The Royal Wulff Murders (19 page)

Martha Ettinger spread an aerial photomap across the hood of the Cherokee.

“Like these?” He held up a couple of river stones.

“Two more, Walt. There’re four corners to a map. Use your brain.”

“Aren’t we Miss Testy this evening?” he said, bending down.

“Sorry. It’s this”—she grabbed her hair with both hands and then shook it loose with a violent shudder—“sit-u-a-tion. I got everybody thinking I’m a half clip short. A man’s got water in his lungs, he’s found in the river, that’s where he drowned. Only microscopic bugs say he didn’t. If it wasn’t for Doc’s goddamned microscope I’d be having a better hair day than I’m having.”

“Yeah, Marth, you got that Bride of Frankenstein thing going up top, I must say.” Walt approached with the rocks.

“Gimme,” Martha said. She pinned down the map.

“Any bodies of water we haven’t hit? We been at this ten hours.”

Martha pointed. “Here, here… here. Three to go—this pond’s just a little way down from Quake Lake, where I met the fishing detective who saved Meslik’s waterlogged butt. Hmm?” She flicked her lower lip, exhaling a sound like bubbles rising to the surface. “You know what I like about this? I like knocking on doors in an election year and asking voters if they’ve drowned anyone recently.”

“Shit, Marth, none of these sunbirds vote. Come Labor Day, they’ve all flown back to LaLaLand.”

T
he Lazy S was a typical ranchette rip-off: the property shaped like a stick of chalk with three hundred feet of riverfront, a stagnant-looking pond, and ten worthless acres of sagebrush running back into the foothills. A young antelope buck cocked a baleful eye at the Cherokee as it turned under the yoke-style gate, then dashed off at sixty per.

The chinked log home sported a green metal roof with swallow nests plastered under the eaves, a wraparound porch, peaked windows overlooking the Madison churn. The houses on the neighboring parcels were a comfortable football field apart. One small dwelling upriver, built from dark logs and set back into a grove of mature aspens, had obviously been there longer than the development. The others were of a generic mold, similar to the Lazy S but with different colored roofs. The contractors had dismissed the setback clause with Libertarian aplomb—this was Montana after all—and built them illegally within the floodplain. Another act of God like the earthquake of ’59, Martha thought, and there’d be a few million dollars’ worth of logs floating to Three Forks.

“Y
es?”

The man who introduced himself as Lionel Sinclair—“Call me Tony,” he insisted—had an open, handsome face and brown eyes that housed a welcoming light, dimmed only slightly by the straw Stetson that rode his forehead. The corners of his mouth twitched in bemusement as Martha trotted out the spiel she and Walt had fine-tuned through the course of the day. They would ask to see the pond, say it was part of an ongoing investigation without offering specifics, offer their apology for the inconvenience. At the pond, they would take a water sample to filter for the algae and aquatic invertebrates found in the
victim’s esophagus, although the university limnologist had assured them the species were common to many still waters in the county. What they were really looking for was a bootprint match, a link between a specific pond and the campsite where Little Feather had found the print under the tent.

Sinclair listened patiently, leaning cowboy-style with his right arm braced against the door frame. He had Walt by six inches, four if you subtracted the heels of his ostrich-skin boots.

“You understand, Mr. Sinclair, we’re just trying to eliminate right now,” Martha concluded.

“Be my guest,” he said. “I got the Department of Resources permits for the pond. Only things I have to hide are a couple spots up the river where there’s brown trout long as your arm.”

“Feel free to keep them under your hat,” Martha assured him, and turned with Walt toward the pond. Halfway across the sagebrush flat, Walt glanced back to see Sinclair still standing in the doorway, giving them a laconic gaze.

“Cocksure bastard,” Walt muttered.

T
he pond, perhaps an acre in extent, was clouded with pinpoint algae and had no more than a few inches of visibility.

“Pea soup,” Walt said with a note of disgust.

Martha was already striding off. “You go one way, I’ll go the other.”

“Won’t have to,” Walt said, pointing at a line of boot tracks in the mud. The tracks ended where a distinct drag mark connected the shoreline with the bank. Martha felt a flush of excitement. The impression was finely ribbed, like corduroy. There were no human tracks in the drag mark, or to either side of it.

“Might use that Indian tracker ’bout now,” Walt said.

Martha grunted. Little Feather had told her he’d be at his sister’s house in Pony, working horses. It was too late in the day to call him.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “If this is a mark where someone dragged
a body out of the pond, then you’d expect to find two sets of tracks, one going down, one coming up.”

“Maybe not, Marth. Say the killer is the guy who made the tracks going down to the water. Victim’s in the drink. He pulls him up the bank, the body covers up the tracks he’s making backing up, probably those of the victim, too. Wouldn’t be any sign of either, you see what I’m saying?”

Ettinger grunted. She unfolded a tracing of the print found under the tent and placed it on the dried mud next to the tracks.

“’Bout the right size,” Walt offered. Ettinger withdrew a photo of the track taken under the tent from her breast pocket. Walt nodded. “Tread’s a match. I’d say we got us a crime scene.”

“Maybe not. These prints are smeared in the muck. Makes them look bigger.”

“Anybody tell you you’re a pessimist?”

“I’ve been through two husbands. It comes with the territory.”

“I hear you on that. Still… we might have something here.”

“Let’s see what kind of boots Mr. Sinclair pulls over his dogs.”

“I
’m beginning to feel a bit guilty,” the tall man said when he saw the expression on Martha Ettinger’s face.

When she said she’d like to ask him a few questions, he nodded and held the door open. He hung his hat on the antler tine of a mule deer mount that acted as a hat rack and led the way into a spacious living room done in a tasteful desert motif; Navajo rugs were scattered, a bison robe was draped over a sofa patterned with eagles. A slim woman sat at one end, facing the windows that overlooked the river. A heavy pair of binoculars rested on the sill. She was reading a book and didn’t turn around.

“You have a nice place here,” Walt said.

“Thank you.”

Sinclair was bald with a rim of brown hair pulled into a ponytail; a white line of demarcation marked where the hat had rested.

“I keep waiting for that Propecia to kick in,” he said. “Till then, I have to be careful of the sun.” He chuckled, then crossed the living room and placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder. When she looked up, he made a few fluid movements with his hands. The woman stood and turned to Martha and Walt. Walt instinctively straightened.

“My wife, Eva,” Sinclair said from behind her.

The woman touched her ear and lips, shook her head side to side, then took Martha’s and Walt’s hands and pressed them warmly. She was dressed in creased jeans and a cream linen shirt with pearl snaps. Shearling-lined slippers cradled slim brown feet. Lustrous black hair was pulled back in a sterling clip. She wore a silver bracelet and turquoise rings on two fingers of her left hand.

The woman held out her right hand in the shape that indicated a glass.

Martha shook her head, then mouthed the words “No thanks,” and could have shot herself for being an idiot.

“Ah, we could sit at the table,” Sinclair offered.

“Actually, we’d like to see your mudroom, where you keep your boots.”

He hesitated.

“If it’s all right with you.” Martha scrutinized his face, which showed confusion, then, with a brief nod of his head, dawning comprehension.

“This is about the antelope, isn’t it? We reported it to Fish, Wildlife, and Parks; that’s what we were supposed to do, I thought.”

Martha tried not to betray her surprise. What antelope?

While they’d been talking, Sinclair had led them across the living room toward a side door. Walt glanced back to see the woman bring the binoculars to her eyes and look out the window. He felt a sharp
tug on his sleeve and turned to see an expression on Martha’s face that said, clear as spoken words,
Get back on the job.

The mudroom was roughly finished but fastidiously organized. Waders hung upside down to air-dry on pegs. Boots were paired against one wall. A stack of fly rods stood at attention in a rack, a lineup of slim graphite quills. Martha peered at the flies hooked onto the keeper rings above the corks. She noticed that one was a Royal Wulff.

“If you’re interested in the antelope, I honestly don’t know much more than I told the warden.”

“Why don’t you explain to the two of us?” Martha said.

“I heard the shot. Woke me up. Just getting light so I looked out the window—our bedroom’s upper level—couldn’t see anything. Only when I went outside later that morning I noticed the doe. She was by the pond.”

“Any idea who might be responsible?”

Sinclair hesitated. “I have my suspicion, but that’s all it is.”

“This is just between us,” Martha said.

Sinclair told them that the new neighbor two houses downriver, Gus Gentry, had built a bench rest in his yard and started blasting at gophers with a scoped rifle. When Sinclair had approached him about it last Sunday—after all, he had twin nephews who spent the better part of their summer vacation on the river and liked to roam the property—Gentry had reminded him that there were no covenants prohibiting shooting on his own land. The man was an ex-Marine, a noted big-game hunter from El Paso, Texas, who owned a chain of high-end taxidermy businesses that specialized in mounting African trophies. Sinclair had told him he would bring up the matter with the homeowners’ association and Gentry said, “You do that.” The next day, Sinclair had awoken to the shot and found the antelope, a bullet hole in the center of her chest.

“This happened Monday morning, then?” Martha prompted.

“Yes. I registered my complaint right after. The warden said someone would investigate, but no one has. My wife didn’t enjoy looking at it, so this afternoon I hauled her out of the mud myself, drove up the Sheep Creek Road, and dumped the carcass in a coulee. I don’t suppose I can count on you to do anything about this?” The accusation was buffered by a smile that Martha imagined had helped make him what he was, in whatever business he was in.

“We’ll have a word with your neighbor,” she said distractedly. She was thinking of the drag mark at the pond. The corrugated pattern in the mud must have been made by the antelope’s hair. She felt a letdown of expectation. So much for the idea that Sinclair had moved a human body.

“I could take you there, up where I dumped her.”

“That probably won’t be necessary. Mr. Sinclair….”

“Tony,” he corrected.

“Tony, your complaint, though I assure you we take it seriously, isn’t what brought us here. I’d like to ask you about a set of footprints we found at your pond. Are they yours? Maybe where you dragged out that antelope?”

He nodded. “Hasn’t been anyone else there to my knowledge.”

“Mind showing me the boots you were wearing?”

“Sure.”

He pointed to a pair of boots in the lineup. Martha couldn’t help noticing that his finger was dead steady.

She picked up the right boot and registered the mud smeared at the edges of the sole. It was an L.L. Bean Maine hunting shoe, size eleven.

“Would you object to me taking these boots back to Bridger? Just for a day or two?”

Sinclair’s eyes never changed, but he straightened a little.

He said, “Is this really necessary? I mean, I have nothing to hide, but it would ease my mind if I knew what it was you were looking for.”

“And I told you it’s confidential business at this point. We’re just trying to eliminate, not to accuse. We’ll get the boots back to you.”

“That isn’t my concern.”

“Then let us take them.”

“All right, take them.” He bit the words short.

“And this rod, can we borrow it, too?” It was Walt, holding the fly rod with the Royal Wulff knotted to the leader.

Sinclair threw his hands up.

“Take it. Whatever. Want my hat, too?”

“No,” Martha said. “And we do thank you for your cooperation. I understand why you’re upset. I’ll probably come back tomorrow to have another look at your pond. Until then, can you keep people away from it?”

He nodded. “I’m sorry. Just wish you didn’t have to be so damned mysterious. Makes me wonder what’s really going on.”

Martha let him wonder. She thanked him again for his cooperation, then turned with Walt toward the side door.

“We’ll let ourselves out here if you’d prefer,” she said.

“That would be considerate of you. Now, if you don’t mind, Sheriff, I’d like to explain to my wife.” Sinclair smiled his smile. It looked almost genuine. “She’s having a hard time understanding what this visit is about, as you can well imagine.”

“A
s you can well imagine,” Walt echoed as they left. “As you can well imagine. “Who talks like that?”

“People with an education, Walt,” Martha said with an audible sigh. She knew that Sinclair would be a dead end. Taking his boots was just going through the motions, similar tread to tracks found at the campsite notwithstanding.

Walt said, “I’ll bet there’s a shitstorm of sign language going on in that living room. My, she was beautiful, though. Silent. Sorta like a panther the way she walked.”

“I wonder,” Martha said, “just how you say ‘shitstorm’ in sign language?”

Walt didn’t take the bait.

“She looked a little Native American to me,” Martha said. She was thinking of Little Feather and flushed.

“A man could cut his hands on those cheekbones,” Walt said, nodding his head. “Yup,” he said as Martha put the Cherokee in gear. “Per near cut your hand right off.”