Dead Man’s Fancy (26 page)

“You were in love with her, Sam. I understand how it affects IQ.”

“So what's going to happen to her?”

Stranahan frowned. “Amorak wouldn't be dead if she hadn't tricked him into coming to the lake. There was an armed standoff and she's got GSR all over her hands. She admits firing the shot that killed him. So Ettinger's going to huff and puff. But unless Harold or one of the techs finds something to contradict her story, Ettinger will present the evidence to the DA with her assertion that it was self-defense. She'll recommend to not prosecute. The only thing that could trip her up is if Ettinger finds out she's Nicki in disguise.”

“I'm telling you, man, there's no way. Not unless her head starts bleeding all over the floor.”

“She told Ettinger she got gouged with a rock when she was struggling with Amorak. That's covered. I mean her documentation.”

“She's a dual citizen from when her dad brought her down to the States. She's got a U.S. driver's license as Nanika Martinelli; she's got Canuk papers as Nadina. Legally, she's two people. Or almost legally. You squint your eyes, they even have the same name. Nadina, Nanika, it's a two-letter difference. Like she told me, ‘Smudge it a little, who's to notice?'”

“So were there ever two sisters, or did she just make Asena up?”

Sam shook his head. “I'm starting to think I never knew who she was.”

H
e was halfway back to Bridger when something drifting around the edge of his consciousness settled long enough to pin down. It was Asena's reaction to meeting him at the Culpepper Ranch, her quizzical expression when she said he reminded her of someone. At the time it had meant nothing; now he realized that she'd recognized his voice as that of the man she'd knocked into the root cellar at her father's house. The man she'd mistaken for Fenrir Amorak. It was only
after
he'd spoken that she had quit firing through the floorboards. And when he confirmed her suspicion by telling her about his trip to Libby, the way she hugged him in the tipi, it had seemed like an overreaction. He realized now it was her relief at having not shot an innocent person. But what had happened before she hitched the ride to Libby? How had she escaped Amorak? And his incantations about the men who cried wolf? What was that about?

Stranahan thought Ettinger would hold her at least until the techs completed their work at the lakeshore, midmorning if not later. He'd meet up with her at Law and Justice, put some questions to her of his own. In the meantime, a few hours on the cot would do him a world of good. Stranahan dug his fingers into Choti's coat. “Home soon now, girl.”

But in fact he did not drive directly to his tipi, but detoured to the Bridger Mountain Cultural Center, the halls five a.m. empty, his boots ringing on the travertine tiles. He let himself into his studio and booted up his computer, his brain wired on caffeine but his right-hand fingers so swollen he had to punch keys with his left. A name search hit nothing but a spate of news stories chronicling the search for Nicki Martinelli. He sat back in his chair. Asena had told him she was seven years old when the snowmobile cracked through the ice. It was a traumatic experience and Stranahan had heard only her version, how the two girls were hurled with their mother into the freezing water. The daughters survived; their mother had died. Working backward from Asena's age—she'd told him she was twenty-seven, two years older than her sister—Stranahan isolated the probable year of the accident and finally found an account in the archives of the
Smithers Interior News
. It was dated December 29, and after he'd read the article he opened the bottom right-hand drawer, took out The Famous Grouse and poured two fingers into a water glass. While the whiskey warmed him, he read the story a second time.

Schoolteacher Drowns in Two Loon Lake

Tragedy Claims One Daughter, Leaves Second in Coma

A Houston teacher and her 7-year-old daughter died Thursday morning when their snowmobile plunged through the ice of Two Loon Lake.

The coroner's office identified the victims as Elizabeth Martinelli, 31, and her daughter Nadina.

Her younger daughter, Nanika, 5, was rescued from the icy water by her father, Alfonso Martinelli, 37, a commercial fisherman and fur trapper.

According to the sheriff's report, Mrs. Martinelli and the two girls were riding on one snowmobile across the frozen lake. Her husband was following in a second snowmobile when he heard a crack like a gunshot and saw his wife and daughters fall through the ice.

Martinelli used a chainsaw to saw a branch from a tree to attempt a rescue, but by the time he crawled to the opening in the ice, only the younger child was visible. He pulled her to safety.

The child slipped into a coma before being admitted to the Houston Community Clinic. She was listed in critical condition, suffering from hypothermic shock.

Dr. Kevin McCarthy, who related Martinelli's account of the tragedy to the
Interior News
, said the distraught man managed to convey what had happened in a mixture of French and English.

“He told me it was his fault because the daughter who drowned usually rides on his machine, but it was too laden down with ice-fishing gear that day,” McCarthy said. “He kept saying, ‘My life is under ice.' Either that or ‘My wife is under ice.' He was babbling.”

McCarthy said that even if Nanika Martinelli emerges from her coma, it could be weeks or months before the extent of her injuries are known. Depletion of oxygen can cause brain damage in hypothermic and near-drowning victims, although younger children have a better chance of recovery.

The last paragraph was a roundup of ice-related tragedies, and Stranahan glanced from the screen. So there had been two sisters and it was Nadina who died that day. The veil of fog was lifting. But what happened after Nanika came out of the coma?

Methodically, Sean searched the archives for an update on the girl's condition. Frustrated, he people searched for the doctor who had treated her. That also went nowhere. He did find a number for the clinic in Houston. A woman said in a tired voice that there was no doctor named McCarthy in personnel, but she'd only been there three years and a nurse who came on duty at seven had a longer tenure. Stranahan said he'd call back. He found himself yawning, suddenly overcome with fatigue, and lay down on the futon. Choti pushed her nose into the crook of his knees. Both were instantly asleep.

—

“H
ello?”

“Dr. Kevin McCarthy?” Stranahan had slept for four hours and awakened with a dull pain behind his eyes and cramps in his side where Killer had bitten him.

“This is he. With whom am I speaking?”

Stranahan identified himself as an investigator for the Hyalite County Sheriff's Department. He said a background check on a missing woman revealed that she had once been treated by him.

“How did you find me? I haven't lived in British Columbia for twenty years.”

“A nurse at the Houston Clinic told me you'd moved to Toronto. Pam Granger. I dialed every McCarthy in the white pages.”

“How is Pam?”

“She sounded okay. She says to say ‘hi.'”

“How can I help you, Mr. Stranahan?”

After Stranahan spoke there was silence on the line.

“Yes, I remember.” The voice was careful. “I've often wondered what happened to her.”

“She seems to have been confused about her identity. Sometimes she called herself by her sister's name, Nadina. Or Asena. Does that make sense to you?”

Silence.

“Dr. McCarthy?”

“I'm thinking about what you said. Unfortunately, it does make sense. The girl was comatose for several weeks, I can't recall the exact timetable of her recovery. A CAT scan showed neuropathic damage to the visual cortex, which sounds worse than it is. She had some spatial discrepancies in her nervous system, but brain function was largely unimpaired. From what I gather she had no memory of the accident except what her father told her. He may have been part of the problem. I was in the room when she spoke her first words and he called her by both her own name and the name of her sister, even in the same sentence. I think he suffered as much mental anguish as she did and carried a burden of guilt over the accident. From conversations with the girl's teachers, I gather Mr. Martinelli had been devoted to his older daughter, Nadina, the one who drowned. I was told she was very much the image of her mother. Nanika was quite an unruly child, emotional and full of undirected energy, what in my day might have been called a little dickens. I'm not a psychologist, but I would not be surprised if his calling her Nadina was an attempt to keep the memory of his older daughter alive. He might have thought that by reinforcing personality traits that reminded him of her, and indirectly of his wife, he would be better able to cope with the tragedy. But I really should not be speculating about this.”

“Dr. McCarthy, we are searching for a missing person. It's hard to find someone when there's confusion about who you're looking for.”

“Yes, of course. I only treated her for the initial trauma. Patient confidentiality is not an issue. I do wish to help.”

But that was the note on which the extent of his help ended. He had not maintained contact with the father or his daughter and had taken a position in Ontario only a few months later. He would appreciate being informed if the woman was found. Stranahan set down the phone. On a whim he picked it back up and tapped in Martinique's number. The last time he'd called a man had picked up. Martinique had assured Sean that he was a fellow student in her study group. The phone rang six times. He set down the receiver halfway through a hello that was clearly male.

By the time he got a tetanus shot at the Bridger Health Clinic and drove to Law and Justice, Asena Martinelli, or rather the woman who had assumed the name, had been cooling her heels in the interview room some ten hours while the evidence dribbled in. Ettinger, who was in a surly mood, offered Sean a chair in her office by cocking a finger.

“I'm going to start by telling you a couple things you don't know and you're going to listen. Then we're going to get around to your shenanigans at the lake.”

“I wouldn't call getting shot at and being chomped by an Airedale shenanigans.”

“Humpff. Anyway, Katie's and your little extracurricular snooping in the park, the girl who got burned in the hot pot?”

“Carrie Harding. Did she come out of the coma?”

“Didn't I say listen?”

Stranahan raised a hand in acquiescence.

“No, she didn't, but the guy who found her, the professional wrestler who called himself the Madman of Minnetonka, hanged himself at a rental cabin in Gardner last night. I mean that's when they found him. He'd been swinging awhile. The suicide note said he'd given Harding a lift when she was hitchhiking and told her he'd show her the Cobalt Necropolis. All he wanted to do was touch her leg. He wrote that he felt like Frankenstein, who drowned the little child in the lake. He actually tried to save her, burned his own legs all to hell dragging her out. So our man Amorak, he's off the hook for that or would be if he still had a heartbeat.”

“That doesn't come as a complete surprise,” Stranahan said.

“No, but this will. Remember the list you found in old man Martinelli's journals? Ranchers Who Cried Wolf? They were some of the guys sent the anonymous poem written in blood? Sheriff Monroe over in Libby suspected Amorak, but no one on the list got hurt. Well that was then and this is now. I had one of my deputies do some digging. Turns out two of those ranchers were killed in hunting accidents well after the fact. One three years ago. One two years ago.”

“So?

“So they were both hunting alone and found dead with their heads blown to hell.”

“How do you get from that to Amorak?”

“You know me, I'm not the kind to leap at threads. That's your forte. But statewide we get only about one accidental shooting a year during rifle season. The odds of two men from a list of thirty-two names being the casualties of errant bullets in back-to-back years aren't so good. What I'm thinking now is Nicki Martinelli gave Amorak that list. Maybe she thought the letters would be the end of it. Scare the bad guys who hate wolves a little. Instead, her boyfriend puts bullets into a couple brain pans on opening day of the season. Maybe she knew about it, maybe she didn't.”

“That would be a hard secret to live with.” Stranahan thought back to Amorak's incantations at the lakeshore.

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

And he will die

No wonder she'd been so distraught.

Ettinger sighed. “I remember when the worst thing to happen in Montana was yearling prices fell.”

“So when are you going to process her out?”

“You like that woman, don't you? Can't ever get enough of the pretty ones.”

Stranahan shrugged. “She paid me to do a job.”

“Uh-huh. Well, if it hadn't been for a dog breaking out a car window, you'd have got yourself dead doing it. Here's the situation. She was armed. She admits luring Amorak to the lake. She admits confronting him about her sister. She trailered a boat and there was anchor chain in her rig, which makes me think she planned to feed him to the trout. She says she didn't fire the Colt, only the pistol, but a Colt holds six and you only extracted five cartridges, with three being empties. Where's the sixth cartridge?”

Stranahan thought about the warning shot that had hit Amorak's leg. The empty was still in his jeans' pocket. He said, “It's not unusual to carry a single-action revolver with the chamber under the hammer empty. For safety.”

“I'll grant you the point. It still stinks to high heaven. But the man was scum and fired first. Thanks to you she has a witness. I told her to stay in the county until forensics comes in, but that's a formality. What are they going to find, a drop of blood from a guilty heart?” She shook her head. “To answer your question, we'll cut her loose inside the hour.”

“I'll give her a lift back to Sam's. I'm sure he'll put her up as long as necessary.”

Ettinger wagged her finger back and forth—“No, that's not going to happen. You were questioned at the scene, but you haven't given a formal statement. Walt will do the honors. My advice is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. Besides, a deputy brought Martinelli's Bronco up from the lake last night. She can drive her own sweet self back to Sam's. As for you, down the hall, down the stairs, second door on the left. You know the drill.”

Stranahan stood up. He'd thought of something. “Did you pick up the girl in the campground?”

Ettinger nodded. “We did an interview this morning. Denise Aldridge. Two gallons shy of a half tank. Said she'd met Amorak Monday, September 20, when she was signing the register to hike into Shoshone Lake in the park. He mentioned he knew a denning site and offered to show her a wolf—showed her a wolf. She said she'd taken a bus out here after quitting her job at the Dairy Queen in Bismarck and wanted to settle somewhere, quote, ‘where there was mountains and nature and stuff,' and was looking for a sign. Amorak was the sign, but she knows next to nothing about him except that he told her he made a little money negotiating with urban entrepreneurs. That's drug dealer to you or me, but she didn't understand the word and didn't ask what it meant because she didn't want to appear dumb and jeopardize her chances of graduating to the red contact lenses. Kid's just a prey animal run out of cover where anyone can take a bite.”