The Royal Wulff Murders (13 page)

Sam had kicked over during the fight to encourage him.

“Easy now… these cuttbows always got enough gas left for one more run.”

Stranahan saw the fish weakly break water. Taking advantage, he pulled it onto its side and it slid toward him until the butt of the leader was only a few inches outside the rod tip-top. Suddenly it dove underneath the tube, tangling the line around Stranahan’s waders. He felt a sullen weight as the fish came to the end of its tether, the float tube turning under pressure from the fish; then suddenly the line was limp.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

He looked at Sam and shook the rod tip to indicate that the fish was gone.

“That trout would have gone eight pounds, my man,” Sam shouted. He spread his hands apart to show the size, and, as his shoulders opened, his upper body jerked perceptibly backward. The float tube collapsed with a burst of air. A half second later Stranahan heard the crack of a rifle, then the shot echoing away. Sam was down, pinwheeling his right arm frantically to keep his head above water.

Stranahan began to kick toward the limp smear of blue where the bladder of the float tube eddied among the wavelets.

“Hang on, Sam, I’m coming,” he shouted.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

W
hen Stranahan reached the shattered float tube, he could see that the bladder that formed the float tube’s backrest was still intact, rocking on the surface like a blue bobber. Looking down, he saw Sam’s hand where it grasped the submerged part of the tube. He grabbed the hand and pulled. Immediately, his own tube flipped over and he felt the explosion of the water around his head. He reached up to unclasp the buckle that attached the seat webbing to the front of the tube. The water was murky with suspended algae and he had to feel for the buckle. After a few moments of near panic, his fingers found the clasp and the buckle snapped open.

Instinctively, he dove for the bottom and kicked free of the tube. He came to the surface spluttering. He twisted around, trying to spot the air bladder of Sam’s float tube over the standing waves in the lake. There it was! He began to sidestroke toward the blob of color, his legs heavy from water that had seeped past his wading belt. Finally he was able to reach out and crook his arm over the bladder of Sam’s tube. He dug his fingers into the collapsed material and pulled, seeing Sam’s fist rise toward him, like a hand reaching from a grave. It was tangled in the straps of the torn float tube. He let go of his grip on the material and stretched his arm down farther, gripped the tube, and hauled. Twice more he hauled, released, and shot his arm down. First the hand, then Sam’s entire arm climbed above the gray curtain of the lake surface. Stranahan grabbed the big man under his right shoulder.
He lifted Sam’s head out of the water. His face looked waxen and lifeless.

Breathe, dammit
, Stranahan said to himself.

He looked toward shore. The stand of aspens had to be a hundred yards distant. He thought back to the Red Cross course he had taken in CPR, but the rules were predicated upon the assumption that the victim was lying on hard ground.

Maybe if he could squeeze the water out of Sam’s lungs, it would get his breathing reflex going. He reached down and across Sam’s chest with his right arm and pulled, but it was hard to get leverage. The slight movement must have been enough, for there was a gagging sound as Sam vomited lake water. The big man’s breath was coming in shuddering rasps. After a minute, his body began to relax and Stranahan was able to get behind him and work both his arms under Sam’s armpits. Swimming backward, he began to pull Sam toward shore.

Minutes later—it seemed hours—Stranahan felt his flippers dig into the soft silt on the lake bottom. He’d made it. Turning onto his knees, he crawled out of the lake, dragging Sam until only the rear half of his body remained in the water and he no longer had to worry about him drowning.

Struggling to stand with a few gallons of water inside his waders, Stranahan felt a tugging at his right leg. He looked down. The tan-and-black leech fly that he had hooked the trout with was buried in his wader leg, the leader and the line stretching back into the lake. Stranahan registered the probability that the line was still hooked to the rod, which he’d dropped into the lake, though he couldn’t remember when that had happened. He freed the hook, then stuck the fly into a piece of driftwood so it would not wash back into the lake. He could come back and retrieve the rod later. It hardly seemed important.

“I’m shot.”

Christ! Stranahan had been so occupied trying to get Sam to shore
that he had forgotten the rifle shot. Bending over Sam’s heaving chest, he saw a ragged rent in the waders. The checked shirt above the wader top was soaked through with blood. He ripped his shirt off, then twisted the cloth to wring it out and clamped it over the wound.

Sam screamed, his head jerking up off the ground.

Stranahan glanced wildly around, his eyes falling on the two-lane blacktop that bordered the lake. The blacktop ended a hundred yards farther along to the west. Beyond the break, he saw a shimmer of dust lifting from the gravel and knew a car must be coming. It was like a heat mirage, wavering in the sunlight. Twin images merged and he was looking at a truck in the distance. He hiked Sam’s waders up to keep his shirt in place over the wound and stumbled toward the road, waving his arms, but the truck veered onto a side track and disappeared. It was a two-mile hike to the fishing store where he’d bought his license. Sam could die of blood loss before he ever reached help.

The next half hour was the longest of Stranahan’s life as his hand pressing the shirt became tired and finally numb. He talked to Sam constantly, but the big man just breathed, an occasional bubble of blood blowing between his lips on the rattling exhales.

Finally, Sean saw another wafer of dust lift to the west and he stumbled to the road to intercept the oncoming vehicle.

The truck stopped, motor idling.

“What’s the problem?” The man behind the wheel smiled under a well-tended mustache.

“My friend’s just been shot,” Stranahan said, gesturing wildly toward the shoreline.

The man lifted his hand off the steering wheel and raised the palm to Stranahan.

“All right, settle down.” He had a deep, reassuring voice. “I’m going to get my bag out of the camper and we’re going to help him.” He was already out the door and walking to the back of the truck. “I’m a vet. What I need you to do is take the cell phone. It’s in a holster under
the dash. Get it. Reception’s spotty here, but if we get a bar you’re going to make some calls while I attend to your friend. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” Stranahan said. “Thank God, yes.”

“Don’t thank God just yet,” the man said. “He’s got some work for us to do first.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

M
artha was on the line to Walt, who was checking a quarter mile of fence line that had been snipped with a wire cutter to aggravate a ranch owner who just happened to be a Hollywood action hero with a reputation as an asshole, when the desk officer interrupted to say there was a call waiting. The pine jockey cocked his hand like a pistol and mouthed the word “Bang.”

She told Walt she’d get back to him, set one phone down, picked another up.

“This is Sheriff Ettinger.”

“Sheriff, it’s Doc Svenson.”

“Yes, Jeff, what is it?” Svenson had helped deliver a breech foal at her place seven years ago, the mare she now rode to hunt elk.

“I was out visiting a colt on the Culpepper Ranch down by Henry’s Lake and got flagged by some fella. His buddy’d been shot. Bullet broke a rib in the left chest quadrant. He was aspirating blood so I’m assuming the lung was creased, could collapse easy. Hyalite Rescue drove up ten minutes ago. They’re leaving with him for Bridger Deaconess. I’m not so sure he’s going to make it. Thought you’d want to talk with the man that flagged me down. He and his buddy were fishing in float tubes. Says he had one heck of a time getting him back to shore….‌No, he didn’t see the shooter.”

Martha interrupted. “What are you calling me for? You’re in Idaho, right? That’s Centennial County jurisdiction.”

“I
know, and I got them on the horn first thing after making the nine-one-one. They’re sending somebody, but thing is, the guy who’s shot is Sam, um… hey, what’s that guy’s name?… Meslik. Sam Meslik. Isn’t that the fishing guide who found that body in the Madison?”

“Put him on the phone. Put his friend on the phone right now.”

“Hello.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sean Stranahan.”

The name rang a bell, but she couldn’t place it. “Mr. Stranahan, I want you to remain where you are… ah, where are you exactly?”

She listened a second. “Yeah, uh-huh. Well, here’s what’s going to happen. In a couple minutes a deputy from Idaho’s going to arrive. If he wants you to go back with him to county, you go. But if he takes your statement at the scene, which I think he’ll do, then stay put till I get there. Got that?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” she heard him say, and knew then where she’d heard the name. He was the fisherman she’d met on the Madison at the outlet of Quake Lake. The good-looking bastard who had been fishing a Royal Wulff. She felt her face blush with heat. She’d thought about him just last night when Sheba, her old Siamese, had curled up against her back and she had felt the warmth through her flannel nightgown.

Ettinger cleared her head. She instructed Stranahan to put the vet back on the phone and told Jeff Svenson to stick around, too. As long as he was there, she didn’t have to worry about anyone changing the scene. She told him as much and he understood he was to keep an eye on the witness. Then she called Walt back and told him to get his ass to the hospital pronto and wait for the arrival of Sam Meslik. Warned him that someone wearing an Idaho badge might also want to stick their nose in the door.

“Fuck ’em,” Walt said. “They’ll huff and puff but underneath they’ll just want us to take it off their hands. You know Monroe, the sheriff?”

“I haven’t had the pleasure,” Martha said.

“He’s a butt scratcher. Draw a circle around his feet, come back next week, and he’s still standing there.”

“I get the picture. But what if Meslik kicks?”

“He’s a goner, makes Monroe’s job easier. Mark my words, Idaho won’t interfere.”

“Listen, when Meslik comes around, don’t let him say one word that you don’t get on the record.”

“You don’t have to worry about me. I can coax a statement out of a corpse.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Martha said.

E
ttinger pushed ninety up the valley floor. She pulled off the road behind Sam’s truck a little over an hour after leaving Bridger.

“That you, Jeff?” she called out toward the silhouettes of two men who were sitting on a log at the shoreline.

The man wearing a straw cowboy hat gave her a wave. The other, hatless, shirtless, rose to his feet as she approached. An inflated float tube ebbed against the shore.

“Sheriff,” the bare-chested man said. There was no smile for her this day.

“Mr. Stranahan, right? What a coincidence.” She looked appraisingly at him, let the moment stretch. He looked ashen, but not nervous.

She thought she’d let him stew a bit.

“Anybody with an Idaho badge show?” She directed her question to the veterinarian, learned that a deputy had taken a statement and said he’d be in touch.

She nodded. She looked soberly out to the lake a long moment, then at Stranahan.

“That your float tube?” She pointed up the lake a couple hundred feet.

“It flipped when I tried to rescue Sam. It washed up a while ago.”

“Tell me what happened.”

As he told the story, she never once let her gaze stray from his eyes, interrupting only to ask how long it had been between hearing the first two shots and the one that had struck Sam. He said an hour or so, it was hard to recall. Had the third shot sounded closer? Yes. How much closer? It was loud. Location? If you had to guess, where would you say the shooter was firing from?

Stranahan pointed northeast, toward the foot of the mountain slopes. Then he rolled his eyes up and blew out a heavy breath.

“I can’t be sure. I’m sorry.”

The wind had picked up, blowing the bang of black hair that dipped over his left eye. Martha felt herself being drawn toward his old-fashioned courtesy, the angle of his chin, his deep green eyes. She shook it off. He wasn’t going to get to her today. First the Royal Wulff fly he’d been fishing. Now Meslik. She didn’t believe in coincidence.

“You’re an artist, you say?”

“I have a studio at the cultural center.” He hesitated. “I ought to tell you I used to be a PI. In Massachusetts. It’s etched on the door, but that’s only because the director thought it would add some pizzazz to the building.”

“Oh, really?” Martha said. “I don’t suppose you could show me your license?”

“I’m not licensed in Montana. The sign on the door is for show. I’m just a painter these days.”

Martha glanced at the veterinarian. “Jeff,” she said, “I’d like a few words in private with Mr. Stranahan. You don’t have to stick around—I’ll be in touch, though, or Walt’ll get back to you.”

Svenson shook his head in affirmation, met Stranahan’s eyes, and nodded. “Sheriff. Sean.” He headed back to his truck, punching the keypad of his phone.

Martha pressed her lips into a thin smile, as if to say, It’s just you and me now, and what a predicament we find ourselves in.

“You wouldn’t be neglecting to tell me anything, would you, Mr. Stranahan? Because now would be the time….” She let the words ride.

I should have known better
, he thought.
I should have known that a woman doesn’t pay you to go fishing, place your hand on her heart, and then disappear without there being some kind of catch that has nothing to do with hooking a fish.

“Somebody came to the gallery a few days ago,” he admitted. “I was asked to do something, but it’s not detective work, exactly.”

Martha looked sternly into his eyes, no longer noticing their color.