Gray Ghost Murders (9781101606070) (13 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Field of Stars

“S
o you had a conversation with this man and somehow managed not to get his name? Is that the size of it?” The half of Martha Ettinger's face that was illuminated looked tired.

“He wasn't the kind of person who said anything he didn't want you to know. I got the impression he liked anonymity.”

The two vehicles, Ettinger's pickup and Jason Kent's Chevy four-by-four, had driven up the access road a half hour too late to intercept the houndsman. They were gathered around a six-volt lantern set on the hood of the Chevy. Kent spread his big hands on the hood for warmth. Warren Jarrett was working a toothpick. Harold Little Feather scratched under the cast covering his left forearm. In the hard glare of the lantern light he looked like a zombie, with a blood-stained gauze forehead bandage half hidden underneath a tattered red bandana.

“Like old times,” he said.

“Don't remind me,” Martha said. The last time they had powwowed around the hood of Kent's truck was a little more than a year ago, night two of the manhunt for a murderer named Apple McNair. He had managed to escape the net.

“What I'm saying is, being back, it wasn't a guarantee,” Harold said. “It's a nice feeling.”

Ettinger felt the cell vibrate in her pocket. One bar of reception, a short conversation consisting mostly of
huh
s.

“That was Katie. She'll be here in forty minutes.” She unscrewed the stopper of a metal thermos and poured a cup of coffee into the cap. “I've got paper cups in the truck,” she said.

Jarrett stopped working the toothpick long enough to say, “No thank you.”

“Unless you know something I don't,” Kent said, “I can't see why we aren't done here. At least 'til daylight when we can turn the dog loose and see if he finds a fresh-turned grave. We've accounted for the Volvo. Pickup's gone. We got a plate we can run and an eyewitness who can make the ID.”

“Uh-huh,” Ettinger said. She lifted her chin toward Stranahan. “Would you say this man was evasive because he had something to hide, or because it was his nature?”

“I think if he was trying to hide something, it was running lion outside the chase season. He came up with a cover story of his dog bolting just in case someone from FWP asked me about it later. But the guy seemed awful unconcerned for someone who'd just committed murder. I don't see him with a shovel in his hand.”

“You never do,” Martha said. She blew out a breath. “Look, we're here. It's only a few hours 'til dawn. Let's kick it around. I don't expect all of you to add this to your workload, certainly not you, Jase”—Kent nodded—“but I'd like everybody in the loop.”

Warren said, “Is Katie bringing donuts? Or is she going to feed us dog biscuits?” He looked at Sean. “She did that once. She was supposed to bring donuts and handed out these biscuits shaped like hearts. ‘They're gourmet,' she said. She got offended when we passed on them.”

Martha said, “I told her to get the donuts when I called her from Bridger. She said she would.”

“Then I'll have some of that coffee,” Warren said.

•   •   •

W
hile they waited, Ettinger took them through the case developments, starting with the autopsy results for the second body. Doc Hanson had contacted Boyd Mathis, his old residency supervisor at Kern Medical, who had records of a sixty-four-year-old Hispanic patient with degenerative bone and nerve damage from valley fever. The man had been reported missing in mid-July last summer. Mathis had recalled sitting down with the distraught brother, with whom the patient lived, and discussing the very real possibility of suicide. But because a body had never been found, Mathis wanted to consult with the medical lawyers about confidentiality issues before discussing the patient in detail. He did say that he would get in touch with the brother, to pave the way for Martha speaking to him directly. She said she was cautiously optimistic. The age, ethnicity, and time frame were on the money.

“We get a DNA match with the brother, then we work the phones and see who this man was in contact with. It could lead to a relationship with the first victim, or maybe to whoever killed him.”

“If it wasn't suicide,” Jarrett said.

Ettinger rubbed her front teeth over her lower lip, thinking. “We have two men with terminal illnesses dead four months apart, buried within two hundred yards of each other, one with a big hole through his skull. Plus we have a bullet in a tree root from the vicinity. I think this is murder. Somebody lured these men to the mountain to kill them. If it isn't the lion hunter, then it's someone else with roots in the area. He's killing people in his backyard.”

“Awful big backyard,” Little Feather pointed out.

Katie Sparrow arrived, Lothar with his ears perked, sitting shotgun. She walked around the hood of the truck, holding out the donut bag like she was offering a bucket of candies for children at Halloween. She came to Sean last.

“And one for you,” she said.

He took a bite of a powdered cake donut.

“I like a man with a white mustache,” she said, and winked at him.

Martha caught the wink and said, “Hunh-uh. No office romances.”

“I'm federal and he's a private citizen. I can jump his bones if I want to.”

Warren said, “Martha's just upset because she found out about Walt and Judy.”

“You've got to be kidding,” Katie said. “Isn't that, like, unnatural or something?”

“Or something,” Martha said. “Can we focus here? Katie, you found the bullet. Take us through the process of discovery.”

When Katie had finished, Sean said, “About the caliber. I met a man who has a rifle that shoots a five-hundred-grain bullet. He used a solid in that weight to kill a Cape buffalo.”

Ettinger looked at him. “Really,” she said.

All eyes turned to Sean as he related his meeting with Congressman Crawford.

“Why didn't you tell me?” Martha said.

“Because the caliber's wrong. The congressman's rifle is a .470. The bullet Katie found is .488.”

“Caliber designation isn't always the same as bore diameter,” Jarrett said. “A .270 Winchester mikes out at .277.”

Martha was shaking her head. “Bullet, no bullet, I can't see Crawford as a suspect. He's an asshole who's set the image of our state back forty years, but I don't see him as a murdering asshole. He would have been in office at the time these two men were killed. Still, why don't you look into this, Sean? Arrange for another meeting, feel the man out. And nail down the bullet discrepancy. Find out exactly what kind of gun it is we're looking for.”

Jarrett abruptly stopped working his toothpick. Feeling his eyes on her, Ettinger explained Stranahan's temporary hiring as an outside investigator for special projects. Sean watched the faces register the news—Katie raising her eyebrows in bemusement, Kent nodding slowly, Jarrett starting to work his jaws again with no change of expression. Little Feather said, “Sean showed good judgment tonight. He managed to talk to this guy without arousing suspicion. I say welcome aboard. I can always use another pair of eyes on the ground.” Stranahan realized his status in the group had changed over the past year. He was accepted now, if not as an equal, at least as someone who didn't need hand-holding.

Ettinger said, “Yeah, well, we're shorthanded. I thought it was in the department's best interest. Sean seems to be able to step in shit even if there's only one cow in the pasture. Jase”—she worked her chin with her fingers—“why don't you go home, bolster what's left of the troops. You can take off after I get back. It doesn't look like we're going on a manhunt this morning, at least not for anyone above ground.” She pursed her lips. “Warren, you run down that lion hunter. Don't mention the bodies. Just bring him downtown for questioning. Let him think it's something to do with chasing cats out of season, a wildlife infraction. I want him in the chair, face-to-face, when I drop the M word on him.”

Jarrett nodded and climbed into the passenger seat of Kent's Chevy.

After the truck had grumbled away, Stranahan said, “So I guess my job is to step in shit.”

“What about me?” Katie said. “What do I get to do?”

“Besides being chipper for no reason?” Martha looked west across the valley. The sky was midnight blue over India ink, a field for a thousand stars.

“It's your show. Lead the way. If we start now, it will be light when we reach the saddle.”

•   •   •

F
or two hours Katie worked Lothar off leash, uphill into the sink of the chill morning air that flowed down the shoulder of Sphinx Mountain. When the sun was up and the flow shifted, she skirted around to the top of the microburst and worked down through the deadfall from the upper bench to the lower one, clearing grids as Martha, Sean, and Little Feather sweated through their shirts, searching the country to either side.

They reconvened at noon before hiking back to the trailhead. No one was in the mood to joke. Katie had found fairly fresh grizzly tracks in the disturbed earth where they had excavated the second body, mama bear and her cubs just making the rounds. But if someone had been shot and buried, it wasn't here. Katie suspected from Lothar's elevated attention that a human had passed through the area within the past twenty-four hours, but she couldn't be sure. When Martha pressed her to be more specific, she said flip a coin.

Sean reminded them that he had spent an hour or so in the area yesterday afternoon. It could have been him that aroused the shepherd's nose.

“Fiddle-dee-fucking-dee,” Martha said.

It was a weary procession that switchbacked down from the saddle to the meadow at the trail junction, where they stopped for a water break. They rested awhile in the shade of some boulders near the creek and had just started walking again when Harold motioned them to a halt. It was the exact place where Sean had had an impending sense of danger the day before, but Harold didn't look concerned, just attentive as he canted the angle of his head and turned first one ear to the east, then the other.

“Bear bells. Probably that man and woman who called from the Sphinx.”

In a minute they saw the couple clomping down the trail under bulky packs. They stopped, chests heaving, the man with a beatific expression on a face framed with damply curled long brown hair and a Jesus beard; the young woman's face just looked relieved. She was pretty in a hippyish, Joni Mitchell way, a willowy blonde with sea foam eyes, her untethered breasts tenting a T-shirt that read
THINK GREEN
under a stenciled frog. They took off their packs and sat with their arms around their knees, reliving their night on the Sphinx.

“The wind wouldn't stop,” the woman said. “It howled all night.”

The man agreed. “It was wild.”

Martha questioned them to fix the timeline. When did they hear the wolf? About seven, after they had peaked. Was it a wolf? For sure, the man said. The woman drew her shoulders together and shuddered. Scary, she said. Just one wolf? One drawn-out howl, followed by another about an hour later. The woman said no, the wolf had howled a third time, but it was faint because the wind had picked up. But all from more or less the same place. Location? The man pointed toward the saddle. But hard to tell. Two shots? No disagreement on that. About an hour before dark. Close together. Not
bang bang
, but
bang
 . . . bang
. Where? Really hard to say. From the place where the wolf howled? Maybe, but the man thought more north and from lower elevation, down toward the Middle Fork Trail. Had they by any chance heard a dog barking or baying, like a hound would bay? The woman might have. She'd thought it was coyotes. It came and went. It was in the middle of the night. She hadn't managed much sleep. The young man shook his head. He hadn't heard anything after the shots.

Martha noticed that the man looked only at her and seemed unable to meet the eyes of either Sean or Harold, both of whom were indelibly stamped by their masculinity and utterly relaxed within their bodies, setting their feet on the planet wherever it occurred to them to set their feet.
He's just a boy trying out his beard
, she thought. The young woman kept glancing at Harold. When she stood up and shouldered her pack, her damp T-shirt stretched tight and she spent what to Martha seemed an inordinate amount of time adjusting the sternum strap.

“I need her like the ax needs the turkey,” Harold said after the couple had gone.

Sean said he knew what he meant.

“Grow up,” Martha said, feeling her face flush under the brim of her hat.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Dark Continent, Light People

“I
wanted to hear your voice. Are you at work?”

“I just sold a decaf C-cup to a guy who must have been eighty. He told me I looked like Paula Prentiss. Do you know who that is?”

“Some actress? The name's familiar.”

“He said I should take it as a compliment. I watched him drive around the block twice before he worked up the courage to stop. I
do
think the gentleman has a crush on me.”

It was the first time Sean had caught a note of playfulness in her voice.

“It looks like I have competition,” he said.

“You better hurry back is all I can say.”

“I have another job that will keep me through the afternoon. Then tonight the boys at the clubhouse want to have a going-away party for me.”

“Did you find their fly?”

“No.”

“Some detective you are.”

“Do you want to drive down after your shift? Everyone would like to meet you. I call them the boys, but they're older. You'd find them entertaining, I think.”

“I've had enough old men looking at me today.”

“They're not like that. Besides, I want to show you off. It would do you good to get out of the house.”

“Okay . . . Let me think about it.”

Sean heard a clacking noise. Martinique's voice was faint. “Welcome to Lookers and Lattes. What can I get you today?”

Sean heard a man's voice and held the phone out, discovering that he didn't really want to hear someone talking to her whose eyes were directed at her body. Outside the phone booth, an anvil cloud jutted its jaw over the Gravelly Range. He could smell rain coming.

“I'm back,” she said. “Okay, I'll come. Where should I meet you?”

•   •   •

A
fter using the phone at the Blue Moon Saloon, Sean drove across the West Fork Bridge, headed upriver and then down the grade from the bluff to the Crawford mansion. He sat a minute after switching the motor off, looking down the draw past the clubhouse to the trees and the river beyond. The surface was pelted pewter by the rain. Sean had always had luck fishing in rain, darting a marabou streamer and then letting the line slide through his fingers so that the fly drifted, the minnow it represented vulnerable for just a second before he stripped it again. The trout hit during the pauses, and if the take wasn't as visually exciting as seeing a trout sip a dry fly off the surface, it had the element of surprise. It sent a shudder right up the arm holding the rod. But he was too exhausted to think about fishing now, and he walked to the door licking the rainwater off his lips and half hoping the congressman wasn't home.

“Come in, come in. Just don't shake yourself like a Lab or I'll have to get the mop.” Crawford held the heavy door open, a querulous look on his symmetrical face.

“Thank you, Congressman.”

“There aren't any congressmen here. The congressman resides in Kalispell. In Hyalite County, I'm Weldon. Drink?”

Sean nodded.

“To what do I owe the ho
nor? You're not still looking for those trout flies, are you?”

“Yes, I am, but with less hope. The fact is I'm here because of that guy.” He pointed to the Cape buffalo brooding on the wall. “I've always wanted to test myself against one of those and finally sold enough paintings to do more than dream. I thought maybe you could give me some advice about safari rifles. If you have the time. I know you're a busy man.”

“I always have time to talk guns,” Crawford said. “Where are you going to hunt—Botswana, Tanzania, Namibia? Namibia's an arm and a leg. Tanzania's your pecker, too. For my money the best bet for buff is the Cahora Bassa in Mozambique. You'll track bulls in mopane scrub, every day all day. You'll earn your buff. I wouldn't hunt with anyone but Tony Tomkinson. He's the best PH in the business. I'd be happy to help you book your hunt.”

“I'd appreciate it. I'm thinking about sometime next summer.”

“Our summer's their winter. I'd suggest July, not as hot then.” He walked to the bar. “Scotch suit you?” Stranahan nodded.

“‘God is good, but never dance with a lion.' Old African proverb,” Crawford said, and they touched glasses.

“So what do you think about a rifle?”

“How much money do you have? A Ruger .375 will set you back a grand. That's the least you can expect to spend.”

“I'd like to shoot a bullet as heavy as the one you took that bull with.”

“Then you want a bolt-action in .458 Lott, but only if you can handle the recoil. The classic route is a double rifle in a caliber like .470 Nitro, but if you have to ask how much one costs, you can't afford it.”

Sean wanted to bring up the diameter of the bullet he and Katie had found in the root, but didn't know how he could without alarming Crawford. Just keep him talking, maybe. He shrugged. “I'm asking.”

“Twenty grand for a boxlock made during the golden years between the world wars, and as high as the sky from there. I've owned a handful, including a .577 that weighed thirteen pounds and God help the man who shoulders it, but most of my collection's back in Kalispell. The only double I have here is the .470 I took the buff with. I'll just go into the library and get it. You haven't touched your drink.”

When Crawford came back, he set an oak and leather gun case with brass corners on his dining room table. The outside of the case was battered, the scuffed leather stamped with faded railroad and steamer ship tickets—Bombay, Mombasa, Pretoria, Ceylon. He opened the lid. Nestled in faded burgundy billiard felt was the rifle, its barrels in one compartment and the stock and action in another. A parchment trade label glued to the inside lid read
JOHN RIGBY & CO., GUNMAKERS, LTD. BY APPOINTMENT TO HIS MAJESTY THE KING
.

Crawford fitted the barrels onto the action. “Made in 1927 for the Maharaja of Sonepur. Rising bite action, shuts up tight as a bank vault.” He passed the rifle to Stranahan.

Stranahan eased the top lever to crack the action. He squinted down the gleaming bores, which were as big around as his ring finger.

“You'll notice some minor throat erosion,” Crawford said. “Those old Berdan primers were corrosive, but she'll put both barrels into a playing card at fifty yards.”

Stranahan said seriously, “I never really thought about a rifle as being beautiful before. But this is a work of art.” He turned it in his hands, admiring the flawless marriage of the stock to the action, the crisp diamond-point checkering on the pistol grip and scroll engraving on the sidelocks and steel buttplate. The twin black barrels looked as deadly as mambas.

“What's this?” Stranahan said, tapping the buttplate.

“That's a trapdoor operated by the recessed lever here. Actually, a steel buttplate is a bit out of place on a double rifle; most have a rubber pad to absorb the recoil, but the Maharaja must have specified the buttplate.”

Crawford shrugged, but his voice had betrayed a touch of nervousness.

“Is there anything inside it?” Stranahan asked.

“No,” said Crawford quickly. “I mean yes, there is, but not what I'd hoped for. The rifle was in India, so I was hoping for rubies. Alas, there was nothing but an extra set of firing pins.”

“It's a beautiful piece of wood,” Stranahan said.

Crawford nodded his head. “That's Circassian walnut. The oil finish alone is a half-year process. I could put this rifle up on a website like Champlin Firearms and pad my retirement account by eighty thousand tomorrow.” Confidence was back in his voice. “I kid you not.”

“You said you own more doubles like this?”

“I've bought and sold over the years. Lately I've sold, so my collection isn't what it used to be.”

“What's the bore diameter of a .470?”

“Point four seven five.”

Sean felt a letdown. The diameter of the bullet in the root was .488. He could pry further about specific guns the congressman owned, but knew he'd be pressing his luck. He tried a different tack.

“What made you want to hunt buffalo? It's a question I've been putting to myself, that's why I'm asking. Why can't I just be content to track elk in these mountains?”

“I can answer that one without saying a word.” Crawford opened the lid of a compartment in the gun case and extracted a red-and-gold package of Kynoch cartridges. He extracted one and held it up, the brass case with its protruding bullet the size of a Panatela cigar.

“An elk's antlers are impressive, Sean. But elk don't bite back and they don't require a cartridge this size.” He pushed the brass right up to Sean's nose, and as he shook it Sean saw a cloud pass across Crawford's face. Then it was gone and the sun was back in the man's eyes, but in that brief instant the concentration of dark energy was palpable.

Sean found that he was looking down on himself from a distance. It was as if they had become actors in a play.

“Hunting dangerous game is a rush,” he heard Crawford saying. “It makes you come alive in a way you didn't know existed. Until they legalize grizzly bear hunting, the only place I can get my fix is the dark continent. If you were a reporter I couldn't say that because of the connotation—dark continent, dark people. But I mean in the sense of Africa as the last blank spot on the map. And that caliber of wildness, forgive the pun, it's still there, even if you have to turn over more stones to find it. I'm envious of a young man like you taking his first trip. You face a buffalo charge, you'll find out what makes you a man.”

“Sort of like going to war, I guess,” Stranahan said.

“I wouldn't know about that. In 1973, my draft number was fifty-six. But that was the last year of fighting and they took only to eleven. As a good Montana boy I'd have gone, of course, and as a 'Nam vet I'd be a more successful politician than I already am. Give a man vet status and he jumps fifteen points in the polls.” He gave short laugh. “Unless your name is John Kerry.”

Crawford drained the amber liquid out of the squat, square glass. “Another?”

Still on his feet after thirty-six hours, neat whiskey was the last thing Sean needed.

“I don't suppose you could make me an Irish coffee.” He was back within his weary body, the senator so close he could smell the aftershave.

Crawford said, “I'll take that as a challenge.”

•   •   •

“Y
ou look like a man who'd rather lay his head on a pillow than the saddle fork of a woman,” Crawford said. He handed Sean a glass of black coffee and Jameson.

“We played poker to all hours in the clubhouse.”

“Invite me next time. I can hold bad cards with a straight face, it comes with the territory. Really, I've enjoyed the members I've met. Polly Sorenson, especially. Willoughby, isn't he the president?”

“He is. But our game might not be rich enough for you. We don't play for money. We play for flies. A caddis fly would be a dollar, say. A streamer, five dollars. The more elaborate the fly, the more it's worth in the pot. They indulge me, letting me bet my own flies even though I'm not on the same skill level as a tier. Some of the flies that change hands, the salmon flies, are worth five hundred dollars.”

“Sounds like fun.”

Crawford indicated a stuffed chair under the glowering bulk of the buffalo mount.

“You know the great thing about Montana?” he said. He settled himself into a chair identical to the one he'd indicated for Sean and leaned forward across a coffee table. He placed the cartridge on its base between them. “It's that people from all walks of life walk together. What I mean is, you go to Washington, anywhere East, and you find that people stay within their own socioeconomic class, within their own political circles. If you're from Boston, Irish, blue-collar roots, vote the Democratic ticket, most of your friends are more like you than they are different. Am I right? But here, you take a rancher who is land rich, who's as conservative as Limbaugh, and his best friends might include a doctor, a professor with an Obama sticker on his bumper, a mechanic, and a waitress. In the East, to be a politician who claims to be a man of the people means you have your picture taken with them. But here, I can meet someone like you, or your friend Willoughby, or a movie star who owns land in the valley, with an old ranch hand like Emmitt Cummings thrown into the mix, and we can become friends on a level playing field. I have guys I hunt deer with who can't pony up the gas money to drive forty miles and back. In camp I'm just Weldon to them. We're at the same eye level. If all the country was like this, we'd understand each other and work to find common solutions. Now I'm sounding like a politician.”

“No,” Stranahan said. “I've noticed the same thing.” He was surprised to find himself in tune with the congressman on at least one subject. There was a charm behind the man's bluster and Sean found himself liking him despite his very real suspicions.

“I've been thinking about your trip to Africa,” the congressman went on. “I don't think I explained the thrill of hunting buffalo adequately. Let me ask you. Have you ever heard of a story called ‘The Most Dangerous Game'?”

Sean brought his head back just a fraction of an inch. He was wide awake now. He said, “That's about the guy who gets shipwrecked on an island and meets some count or somebody. The man plays a life-and-death game with him. I had to read it in high school.”

Crawford nodded. “Actually, he's a Russian aristocrat who traps shipwreck victims and hunts them down—man is the most dangerous game, you see. The premise is that the Russian, Zaroff, has hunted big game all over the world, but it got to be boring. So he searched for a more dangerous game. He came to the conclusion that it was man, the only animal that could reason. But there's a flaw in the story. Zaroff sends his victims into the jungle with a knife, where he gets to track them down with a gun. How fair is that? Now, if two men were equally armed—say you and I went at each other with big-game rifles. We agreed to a field of play. We hunted each other until one was dead. Now that would be a fair fight, and I'd just as soon go that way as another.”