Wicked Eddies (14 page)

“It's not as pleasant for the fishermen,” one woman with a weather-
lined face said to an attentive acne-scarred young man
across from her. “But rain doesn't bother the fish. It can even
oxygenate the river by breaking the surface film, allowing the fly hatches to rise better.”

“I never knew that,” the young man answered.

A gray-haired man next to her nodded while he finished chewing a cookie. “And in wet weather, it gets harder for the flies to dry their wings so they can take off. They stay on the surface longer, so the trout have a better chance of feeding on them.”

“But won't your dry flies sink?” the young man asked.

“Yes,” the woman's voice rose excitedly, “and when your fly gets forced underwater,
keep it there
, because that's exactly what's happening to the naturals. Just wiggle your fly a little bit to imitate a struggling bug.” She made small sharp movements with her hands, as if she was gently flicking a fly rod.

“I always reach for my terrestrials box when it rains,” the older man added. “Grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, and ants can lose their footholds on leaves and grasses during a rainstorm, and get swept into the river. And here's one last tip.” He tapped a finger on the young man's chest for emphasis. “The rain clouds up the water, distorting the fish's vision, so you can creep up a little closer to your prey. Yep, I almost prefer fishing in the rain.”

Boy, these folks are really into the sport,
Mandy thought. Of course, at a funeral for an avid fly fisherman, you were likely to run into more of the same. And fanatics were liable to talk about their obsessions anywhere, even at a funeral. None of this discussion was suspicious, though, so she moved to the other end of the room, toward the entrance.

Just then Craig Ellis came down the stairs, his gaze searching the crowd, probably looking for his mother. He was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, obviously not funeral wear, and was nervously jiggling a set of car keys in his hand.

“Hi, Craig,” Mandy said. “Looking for your mom?”

Craig looked uncomfortable, like he didn't want to meet her gaze after his outburst the night before. “Yeah. I'm here to pick her up and take her home.”

“She's over there,” Mandy pointed to the easy chair, where Brenda was accepting a plate of cookies that a woman had brought her. She was partially obscured by a line of people moving slowly by and bending over one-by-one to talk to her. “She hasn't finished talking to the mourners yet, so you may have to wait a bit.”

“Mourners,” Craig scoffed, his mouth turned down in a scowl.

A couple of people near them turned to stare at Craig.

Mandy took his elbow to steer him back into the kitchen. “Let me get you a glass of punch while you wait for your mom.”

And keep you from upsetting people and making a fool of yourself.

The kitchen was fairly quiet, because all the cookies had been served and the church ladies were out mingling with the funeral attendees. Mandy steered Craig toward a folding chair and fetched him a glass of punch.

She plopped down next to him on another folding chair. “I haven't had a chance to speak to your mom, but Steve wanted me to relay the sympathies of the whole ranger staff to your family. Will you tell your folks for me?”

“Sure.” Craig drank some punch, then held the glass awkwardly in his lap.

“So, I noticed that neither you nor your father attended the service.”

Craig made a sour face. “If we had, it would have been the height
of hypocrisy. I doubt I could have restrained myself from spitting
on the man's coffin. Mom told me that if I couldn't behave respectfully, I shouldn't come.” He put his glass of punch on the counter next to him and folded his arms. “So I didn't.”

Mandy remembered that Howie's coffin, closed thank God, had been very plain—not quite a pine box but close, with a meager flower arrangement on top, comprised mostly of inexpensive carnations and greens.
Who had sprung for the flowers?
“It can't have been easy for your mother to come alone.”

“Easier than staying at home, though.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Dad's been yelling at her, says he can't believe she knew nothing about Uncle Howie's abusive tendencies. He said that she must have been covering up for her brother and because of that, Faith's death is all her fault.”

“Ouch. But then I remember you saying pretty much the same thing to Cynthia.”

“Yeah,” Craig said ruefully, banging his head back against the wall. “And hearing those same accusations coming out of my dad's
mouth made me realize how hurtful they are. Even if Mom or Cynthia knew about Uncle Howie, his abuse of Faith isn't their fault. It's Howie's fault, and his alone.”

Mandy nodded. “I've got to agree with you there. Are you going to apologize to Cynthia?” She put a hand on his arm. “Because I really think she needs to hear what you just said.”

Craig blew out a breath. “You're right. I was pretty darn cruel, wasn't I? Think she'll forgive me?”

“You were hurting, still are, over Faith's death, so I'm sure she'll forgive you. I'm just not sure she'll ever forgive herself.” Mandy
lapsed into a moment of silence. “What about your dad? Do you
think you can convince him to apologize to your mom? She doesn't look so good.”

Craig rose to look out over the countertop. “No, she doesn't look good. And she hasn't been eating very much. I'll try to get Dad to see the light and stop yelling at her.”

“Good.” Mandy got up and stood next to Craig. Only two more
people stood in line to speak to Brenda, and a glimpse of the woman's face showed that it was ashen and drawn. “In fact, I think you should take her home very soon.”

“You know,” Craig said thoughtfully while he stared at his mother. “If my uncle hadn't already been killed, I'd take great pleasure in doing it myself—as slowly and painfully as possible—for what he did to my sister.” He started to walk out of the kitchen, then turned back to Mandy. “Too bad someone beat me to it.”

Twelve

If you believe in your heart that you are right,
you must fight with all your might to do it your way.
Only dead fish swim with the stream all the time.

—LINDA ELLERBEE

Early morning sunlight slanted
through the window blinds in Detective Quintana's office and painted prison stripes across his face. The wind had pushed the rain clouds of the day before over Colorado's front range to pour what moisture they still held onto the cities of Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo. Quintana smoothed his mustache and calmly gazed at Mandy. “I'm bringing her in for questioning.”

Calm was totally out of Mandy's grasp, however. She gripped the arms of her chair. Her heartbeat scrambled along with her thoughts in all directions, like a panicked animal fleeing from a cloud of hornets buzzing out of a disturbed nest. “Why? Why would you bring Cynthia in?”

“We have a witness who overheard her saying to Howie that she would kill him if he touched her cousin. And then there are your reports about her abuse at his hands. She has motive out the wazoo.” He spread his hands wide.

“But she's not a killer. No way! I already told you that. She just doesn't have it in her.” Mandy leapt out of her chair, determined to convince Quintana he was wrong. Dead wrong.

“You know Cynthia's a really caring person, listening to people's problems at the bar. She rescued her cat from the street and nursed her back to health.” Mandy stopped pacing and flung her arms in the air. “Heck, she even put up with Craig yelling at her in her own apartment, saying if she'd told Faith about Howie's abuse of her, then Faith might still be alive.”

“I'm sure that upset her,” Quintana said.

“Put her in tears! But when Craig stormed out, instead of being upset at him, Cynthia was worried whether he'd make it home okay on his bike after drinking. Does that sound like a killer to you?” By the time she finished her tirade, she was shouting.

Quintana just sat there with his arms folded across his chest, waiting for Mandy to splutter to a stop. “This is why I'm not inviting you to observe her questioning. You're too close to her. Too biased.”

Mandy sank back into her chair. “God damn it! How can I convince you she's innocent?”

Inspiration struck. She sat up and slapped the corner of his desk “Wait. Didn't you say that Faith wasn't strong enough to swing the hatchet that killed Howie? How could Cynthia do it, then?”

“Cynthia's got a few inches and quite a few more pounds on her than Faith did. And she works out at Exer-Flex regularly. She could heft that hatchet.”

Mandy's heart sank. “You've been checking up on her already?”

Quintana's face drooped with pity. “It's my job, Mandy.”

“What about Faith's father and brother? Neither one of them attended Howie's funeral. And when Craig came to pick up his mom, he said to me that if his uncle wasn't already dead, he would take great pleasure in doing it himself—as slowly and painfully as possible. There's motive out the wazoo for you.” Mandy stabbed a finger toward Quintana's maddeningly unperturbed face, punctuating her point. “What if they really found out about Howie's abuse of Faith before the weekend? And, didn't you think their alibi was flimsy for the Sunday when Howie was killed?”

Quintana nodded. “Yes, they're still possible suspects, and I questioned them, too. Now it's Cynthia's turn. She's agreed to come in and talk, so she has no problem answering my questions.”

The implication was that only Mandy thought this was a problem. And she did. It was a big problem. Cynthia wasn't just being questioned as a witness. Quintana had made it clear she was a suspect. Mandy was deathly afraid that her best friend would wind up in jail. Was it because she was also deathly afraid that Cynthia had finally taken revenge on her uncle for abusing her? Did she secretly believe her best friend was capable of killing her uncle?

Mandy shook her head.
No, it wasn't possible.

She slumped in her chair, deflating like a spent balloon. “When's Cynthia coming in?”

“In about an hour.” Quintana squinted at her, as if assessing whether or not to tell her something else.

“What? What other bad news is there?”

He drummed his fingers on Howie Abbott's bulging case file on his desk, which lay atop Faith Ellis's thinner one. “Deputy Thompson found the can of pepper spray at the Vallie Bridge campground. We lifted a few prints off of it and the hatchet. Neither Newt Nowak nor Jesse Lopez's fingerprints matched any of those on either item.”

“Have you matched the fingerprints to anyone else?”

“Some. Some on the hatchet were Howie's, smeared with blood and pepper spray. So, as we thought, he was trying to pull it out of his neck. A few on both the spray can and the hatchet we haven't IDed yet. They're small partials and hard to match. But we did find one almost-full thumbprint that was on the end of the hatchet handle, so it wasn't smeared by Howie's efforts.”

“On the end?” Mandy asked. “You can't swing a hatchet with your thumb on the end.”

“No, but it could get there any number of other ways, while picking it up, for instance. And since it was almost full, we were able to match it.” Quintana paused, peering at Mandy.

She gripped the arms of her chair again. Something told her she wasn't going to like what he had to say. She licked her dry lips and gave a slight nod
. Go ahead.

“The print matched Cynthia's right thumbprint.”

_____

Out on river patrol with Steve that afternoon, Mandy had a hard time focusing on work. Her mind kept drifting back to her conversation with Quintana, and she wondered how his interview with Cynthia was going. Her cataraft drifted, too, and nudged against Steve's in the river current.

“Getting a little close there, Mandy,” he said calmly.

“Sorry!” She swept one of her oars in the current to correct her heading and leave a few feet between the two rafts before lapsing back into silence. She'd already filled Steve in on the situation, as much as she felt she could share with him. He had expressed concern for Cynthia, but he couldn't offer anything else to Mandy but a sympathetic ear.

They were floating down the “Milk Run” section of the Arkansas River above Salida, so they could drift side-by-side and have no problem negotiating the few riffles they encountered. The section had been fairly quiet so far. Birds and squirrels were feeding in the trees, and fish were plunking after rising caddis fly hatches in the water, but there was little human activity. Since it was a weekday and this was a tame section, no rafting company trips were on the water.

They'd only passed one local woman lazing back in a small raft and reading while drifting with the current. When she spied them, she held up the book and said, “Thoreau's
Walden
. Perfect day for it,” before returning to her reading.

Mandy envied her tranquility.

They'd seen one fisherman on the banks so far—a local, who Steve knew wasn't competing in the Rocky Mountain Cup. The competitors in the fly-fishing tournament were all supposed to be practicing on the float-fishing competition sections, or beats as they called them, from Salida downstream to Vallie Bridge. That was one reason Mandy and Steve were patrolling this part of the river, to be on the lookout for competitors breaking the rules and practicing on the wading beats. Though why they wouldn't want to take advantage of the float-fishing practice, Mandy had no idea.

They'd already passed the first set of yellow-flagged stakes that volunteers had put out on Monday to mark the first wading competition beat. But when they neared the second beat, Mandy saw that some stakes had been pulled out. One bobbed in an eddy between two rocks along the shore.

“Look at that,” Mandy said to Steve, while she pulled on her oars to back-ferry across the river. She beached her cataraft near the eddy that had captured the uprooted wooden stake.

Steve beached his raft a short distance downstream, got out and
tied it up. He walked back upstream and described the destruction to Mandy as he passed the evidence. Some stakes were missing, others were just uprooted and lying on the ground, and a couple of them were broken in two. He concluded with, “Looks like sabotage.”

“Sabotage?” Mandy stood up after fishing the water-logged stake out of the eddy. “Why would someone want to sabotage a fly-fishing tournament?”

Steve shrugged. “Could be a grudge against the tournament by someone who was excluded or lost work or business because of it. Could be an animal rights activist, who thinks even catch-and-release is cruelty.”

“But the competitors are required to use barbless hooks and cotton nets, and handle the fish gently.” Mandy walked over to Steve to survey the damage herself.

“Some view any form of fishing as cruelty. It also could be an unrelated personal disagreement between someone and one of the tournament organizers or fishing teams.” Steve reached for his radio and called in the damage.

“I'll patch in the tournament director,” the ranger dispatcher replied.

After a delay, a man's voice came on. “This is John Squire. Can you tell me which beat you're on?”

“We're at the second one heading downstream,” Steve said. “We'll
check for damage to the other beats while we continue down the river.”

“Okay, thanks. I'll send out volunteers to restake that beat. And here they thought their work was done for the day. Please radio in if you see any more stakes pulled up.”

“We'll be sure to let you know.”

“Damn! After the murder of that fisherman, this is all I need. Someone really wants this tournament to fail.” He signed off.

“That's an angle I didn't think of,” Mandy said while slapping the stake against her thigh. “That Howie's murder was part of an overall scheme to sabotage the tournament. Do you think that's likely?”

“I think it's a long shot. But someone could be both riled up about this tournament and have a hatred for Howie.” Steve walked back to his raft and untied it. “We should be on the lookout not just for more damage but also for anyone behaving suspiciously.”

Mandy laid the stake she'd retrieved next to another uprooted one and headed for her raft. “Better hustle, then. Maybe we can catch them in the act.”

They got back in their catarafts and pushed off. After negotiating an easy class II riffle, Mandy spotted uprooted stakes in the next tournament beat section. She pointed them out to Steve, who radioed in the damage.

After rounding a bend, Mandy spied Kendra and Gonzo standing among knee-high grasses on the bank, both wearing waders and holding fly rods. One of the rafts from RM Outdoor Adventures was tethered to a cottonwood tree upstream from them. Gonzo was cursing a blue streak while he messed with the end of his rod, and Kendra was laughing. She managed to wave to Mandy before doubling over with guffaws.

Mandy beached her raft on a gravel bar midstream across from them, and Steve followed. “What's up?” she shouted to the two on the bank.

“Got a frigging wind knot in my fishing line,” Gonzo shouted back.

“He refuses to cut his leader and restring it,” Kendra added. “But he's got no hope of untying that knot.”

Gonzo shot her an angry glare, but she just stuck her tongue out at him.

The wind had picked up while they'd been on the river. It was now tossing Mandy's ponytail and riffling the water. It would play havoc with the casts of these two beginners, blowing their tentative circles into strange shapes. “Maybe you two should pack it in and try again on a day that's not so windy!”

“Good idea,” Kendra replied. “We haven't had a bite for over an hour. We just can't get the flies to land right.”

“Has anyone floated down the river past here while you've been fishing?” Steve asked.

“Two guys in a private raft about fifteen minutes ago,” Kendra said.

Mandy exchanged a look with Steve. “Notice anything suspicious about them?”

“Hard to say,” Gonzo said. “They gave us a wide berth, avoiding our lines.”

Kendra looked thoughtful. “Wider than they needed to, though,
like they wanted nothing to do with us. And they didn't look like they were having a good time. Their expressions, and the way they paddled, were almost … grim.”

“They didn't say hi or anything,” Gonzo added. “Downright unfriendly, I'd say.”

“What did they look like?” Steve asked.

“One was dark-haired and thin,” Kendra said, “and the other was shorter and blonde. Both white, both wearing jeans and ball caps. No PFDs and their paddling technique sucked. Amateurs.”

“Thanks.” Mandy pushed off the gravel bar and into the main current. “Good luck with that knot, Gonzo!”

Gonzo threw his rod down on the ground, and mimicked shooting it with an imaginary pistol formed out of finger and fist. Kendra's peals of laughter floated after them as Mandy and Steve paddled around the next bend. At least Kendra was enjoying herself, but Mandy wasn't sure Gonzo had the patience needed to learn how to be a good fly fisherman.

By unspoken agreement, Mandy and Steve kept up a steady pace, using powerful oar strokes to push their catarafts downstream faster than the river current would carry them on its own. Mandy scanned the bank, looking for the stakes marking the next wading beat for the tournament.

Soon she spied a two-man green raft pulled up on the bank to her right, partially obscured by tall grasses and willow bushes. Two men wearing baseball caps were walking along the shore downstream of the raft, one tall and dark-haired and the other shorter and blonde. The shorter one carried a couple of yellow stakes under one arm. The tall one reached down to loosen another stake from the ground before the short one spotted Mandy and Steve's rafts and slapped his friend on the shoulder.