Dead Man’s Fancy (25 page)

“I've got to get a different boat,” he said aloud.

“What?” Her voice was muffled.

“How did you find him, Asena?” Stranahan was struggling to put it together—Amorak's incantations, his declaration of love, the scars on Asena's ankle.

“I . . . I called the center. I told the woman that we'd donate meat, that my husband, he had shot an elk and we'd packed it down to the lake and were going to retrieve it with a boat. I thought he's the one they'd send. You told me that's what he did.”

“Is that why you hired me? To paint a bull's-eye on him for you?”

“I had to find him. He had to pay.”

“What did he have to pay for?” Stranahan realized that they were both speaking in loud voices, having been partially deafened by the gunshots.

“For what he did to us. For shooting those men. He was going to kill me, too, you have to know that.”

Us?
Those men?

“I heard a shot before I got to the lake. Amorak was dragging his leg. You shot him.”

“I . . . I had to. He was reaching into his jacket. He had that pistol. I aimed at the water, but he stepped toward me and it hit him. It was just going to be a warning.”

“Why didn't you aim for his chest and kill him? That's what you came here for.”

“I . . . couldn't.”

“What were you going to do with the body, Asena? Were you going to row out into the lake and dump it? You'd have capsized. Even if you managed it, he'd have washed up on shore.”

She had disengaged and looked up at him. Steam rose when she spoke, her words brittle notes. “Not with forty feet of two-inch anchor chain tied around him.”

So that was it, Stranahan thought. He'd handed Amorak to her. He'd told her where to find him, he'd told her how to get him alone. He'd even told her how deep the lake was. If she had worked up the nerve to shoot him in cold blood, if the bullet that hit his leg had hit his heart, then Stranahan would have done everything but help her load the body into the boat.

“I want to get this straight. You confronted him, brandishing your father's revolver. He pulled a pistol, you shot him in the leg. Did you see the pistol?”

“Yes, I mean I think so. He dropped it when I shot. Then he . . . he talked me into dropping Daddy's gun. . . . He can do that to people.”

“Yes, that part I saw.”

“Killer,” Stranahan heard her say.

The dog was lying down, whimpering. Stranahan shone the light. Nothing reacted with the LEDs except the blood on his left front paw, which Killer was vigorously licking. He must have been hit when Stranahan saw him lurch.

“What was Killer doing in the Bronco?”

Asena's voice was muffled. She'd buried her head back against his shoulder. “When I got here, I let him out, but he was running around and I wanted to surprise Fen. I realized taking him was a bad idea. I had the window cracked. He must have broken through or pushed it down.”

“He saved your life. Probably mine, too.”

Stranahan saw Asena turn her head toward the campground. Headlights were carving along the shoreline a quarter mile away. Stranahan identified the rumbling of the 5.7 liter V8 installed in the newer Jeep Cherokees. Willoughby must have reported Sean as missing, but how had Ettinger found out where he'd gone?

He said evenly, “I want you to listen carefully.”

Asena had dragged Killer onto her lap and was stroking his head.

“This is important.”

She nodded.

“That's a county vehicle, probably the sheriff. You're going to wait here while I talk to her. I'm going to tell her exactly what I saw, and only what I saw. Then, out of my presence, she's going to put the same questions to you. The less you say the better. You may have driven here with the intention of killing Amorak, but you can't be charged with intention. She's going to ask you about the revolver ten different ways, because you brought a gun to a word fight and there's no getting around it. Just stay on track, say you wanted to confront him about your sister, that the gun and Killer were for protection.”

He paused, thinking. “The fact is an armed standoff led to a person's death. That's a problem for you. Are you listening?”

“It's a problem.” She nodded.

“It's not a problem if you never brandished your revolver and you never fired that first shot. Here's what you're going to tell her. Amorak pulled his pistol. He talked you into dropping your weapon, which was holstered. His pistol fell from his hand when he tackled you, when I showed up at the scene. From that point on, everything happened exactly as we recall. There were four shots. Amorak took your revolver after you'd picked it back up and shot at Killer, who was running toward him. The first bullet missed. The second hit Killer's paw. The third was fired accidentally when I struggled with him. That's the shot that hit Amorak in the leg. The angle of the bullet might raise a question, but we were fighting, we were moving around. It's plausible. Then you picked up the pistol where Amorak had dropped it and shot him as we struggled, trying to save me. Got that?”

Stranahan shone his light onto the stones and pocketed one of the four empty cartridges he'd ejected from the .45. “Is the anchor chain in the Bronco?”

She nodded.

“If Ettinger asks about it, tell her it's there for ballast, like a sand bag.”

“For ballast,” she repeated. He felt her hand clamp around his forearm. Her hand was ice cold. “Why are you doing this for me?”

“You killed a very bad man in self-defense. That's the way I see it, and I can live with a lie of omission to make your life a little easier. Remember, Amorak's the one who fired the first shots. You had every reason to believe he was going to kill you. I'm an eyewitness. You'll be okay.” He forced a smile. He could feel a sharp pain above his right hip. “I don't know about myself.”

He heard the engine turn off and the slam of the Jeep door. He felt the wetness on his neck where her head had nestled and wiped at it. His hand came away red in the glow of the tracking light. He shone the light on the top of Asena's head, the LEDs reacting with a clot of blood the size of a fifty-cent piece.

“Were you hit?”

She reached for her hat. “I'm not hurt.”

“Then why are you bleeding?”

M
artha Ettinger stepped out of the Jeep, leaving the headlights on. “This had better be good.”

She put her hands on her hips, took in the Bronco, the boat trailer, the van, the rental sedan. Before Stranahan could answer, she said, “Your friend Willoughby reported you missing. I called the wildlife center. Their log lists Amorak getting a call to pick up elk quarters at Cliff Lake, I made a wild guess where that put you on the map. Enlighten me.”

It was almost midnight before Doc Hanson arrived to bend over the body and mutter about being too old for this. Harold Little Feather, who had driven down from his sister's place in Pony to do the initial assessment of the scene, pulled the body to shore. Asena's first shot, from the big Peacemaker, had shattered Amorak's right shin and was through and through. The second bullet, when Asena had shot Amorak with his own pistol, had impacted the upper back, driving Amorak's wolf medallion into the ruin of his lungs, where the garnet stone eyes remained eerily intact, gleaming from the pulpy mess of the chest cavity. That puzzled Stranahan a minute. The medallion must have shifted around from Amorak's chest to his back when Stranahan was trying to strangle him with it. Doc Hanson examined the small handgun and said it was a nine millimeter Beretta, the Model 1934 with an identifying mark consisting of an etched eagle wearing a crown, to signify its manufacture for the Italian Royal Air Force. His father had brought one back from Italy at the end of the war. The pistol was undoubtedly the war relic Deni had mentioned at the campground, which left no doubt that Amorak had come to Cliff Lake armed. Stranahan knew then that unless Asena tripped up, the only punishment she'd receive would be the knowledge of committing murder in her heart, and that the one question Ettinger didn't think to ask would remain unanswered.

—

D
riving on fumes to Rainbow Sam's Fly Shack two hours after Ettinger finished with him—he'd first had to return to West Yellowstone to drop off the rental and pick up his Land Cruiser, then had driven back to Bridger to collect Choti, who'd been left alone far too long—Stranahan had plenty of time to put that unasked question to himself. He reached over to the passenger seat to worry the coat of the Sheltie, who opened her brown eye, the baleful one, to regard her master.

“Who is she, Choti girl?”

“
Friendliest creature you ever saw,
”
the trapper had told him
.
“But then the next day she was more sober, seemed like a sensible young woman. Called me Mr. Barr.”
Was he talking about Nicki or Asena?

Amorak's words. “She was like this campfire that bows to the wind . . . a person who shows you two faces.”

Then there were Asena's own statements: “I've spent a great deal of my life thinking things through. For both of us
.
” And only a day ago
—“
You try to be someone who knows how to cope and do what you have to to keep going.”

Now that he looked back, Stranahan saw that the clues had been there from the beginning. Asena at the Culpepper Ranch, breaking out of character to spin on her heel like a young girl. Sam talking about making love to two women in one woman's body. And the blood dried on Stranahan's neck. Amorak had presumably yanked out a considerable amount of hair to feed to the wolves.
Nicki's hair.
But it was Asena who bled.

The welts on the ankle were the clincher. It had taken Stranahan a while to recall the story, but he was sure he remembered it correctly, the girl on the verge of womanhood stripping naked to step in a wolf trap, the pool of blood spreading from her feet as her father averted his eyes.
Nicki's blood.
But the scars, they belonged to Asena.

—

S
am answered the knock saying “What the fuck, bro? It's three in the morning,” and Stranahan hit him five times, right-left to the gut, then two open hand slaps to the side of his head when Sam dropped his hands, and another under the ribs when he raised them. Sam went down curled into a ball, his breath coming in stentorian gasps.

“Fuckin' Christ. What the hell'd you do that for?”

He struggled up and held out a hand. As Sean reached for it, Sam clamped his hand in a vise grip, pulled Stranahan forward and swung from the ground with his left. Stranahan dropped his arm to take the blow and hooked him twice—
thup, crack
—the fist this time, the second shot meant for the meat under Sam's ribs, but the big man ducked, taking the punch on the side of his face. He let go of Stranahan's right hand and dropped to both knees.

“Damn,” Stranahan said, grasping his hand. Instantly he felt sorry. He'd almost never lost his temper in his life and now he'd hit his best friend.

Sam sat on the ground leaning back, propped on his arms. “Fuck you, man,” he said. He put a finger into his mouth. “Broke my goddamned bicuspid. Ouch, Jesus that fucker's sharp.” He spit out blood from where the tooth had cut his gum.

“‘Ouch.' Was that what I heard you say, ‘Ouch?'” Stranahan was still squeezing his hand. At least the knuckle hadn't jammed. But it would swell up for a couple days, like it always had after a match.

“Well, it hurts,” Sam said. “Where the fuck did you learn how to do that? I could back you in bars and make money.”

“Ah, Sam,” Stranahan heaved a sigh, “you damn near got me killed. You damn near got your dog killed. Do you have any idea how serious it is to abet someone plotting a murder?”

Sam's voice was thick. “I don't now what you're talking about.”

“Start with forty feet of anchor chain. Ring a bell?”

“Anchor chain? Shit, I got piles of the stuff.”

“Aren't you going to ask where Asena is?”

“Man, I told you before. I'm not her keeper. She goes off on her own.”

“Yeah, well, what she went off to do tonight was wrap Amorak in chain and dump him into Cliff Lake. Using
my
boat. Don't look like you're amazed. You know who Amorak is. He's the one she wanted you to find before you told her I was a better man for the job. You know, to find the sister who was never missing because she didn't exist.”

Sam hung his head.

“I had a lot of time to think about it driving here tonight, and I came to the conclusion that there was only one person she couldn't fool with her act. At least who was alive. Grady Cole she might not have convinced, but he was turning on an elk antler. It was you, Sam. You were with Nicki all summer. She couldn't come back pretending to be somebody else with you, could she?”

“What happened. Is she okay?”

“She isn't hurt, if that's what you mean. But she isn't exactly okay. Right now she's a guest of the county, sitting in a room with a desk and two chairs, drinking bad coffee. You didn't ask how I am. Your dog bit me. Is his rabies vaccination up to date?”

“I'm a responsible pet owner. Where is he?”

“He's at Svenson's Veterinary. He was shot in the paw, but it isn't serious. You can pick him up tomorrow.”

Sam had struggled to his feet and was rubbing a fist into his stomach. “It's like you poked a hole through my gut.”

“Just breathe shallow. It hurts more if you suck too much air.”

“Man, I need a fuckin' drink.”

“I'll give you one, but I want to know one thing first. Who were you in love with? Nicki or Asena?”

He shook his head. “Whoever,” he said quietly. “I was in love with whoever she wanted to be.”

—

I
t took three whiskys to get the story out of him. The first part Sean knew—how Sam had met a red-haired temptress at a Trout Unlimited banquet and taken her to bed, not knowing her name and not seeing her again until this summer, when she showed up wanting a job. What had perplexed him was that it didn't seem like the same person, the woman who'd been so sure of herself that she insisted on a safe word during sex. This woman, Nicki Martinelli, whose reputation as the Fly Fishing Venus preceded her, seemed childlike by comparison, earnest, passionate, but scattered and emotionally fragile. The child was the woman he fell in love with, only to witness her mature as the weeks passed, becoming more like the woman of the banquet and increasingly distant in the process. By the time she took the job at the ranch, they were little more than business partners. It had saddened him to discover she was having an affair with the wrangler, it had devastated him to hear she had disappeared and could be dead.

The night Sam had talked with Sean and Martha at the clubhouse, he'd been telling the truth. He had never heard anything about a sister. But at a knock the following evening, he'd opened his door to a woman who claimed she was just that. The woman had shorter hair, stood straighter, was more self-possessed than Nicki and spoke with a light French Canadian accent. She wore no makeup, and her countenance under a straw Stetson was stern. Her eyes were ice cold, green where Nicki's were gray. She told Sam she had driven from British Columbia to aid in the search for her younger sister. Her name was Asena (“Didn't Nicki ever tell you about me?”).

She'd told Sam that the sheriff had given her his name, as someone who knew her sister. What could he tell her that might help?

Initially Sam had been skeptical. More than skeptical, for they were so alike and behind her eyes he could see flashes of a person that he knew, quirks of expression, a certain canting of the head, the way her nose twitched when she inhaled—nuances that seemingly couldn't be faked. It had to be Nicki.
Didn't it?

But she'd convinced him, even if his eyebrows occasionally betrayed an involuntary reservation. For more than an hour, as she told Sam much the same story that she would repeat in the tipi to Sean later that night, Sam bought the act. Then, when setting down a cup, she'd done something catlike with her lips, touched her tongue to one corner of her mouth and half smiled. And Sam had simply reached over and unbuttoned the second button of her flannel shirt, and she had sat very still as he exposed the top swell of her right breast, where she had a small mole. Sam had always liked that mole. She'd rebuttoned the shirt without looking at him. Then she'd touched a fingertip to her eyes and taken out the contacts.

“I was going to tell you the truth, but I had to see for myself first,” she said. The accent had vanished. “If I could fool you, then I knew I could fool anybody.”

“Thank god you're alive,” Sam said.

That's when she'd asked him to find Amorak.

—

S
am looked critically at the Mason jar holding the last finger of his whisky. He touched his lips to the blood-stained rim and winced. “I'm sorry, Kimosabe. I shoulda' never told her to look you up. I had no idea things were going to get so fucked.”

Sean sipped at his cup of instant coffee. He was past being angry and simply wanted answers.

“What did she tell you about the night in Papoose Basin? What happened up there?”

“She said she wanted to check out the birds she'd seen circling and then got thrown by her horse. She figured it must have got a snootful of wolf. Knocked her cold, anyway, cut a gouge behind her ear. She was in and out of consciousness and then she heard a scream and that woke her up. When she came to, it was night. By the time she stumbled down to where the elk was, Cole was spitted like a suckling pig. Dead as a Montana Democrat. She panicked and ran off the mountain.”

“She never saw Bucky Anderson?”

“She didn't see anybody but the stiff, least she never told me different.”

“And she ran right into the arms of Amorak, there at the Palisades.”

“She said she'd been seeing his tent there for a month. She put the blame on me for that and I deserved it.”

“How's that?”

“ 'Cause I couldn't keep my trap shut. I called the newspaper in Ennis about the Fly Fishing Venus. The story got picked up. He could have seen it anywhere and known where she was.”

“Did she ever actually see Amorak?”

“Yeah, but that was the strange thing. She thought he'd confront her the first time she saw him. It scared the hell out of her. Mind now, I didn't know anything about this at the time. I just remember she came back from a guide day looking like she'd seen a ghost. Clung to me all night, the first time she'd let me touch her in a month.”

“What did he say to her?”

“Nothing. Not one fucking word. Just stood on the bank watching when she floated by with her client. Like he was the cheese and she was the mouse. Sooner or later, she'd stick her neck in the trap. Trade the devil she didn't know for the devil she did.” Sam nodded. “You know how it goes. You hit a low streak and the ex-girlfriend who was a fucking witch looks like she got hit with fairy dust. Your heart's telling you yes while your brain's saying ‘Hey, wait a fucking minute.' But you don't listen to your brain 'cause it's a relief to have someone else do the thinking.”

It was Sam being Sam, but Stranahan followed well enough to get the gist.

“Sure, okay. But what happened that night? What did he do to her?”

“I don't know. I think she PTSD'd there for a day or two. Something real bad. She said she got away from him and hitched a ride with an old dude who used to sell weather vanes and was so busy talking her ear off that he never noticed she was hurt. Anyway, he took her all the way to Libby and she holed up at her dad's place and licked her wounds. That's when she decided to pass herself off as the sister and get revenge on the asshole. She knew he was going to kill her; he'd told her a long time ago that if he couldn't have her no one ever would. But it was chilling, man, to see how her eyes got when she talked about him. Like a cat's eyes. I swear, though, I never thought you'd find him. You're my bro, you gotta forgive me that.”