it challenged one of Martha Ettinger's tenets of police work, that there was no such animal.

Stranahan switched off the headlights and crossed the bridge, the van far out in front, only a soft glow over the clumps of sage marking its progress. He stayed well back and reached the fork, pausing a moment before turning toward the lakes. A hunch, backed by a slight haze that may have been lifted from the gravel by the van's tires. The road dipped and climbed. Yes, there was the glow again, haunting the pines in the higher elevation with a ghostly haze. Stranahan coaxed the Camry through a crust of old snow to the pass, where the glow had vanished. Below him was Wade Lake, its deep-set eye silver in the moonlight. He pulled off the road and let the car idle, trying to envision the country below.

He remembered that the road fell toward the lakes in one long switchback, the downhill grade bending north before the road turned back on itself to complete the descent. He ought to see the van's lights coming into that last turn, and there they were, sweeping in a circle before fading out. Now he wouldn't see them again until the van approached Wade Lake. If he didn't see the lights, then the van would have turned south toward Cliff Lake; the two bodies of water were separated by a saddle in a hill. In either case there was nowhere farther Amorak could go. Both forks dead-ended at water.

Stranahan switched off the motor and walked to the edge of the ridge, where he could peer down into the fault. He should have seen the lights by now. So then, Cliff Lake. Stranahan had fished there only once, at the shoals near the boat ramp. From there the road contoured the shoreline to a campground secluded in the pines. He'd never been to that campground but recalled seeing a rope swing through his binoculars, flailing arms and legs as kids jumped in, their shouts reaching across a quarter mile of water. But that was in July. The place would be deserted now.

What was Amorak doing there?

Slowly, Stranahan motored down the grade, babying the Camry through ice in the ruts. He came to a spur leading to a Forest Service campground called Hilltop, used only when the lakeside camps filled on summer weekends. He turned into it. As expected, the loops were empty but it gave him an idea, and he parked in one of the sites. From here, the Camry would be invisible to anyone passing on the road. Cliff Lake couldn't be more than a twenty-minute hike. He'd find out what Amorak was up to without announcing his presence. He stepped out of the car feeling quite naked without his bear spray, this being grizzly country with a capital
G
. No time now to regret not packing gear from the Land Cruiser. He patted the pockets of his jacket and felt the bulk of the Carnivore tracking light. It would have to serve as his eyes.

As his boots crunched through isolated skiffs of snow, Sean felt the melancholia of men adrift in wilderness, the profound isolation that cold and darkness impose impartially and that was only partly mitigated by the assurance of the road. He smiled at his insecurity and pursed his lips to whistle, an old habit, then thought better of it.

Another half mile and the lake was before him, a pool of milk under the circle of the moon. He stopped walking. Had he heard a sound? Yes, voices. Indistinguishable words tailed in echoes as they floated across the lake. Stranahan had reached the water's edge and looked across toward the campground. No lights there, but again voices rose and now he could hear a dog barking underneath the voices, an abrupt, deep chop that carried clearly. A pause, and the air was split apart, the unmistakable crack of a gunshot. Stranahan instinctively ducked. He began to run toward the campground and went down hard, slipping on a patch of ice, his head and right side slamming against the ground. When he clambered to his feet, pain shot up the side of his body. The voices from farther up the lakeshore seemed to echo around inside his head. The dog's barking was incessant. He waited a minute to regain his equilibrium, then slowly limped toward the campground, wondering whose name the bullet had carried.

—

S
tranahan stood in the shadow of a tree. Ahead, the ground was striped abstractly by moonlight filtering through scattered pines. Nothing to see but the first of the campsites. He moved forward, shadow to shadow. Ahead was the rectangular silhouette of the van. Beyond, where the ground sloped toward the lake, he could make out a boat trailer hitched to what appeared to be an SUV. The dog's bark was loud but hoarser than before, its exhalations breaking up. From the furious scratching and banging, Stranahan thought it must be locked inside the vehicle. No boat on the trailer.

One of the voices had picked back up again, a man's voice, from somewhere farther up the lake. It sounded neither angry nor conversational, but was more a murmuring like an invocation you'd hear standing outside a church service, muffled by heavy wooden doors. Stranahan skirted the vehicles, staying within the security of the pines as he worked up the shoreline. Ahead was a small clearing and as Stranahan approached, the lake came into view and he saw the vague outline of a boat pulled up in the shallows. On its near side stood a short, squat figure. No, that was an illusion. It was a man kneeling in the shallows with his head raised and hands spread as if nailed to an invisible cross. It had to be Fenrir Amorak. Now Stranahan could hear his words:

And the blood of the wolf will rain from the skies

And all the rivers will run red with blood

And the blood of man who cast aspersion upon the wolf will flow with the river

And he will die

And he will die

And he will die

“Stop it. Please stop.” It was Asena's voice, somewhere very near. He realized that the SUV must be Asena's Bronco and that the boat was his own Adirondack guideboat. Behind him the yelping faded as the dog lost its voice. Was it Killer?

The invocation began again. “And the blood of the wolf—”

“Stop.” She couldn't be more than fifty feet away, Stranahan thought, though he still couldn't see her.

“My darling, there's nothing you can do about the deaths of the men who cried wolf.” Amorak's voice was a metronome, amplified by the water. “Only I can absolve you of your sin. Come and be baptized in my arms. You know how much I love you, how it was always you and always will be you and—”

“Just stop.” Asena's voice was pleading.

Now Stranahan could make out her silhouette. She was standing to Amorak's right, maybe ten feet farther up the shoreline. He could see the revolver gripped in her hands, the black barrel pointing at her feet even as Amorak beckoned from his invisible cross.

“I'll shoot again!”

“No, my darling. You won't. Feel your hands. I control them now. They are heavy, they can't move. Let your burden fall from them.”

“No. Please no.”

“Feel your fingers. They are on fire. Open them. I said open them!”

Stranahan heard a clatter as Asena dropped the gun. Amorak rose to his feet, water streaming down his legs, and as he lurched toward her, dragging his right foot, Stranahan saw Asena turn and grab for the gun she'd dropped. She came up with it glinting in her hand, but Amorak had reached her and wrapped his arms around her from behind. With a jerk, he wrested the gun from her. Stranahan bolted from the shadows, running low. He heard Asena scream “Killer!” and sensed, rather than heard, a rushing of air as the dog streaked past him.

Then there was the heavy report of the revolver and sharp pain as a shower of stones hit Stranahan's legs. At the next shot, the dog lurched, then in two great bounds it was on Amorak and he was down, dog, man and woman blurred as Stranahan stumbled into the melee. Amorak had Asena clenched in his embrace with Killer thrashing on top of them, his teeth tearing at the arm locked around Asena's throat. Stranahan made a lunge for the revolver in Amorak's right fist, his other hand grasping at the man's throat, his fingers tangling in the rawhide cord Amorak wore around his neck. As they wrestled, Stranahan twisting the cord in an attempt to strangle Amorak, he saw that Asena, freed from Amorak's grip, had kicked backward and was stumbling along the shore. Stranahan let go of the cord and brought both hands to bear on Amorak's hand gripping the revolver. Now they were chest to chest, Amorak's weight on top of him. He heard a click as Amorak thumbed back the hammer. Again, the revolver fired, jerking in recoil. There was a concussive sound and an eruption as the bullet struck the water only a foot away. A heartbeat, then a thin, cracking report, like the snap of a whip. Stranahan heard an echo bounce off the lake. He felt Amorak's body spasm on top of him. The man released his grip on the revolver and convulsed in a shudder. Then slowly he rose to a sitting position, his face lolling upward, silhouetted against the sky. That image froze. Then, abruptly, he fell forward onto Stranahan with the smack of a heavy stone.

Stranahan looked over to see Asena standing on the shore, her body trembling. What looked like a small pistol wavered in her hands. Killer had released his grip on Amorak's arm and was panting beside her. Stranahan felt a stabbing pain above his right hip. It occurred to him that he might have been bitten. He pushed out from under Amorak's body and got to his hands and knees, his chest heaving. His hand shook as he reached for the tracking light in his jacket pocket. He stood and played the beam over the figure in the water. Clouds of blood, lit to crimson phosphorescence by the LED bulbs, pulsed from under the surface. A river of red smoke issued from the entrance hole the bullet had made in Amorak's back.

“He's dead.”

“Then it's over. He can't hurt us anymore.”

Us?
Stranahan was confused. Amorak had spoken to Asena as if she had been his lover, not the sister of his lover . . . but it was hard to think with the cramps that wracked the side of his body. He found he had the revolver in his hand and dropped it. He managed to cover the ten feet to Asena without falling and took the pistol from her as she collapsed in on herself. He helped her sit down on the pebbled shore. Taking the pistol, he jacked the action open to remove the chambered cartridge and ejected the stacked magazine. He walked back to collect the revolver. He pointed the barrel at a star, brought the hammer to half cock and opened the loading gate. His fingers shaking, he worked the plunger under the barrel to eject a cartridge, repeating the procedure until two loaded cartridges and four empties were ejected. They were identical to the cartridges he'd pocketed two weeks ago, a lifetime ago, in Alfonso Martinelli's cabin. It was the Colt .45, the Peacemaker her father had bought to fulfill his dream of becoming a trapper.

“What just happened?” he said, as much to himself as Asena.

“When you, when you were fighting, I saw it on the shore and got it.”

“You mean this gun, the pistol? It was Amorak's?”

“Yes. I had to shoot him. Oh God, I could have killed you, too.”

“Thank God it was the pistol,” Stranahan said. He realized that if it had been the more powerful revolver she'd fired when Amorak was on top of him, the .45 caliber bullet would gone through Amorak's body to hit him, too.

“Well, you got him,” Stranahan said.

Drained of energy, he closed his eyes. Asena's hat had fallen off, and he felt the warmth of her head where it nestled against his neck. Felt the wetness of her tears hot against his skin. He opened his eyes. She'd rolled up her jeans to her knees, to launch the boat he imagined, though that still puzzled him—
what was she doing with his boat?
Her bare shins gleamed in the moonlight. Evenly spaced white marks girded her right ankle. Stranahan touched one. It was raised, like scar tissue, and he thought about that a long minute, trying to bring something to the forefront of his mind. He looked past her to the silhouette of the guideboat. The last time he'd had a pistol fired at him, he'd been sitting in the bow. A dime of moonlight showed through the bullet hole.