Dead Man’s Fancy (5 page)

Ettinger, recalling Doc Hanson's wisdom, told herself to stay calm. She offered a grudging smile. “I suppose I could say the same about my first husband,” she admitted. “And the second, come to think of it.” Her eyes went from one to the other. “So what's this little experiment prove?”

“We were just seeing how far you had to drop a deer before it got stuck on the antler,” Wilkerson said. “You know, instead of bouncing off.” She dug into her shirt pocket and produced a notebook. “I started to do some calculations in the lab, but it's hard because of the variables. You have to take into account mass, weight and profile of the victim, the size and configuration of the antler tine, drag coefficient and velocity at impact, how much force it takes to impale through skin, fascia, organs and then skin again . . .” She shook her head, her eyes swimming. “If Doc had a John Doe in the drawer it would be perfect, but Julie said she had some confiscated game we could use and this mule deer dresses out around one-seventy, which is approximately the same weight as the victim. Of course it's minus the guts, which throws a wrench into the equation, but I thought I'd learn more here than with the calculus.”

“So what's the verdict?”

Wilkerson cocked her head. “Even with a skinned deer dropped from two meters we didn't have penetration, that's with an impact velocity of twelve point three miles per hour, so it's clear that he didn't fall onto the elk and impale himself. Certainly not to a depth of forty-six centimeters; I'm sorry to be trading back and forth on measures, but we use imperial for velocity and metric for most everything else. Should I call you Sheriff?”

“Everybody calls me Martha. So what you're saying is he had help.”

“I'm saying that he could not have been impaled by simply falling onto the antler tine. Considering the mass, the tine itself, which looks sharp but is technically blunt, puncturing the involved tissues would take at least forty-five Newtons of pressure. He didn't reach impact velocity sufficient for that to happen. Also, that's not factoring in the give, for lack of a better term. The antlers weren't set in cement. They would absorb some of the impact before the skin punctured.”

“If you were called as an expert witness in a court of law—”

“Then it would still be my opinion, but if you're asking if a defense attorney could find another CSI who would contradict my finding, he could. You can hire a forensic analyst who'll tell you a man died of snakebite after you've dug a forty-four slug out of his heart.”

“So somebody pushed him against the antlers.”

“Or he fell. Then he was pushed.”

“Maybe he was pancaked,” McGregor said. “Like in wrestling. You grab the guy chest to chest and fall on him. That would drive the antler in for sure.”

Martha fingered her chin. “Would it take a strong man to do that?”

“Well, you've got the downward pressure,” Wilkerson said, “and then there's the weight behind the pressure, that's the same thing, really. I don't know. I'll have a better answer after doing the math, but offhand I'd say it would take a good-sized person.”

“Could someone my size do it?” Martha was a solid one forty.

“I'd guess at least your size.”

“Mmm. So what exactly were you trying to accomplish by dropping dead animals from ten feet in the air?”

“At that point, we were just interested to see what happens.”

“Yeah,” McGregor chimed in. “Once you start dropping deer onto antler tines, it's hard to stop.” She looked at Wilkerson, her eyes dancing. The two were on the verge of being girls again. Martha resisted the temptation to roll her eyes.

She walked out into the hard sunshine. She put on her polarized fishing glasses, her expression sober behind the mirrored lenses, and brusquely walked halfway to the Jeep Cherokee before realizing she hadn't asked about the bruises on the victim's ankles. For a victim was what he was, contradictory expert witnesses notwithstanding. What was it Walt had said about the G4? “They don't call it the sword point for nothing.” Wilkerson was leaving by the same door Ettinger had and Martha, walking back, snapped her fingers and cocked her hand like a gun, pointing the CSI back into the barn.

L
ibby, Montana, it would later occur to Stranahan, was a town of never agains. Yawning trucks with hoods that would never close again. Boarded-up houses with doors that would never open again. Boats that would never again see water, rusting on trailers with tires that would never roll again. It had once been called God's Corner, an elbow-shaped town of under three thousand souls on the south bank of the Kootenai River, its western flank presided over by the imperious peaks of the Cabinet Mountains. By the time Sean Stranahan passed the giant eagle sculpture at the junction of Highway 2 and Mineral Avenue, Libby, Montana, had earned the distinction of being the deadliest Superfund site in U.S. history, asbestos clouds from a vermiculite mine having sifted like fairy dust into the lungs of its residents, insinuating wormlike fibers into their pulmonary systems and killing an estimated four hundred people. It was known, simply, as Death Town.

The sheriff's department was opposite the VFW, catty-corner from a smoke shop with a service window where two pickups waited behind a paint-peeled sedan, autumn in the air, the exhaust hanging low over the gravel drive-through. Stranahan ran a comb through his hair and walked into the sheriff's office, which was fronted by a man with heavy jowls who regarded him through bulletproof glass. Stranahan was directed to a chair, where he idly leafed through an old
Golf Digest
with Phil Mickelson on the cover, the man in black smiling like he'd swallowed a canary.

He heard a door open and glanced up into what could have been his father's face, had his father lived to be older, angular and darkly complected, with graying temples bracing midnight hair swept to the side. It was a manly, old-fashioned face, one that belonged in a black-and-white movie, looked into with longing by a platinum blonde. The fact that it could be his own face in twenty years didn't register.

He followed the Lincoln County sheriff into his office; they shook hands. Sean repeated the man's name, Carter Monroe, so he would remember it and briefly ran his eyes around the room. A glassy-eyed mount of a bull elk presided over an oak desk, the only furniture that wasn't green office steel. Under the elk was a row of framed photographs of girls' softball teams.

“One of them must be your daughter,” Stranahan said.

“She's the one with the blue bat in the center frame.” Monroe had a husky smoker's voice, but Stranahan didn't see an ashtray, nor the giveaway thinning of fabric where a cigarette pack customarily rode a shirt pocket.

“How long have you been coaching?” Stranahan had noted the sheriff squatting front row left in each photo, the girls growing taller, filling out their uniforms, while he just looked older.

“Seven years,” he said. “Past tense. My Jenny graduates UM with a master's in counseling next spring, she'll get a job God knows where. My wife's gone six months now, bless her. I'm up for reelection. If I lose I don't know what I'll do with myself. If I win . . . well, I'm not so sure about that, either.”

“I lost my mother last year,” Stranahan said. “When they die you see them all broken apart, but in time they become young again, you remember the best that they were. It'll come. Family's everything, isn't it?”

The sheriff let out a long breath and held Sean's eyes, then looked away. “It certainly is,” he said softly.

The fact was if you asked Sean Stranahan, he would say he was unaware of his effect on people, the way he disarmed nearly everyone with his forthcoming nature. Casual acquaintance came so naturally that he seldom paused to consider that it was anything but ordinary to exchange hellos with a passing fisherman and take the confession of his infidelities a half hour later, or converse with this man who looked like his father in a way that brought a sheen to the man's eyes ten minutes after they'd shaken hands. Never meeting a stranger was a Western trait, and Stranahan had grown up in the East where people conducted business with skins of reserve so thick that you had to peel them like an orange. In that regard, moving to the Rockies had been like coming home. His personality was a form of natural grace, like throwing a baseball, but a weapon for all that. Stranahan was not entirely ingenuous; he knew he could extract more information with a smile than most men could with a cocked .38.

Carter Monroe briefly shook his head, as if to clear it. “So if you'll take a seat, here's what I have for you.” He picked up a piece of paper from his desk. “The house is off Kaniksu Mountain Road about ten miles south of town. Belonged to Nanika Martinelli's father. Old Alfonso passed last year.”

He studied the paper. “Alfonso Martinelli,” he recited. “Born in Saint Véran in France, moved to the Morice River valley in British Columbia in the seventies. Commercial fisherman, trapper, carpenter, jack of northern trades. Moved a number of years later to a place near Kamloops, worked the southern part of the province as a wolfer.” He looked up. “My understanding is that's just what it sounds like; he killed wolves. Packed up his traps and came here about eight years ago. Hired on as an animal damage control specialist for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. They liaison, if that's the right word, with our own FWP to eliminate predators that kill livestock. Cougars, bears, coyotes, and wolves, of course. We've got wolves here like no tomorrow.”

Monroe squared the paper and looked up. “He was a recluse. I'm told the place stank to high heaven from pelts and home-brew wolf lure and the like, though he was law abiding. I never had the occasion to knock on the door. People called him Fonzo or the Fonz, after the character in the TV show. Maybe you're too young to remember.”

Stranahan said he remembered. “I thought you said he was a recluse. Somebody called the Fonz doesn't sound like a recluse.”

“I did, didn't I? Alfonso had a strained relationship with his daughter. She was a hellion, rebelled against everything he stood for. When they reconciled, he came out of his shell, you saw a different man.” He caught Sean's eyes. “That doesn't surprise me. Nicki was on the track team with my Jenny senior year. All I can say is the mother must have been a stunner. She didn't get her looks or that hair from him. And she sure as hell didn't get his personality. You hear about people who walk into a room and the room changes? Nicki changed a room. Put her in any group of people and she just bubbled to the top. I called her a hellion but that was a wrong choice of words. More like an innocent with a strong sense of purpose. Everyone was drawn to her.

“Anyway, Alfonso, when he lost his job, or quit, or whatever derailed him from the federal gravy train, he started a handyman service—I'll Do Most Anything. I used to see him driving around, shuttling cars for the rafting companies and fly shops.”

Stranahan's head came up fractionally. “Nicki worked for a place called Hook & Hackle.”

Monroe nodded. “The Fly Fishing Venus. The owner of the shop had the bow painted with a mermaid with red hair. She gave her old man a new lease on life, so says just about everyone I talked to, but I already told you that.” He frowned. “I'm repeating myself.”

Stranahan said, “Was there anyone in Nicki's life, a boyfriend, girlfriend, who might be able to tell me something about her?”

“Last I heard she was seeing the guy who owned the fly shop. His name's Robert Kelly. Look, all I did after Sheriff Ettinger gave me the heads up was boot the computer and punch numbers into a phone. There's more digging to be done if someone wants to dig. Nicki was arrested twice for disturbing the peace, demonstrating against the mine. Fairly innocent stuff, though I can't say that about some of the people she associated with. I'd be happy to help, but anything extracurricular, you'd want to coordinate with me, this is my jurisdiction.” He waited for Stranahan to acknowledge with a nod. “Just what is it you do, Sean?”

“I'm an artist and a fishing guide, but I used to be a private investigator and still am, in a small way. I liaison, if that is the right word, with the Hyalite County sheriff's office. What I'd like to do today, with your permission, is drop in at that fly shop and then have a look at the cabin before it gets dark.”

“That isn't a problem, although to my knowledge there hasn't been anyone living on the premises since Alfonso French-kissed his revolver on Memorial Day weekend.”

“So he committed suicide?”

Monroe nodded. “He suffered from asbestos poisoning, cancerous mesothelioma to be exact. I don't blame him for taking matters into his own hand.”

“That's from breathing asbestos into the lungs, right?”

“It is. Unfortunately I'm an expert on the subject. It's what took my Mary Ellen. If you asked me even a couple months ago, I would have a hard time talking about it.”

“I'm sorry,” Stranahan said.

“No, it's okay. You distance yourself from these things, or time distances you, I don't know which. You keep breathing, anyway. The story with asbestos is the fibers irritate your lungs and make scar tissue. Then plaque builds up around the fibers. What it does is choke you; you can't get enough air. You walk around town, you'll see people dragging their canisters of oxygen. That's called asbestosis. I have it to the degree that I can't hunt elk anymore and talk like I swallowed a jar of buckshot. The worst-case scenario is cancer develops and you hike out to the wood pile like Alfonso did.” He made a gun of his hand and dropped the hammer, pointing his index finger at his mouth. “It was Nicki who made the call. By the time I got there, she was holding him in her lap, just soaked in blood. She was beside herself, kept telling me how she should have seen it coming and it was all her fault.”

“What did she mean?”

“It was just crazy talk.” Stranahan heard a change come into his voice. “People assume a lot of blame when loved ones die.” He pressed his lips together and briefly looked away. “When my wife got the diagnosis, I beat myself up pretty bad. We weren't from here, came sight unseen for the job. That reporter from the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
who blew the whistle on Zonolite Mountain, what W. R. Grace and company were putting into our good, clean air, those stories were just coming out. I could have got Mary Ellen out of here, she might be alive today. But she was a nurse and wanted to stay and I was loyal to the town.” His voice trailed away.

“Why don't you leave now?”

“Because it wouldn't matter. All of us who breathed the stuff, we're like ticking bombs. I could hide under a rock in Africa for the next five years and the big C would know right where to find me. Or I could die drinking kava in Fiji on my ninetieth birthday. Knock wood.” He rapped his knuckles against the desktop. “Anyway, they say the risk of accumulating more fibers is slim; it only took a five hundred mil cleanup. That's what they say. Besides, I love this town, and I love the Kootenai. There's good people here, and I say that as someone who deals with the dark side of human nature. I just wish we could climb out of this goddamned recession and the county could pony up for another deputy.”

He looked askance at Stranahan. “I ought to warn you, it's Appalachia West up along that Kaniksu Mountain Road. We call it the Boneyard because it's where a lot of hunters toss game carcasses. It's a checkerboard ownership, private and Forest Service, about a dozen houses strung along the creek. We've shut down one meth lab and another could have popped up, so keep your nose in the air. Shouldn't be anyone at the Martinelli place, but you never know. If it smells like a hospital ward or wet diapers, just walk away.”

“You wouldn't have a key to the door, would you?”

“No, but anyone with ingenuity ought to be able to find a way inside. Here,” he lifted his hip to extract his wallet, “I'm going to give you a card with my private number on it. Anybody asks why you're poking around, call and I'll put them straight.”

Stranahan said thanks and took the card. He thought of his cell phone, skipping like a basalt stone across the surface of Henry's Lake. He really was going to have to get another one.

Monroe stood up. “Sheriff Ettinger told me if you didn't show up today, it was either because that heap you're driving died or else you were up to your waist in a steelhead river. You want to float the Kootenai tomorrow morning? Seven a.m.? I could have you off the river by eleven. What is it, seven hours to Bridger? You'd be home before dark.”

Stranahan thought about it, “Why not?”

“Where are you staying tonight?”

Stranahan asked if there was a campground along the river.

“There's one right at the put-in. I'll come by and collect you in the morning. Here, I'm going to draw you a map.” He scribbled on a legal pad and tore out the sheet and handed it over. “You don't hesitate to call that number now.”

—

T
he Hook & Hackle, on the north bank of the Kootenai River, was everything Rainbow Sam's Fly Shack wasn't. For starters it wasn't a shack, but a neat, two-story clapboard with twin trailered ClackaCrafts in a gravel swing-through drive. He entered the shop, which could have been any of fifty fly shops in Big Sky country—a picket fence of fly rods, gleaming bar-stock aluminum reels, bins stocked with every variety of fur- and feather-clad hooks, custom teardrop landing nets, logo hats—right down to the obligatory Labrador snoozing on a throw rug. Stranahan exchanged nods with the man behind the counter and bent down to pat the broad head of the Lab.

“Does she hunt?” he asked without standing up.

“Does she hunt? You come into my shop and first thing you do is insult my dog?” Stranahan looked up. He was a big man with an outdoor complexion, a high wattage smile at the center of a doorknob- style beard and brown eyes in the pale ovals of skin where his sunglasses would rest.

“First time to the Kootenai? I can offer you the off-season rate if you're looking for a guided float. I know this river better than anyone.”