The Royal Wulff Murders (23 page)

Ettinger was slow to respond. “That’s such a good point that we’re going to have to find out.”

“You don’t sound very happy about it.”

“You’ll learn why. Come on, let’s go back to the shore.”

“Now what?” Sean said when they were on the bank.

“Now you’re not going to get the wrong idea,” Ettinger said, and she began to unbutton her khaki shirt. In moments she was down to T-shirt, bra, and panties.

“Consider this a bikini under a T-shirt,” she said.

She waded a few feet out, shook her head as if to clear it, then dropped backward into the river.

“Mother of mercy, that’s cold. Come on, let’s get it over with.”

Stranahan didn’t need her to spell it out. They were going to find out if he could drag her to the logjam. He grabbed her wrists. When he lifted she sputtered, her head going under. It was like wrestling a bear.

“Let’s try another way.”

He let Martha catch her breath, then tried wading out by holding onto her ankles. It was easier… a little.

“What happens if a drift boat comes past?” He grunted.

“I’ll flash ’em my badge,” Martha said. She gulped a mouthful that went down the wrong way and they stopped while her body was wracked with coughs.

“One more try,” he said. “Turn around.” He gripped her under her arms, wrapping her in a backward bear hug, one forearm smashing her breast. He repositioned his arms.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said.

Stranahan began to wade toward the logjam with his back brunting the flow, Ettinger’s feet trailing in the current. With only the slot of deep current outside the comma of debris alongside the logjam to cross, he repositioned his grip—the muscles in his arms burning from the tension—jammed his boots crab fashion against the burgeoning current, and went under all at once, releasing his grip. He heard her curse as she went down with him.

Ten yards downriver they managed to stand and slogged back to shore. Martha disappeared behind a willow clump to wring out her underthings and change back into her shirt and pants.

“I think I could have made it if I’d had my adrenaline up,” Stranahan said.

From behind the bush he heard her voice. “I weigh one-thirty-eight
in my birthday suit. Think you could drag a hundred-and-sixty-pound man out there who was wearing waders? In the dark?”

“No,” Stranahan admitted.

“Tell you the truth,” Ettinger said, “up till today I thought the killer acted alone. Now I’m thinking two people, but I don’t know…. I don’t know what to think.”

Stranahan was surprised at the loss of heart in her voice.

She stepped out from the bush, carrying her bra and panties in her hand. “What’s the motive? What are we missing here, Stranahan?” She hitched up her belt.

“I told you what I think. I think you need to look at that fish hatchery outside Cascade. The last time anyone spoke to your victim, he was following a truck from the hatchery. He called his sister from a pay phone in Ennis and disappeared. A day later Sam finds him here.”

“So she says.”

“Why would she lie about it?” His voice was sharp. He was tired of playing her guessing games. “What does it matter what I think? One minute you all but accuse me of having a hand in this and the next you strip down to your Victoria’s Secrets and have me drag you around the river. What are you really after, Sheriff?”

“I’m after the truth,” Ettinger said. “And it’s Maidenform. But what I really want is your help….Yeah,” she said, lowering her voice, “I’m asking for your help. Just between you and me, I’m alone on this one. My deputy’s the guy you want for your back when you go down a foxhole. But upstairs?” She shook her head. “And the department’s no help. It’s an accidental drowning to everyone but me; why disturb the water, no pun intended.”

“You didn’t tell me what convinced you that it’s murder. How can I help if you keep things back from me?”

“Oh hell, just give me a minute to get my waders on.”

Wading to the logjam for the second time, Martha pointed out the
branch that matched the stub in Beaudreux’s eye, showed Sean where the body had been found twenty feet upriver. She told him about the microscopic lake creatures in the man’s lungs.

“You see, this is no accident,” she said, sitting down on one of the logs. “But our perp, he made mistakes. If you want someone to think a fisherman drowned here, then you park the fisherman’s car nearby. Instead, he went to all the trouble to drive it twenty miles up the road to a campground and put on some plates that turn out to be stolen. It’s like he’s overthinking things or else he’s not quite smart.”

She stared into the distance.

“Where did Meslik tell you he found the rod, exactly?”

“He told me it was upstream from the logjam about thirty yards. He found it on the way back from calling you from one of those cabins. The one with the weathervane.”

Stranahan pointed to a blond log home squatting on the west bank of the Madison, about three hundred yards up the river.

“I know the lord of the manor,” Ettinger said. “Belongs to Terry Jarvis, a county commissioner. Did he say where in the river—near the bank, midstream?”

“He saw the tip sticking up and waded to get it, so I think it was out in the current.”

“What’s that mean—you think?”

“If it wasn’t for the stick in the eye, I’d say he was dumped upriver and floated down into the logjam here.”

“Only he wasn’t. Here’s the way I see it,” she said. “Beaudreux was drowned somewhere else, a pond, a lake, somewhere he could suck the bugs into his lungs. Whoever it was killed him, he didn’t want the body to be found there, maybe because it would tie the two of them together. So he puts the body into the trunk of the victim’s own car—we’re still waiting on forensics but I’m pretty sure—he drives it to the campground on Quake Lake, sets up the tent, and waits till it’s dark.
We know this because the camp host saw somebody wrestling with a tent about ten o’clock. It was still light out then, and no, before you ask, he didn’t get a look at him.

“Then after dark he drives here, parks upstream off the river road. He hauls the body into the river and holds on to him as he walks downstream. That way he doesn’t have to fight the weight of the body. The current does the work. Now he can’t approach the logjam head-on, because the current’s fast and there’s a deep hole at the top. So what he does, he walks the body alongside until he can easily get across to the lower end of the jam, then drags it back upriver through this slack water where we’re sitting, and wedges it under the logs. The body snags on the branch en route—that would account for the stick in the eye. He knew the body would be found right away—your buddy found it the next afternoon—but he didn’t care about that as long as it was in a place that didn’t point the finger at him. If he got lucky, we’d think the drowning was accidental.”

“What about the rod?” Stranahan asked.

“I think he meant to place it here at the logjam, maybe wrap some line around the victim’s hand so we’d be sure to find the rod with him. If a fisherman drowns in a river as shallow as the Madison and you don’t find a rod, it raises suspicion. So he needed Beaudreux to be found with his rod. My guess is that he accidentally dropped the rod and couldn’t find it again. It was night, remember, and he was wading down the river hauling a dead body.”

“What’s wrong with just dropping it where Sam found it?”

“’Cause there are too many people like Sam who would steal the rod if it didn’t come attached to a body. But either way, he’s made a case for an accidental drowning. Have I connected the dots here? I’m asking you.”

Stranahan nodded.

“As far as it goes. You’ve got a when and how; what you don’t have
is why or who. The fish hatchery is the only lead we have. Seems to me like that’s the end you work from.”

“Me, too. But there’s a catch. Officially, this isn’t a homicide investigation. The car in the campground, the hatchery, the stick in the eye, they add up to nothing. The fly in the lip, that was self-inflicted, just bad casting. Now the bugs in the lungs and the stolen plates, yeah, that raises an eyebrow. But it’s not enough for a full-blown homicide investigation. There are no signs of struggle, no bodily injury. I could make a call to the hatchery, but I can’t justify driving three hours out of my jurisdiction to question the owner about a missing employee. Now, if someone were to tip me off about a vehicle previously seen in connection with our victim—say, right here in Hyalite County—then we might have a thread I can follow.”

Stranahan smiled. “You’ve been building up to this all morning, haven’t you?”

“Me? I’m just flying by the seat of my pants.”

“You want me to drive to Cascade and check out the hatchery.”

“No, I didn’t say that. Officially, I’m telling you not to stick your nose in this. I’m telling you, ‘Don’t talk to anybody. Don’t do anything stupid.’”

“What if I followed that truck? According to Vareda, her brother said it had driven away from the hatchery on a Tuesday evening, then on a Thursday, also evening. He’d followed it the next Tuesday. Maybe that’s the schedule—Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Today’s… Thursday.”

“Is it?” Ettinger said. “I’ve lost track.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

A
t Three Forks, Montana, the Madison, Gallatin, and Jefferson rivers get a taste of each other’s water, streaming together to form the Missouri River—fishermen call it the Mighty Mo.

Turning off I-15 at the Cascade exit, Stranahan fed his thirsty Land Cruiser fifteen gallons, crossed the bridge, and turned south onto Sheep Creek Road. He’d let his fingers do the walking at a pay phone and found the hatchery without trouble, though the old farmstead with its prefab outbuildings had no sign and no obvious evidence of its purpose. Stranahan drove past, stopped, and got out. He studied the clouds, holding his hands in the attitude of a man attending to nature’s call. From this angle the hatchery raceways, filled with aerated water for trout rearing, were apparent, so he air-zipped up and motored down the road a couple of miles.

Stopping again, he traced his fingers along the spider cracks on the weathered dash of the Cruiser. If Vareda’s brother had been killed because he’d followed a truck from the hatchery, then anyone involved had to be alerted, and Stranahan couldn’t afford to be seen loitering. Parking and pulling down your zipper was innocent enough, but a man could feign peeing for only so long. He let out the clutch, turned around, and drove back up the road past the hatchery.

There was a turnout on the near side of the bridge he’d crossed out of Cascade and he swung over and geared up. One seldom caught fish at a town access, but he wasn’t interested in trout; his eyes were on
the bridge. Anyone driving from the hatchery would have to cross it before entering the on-ramp to the highway.

Stranahan had noted two vehicles parked at the hatchery when he’d passed by earlier: an older Subaru wagon and a three-quarter-ton pickup with dual rear tires; both were iconic ranch vehicles. That was of limited value—Vareda’s brother had said the truck he followed was one he hadn’t seen except on the Tuesday and Thursday evenings. The live well in the truck bed would be the giveaway, that and maybe a dog riding shotgun.

Lost in thought, he was unprepared for the strike. The trout walked on its tail a yard and crashed back to the surface, jumped a second time, and headed for the middle of the river. There it bore down and Stranahan, hearing a crunch of gravel, swiveled his head to see a truck cross the bridge. It was a flatbed pickup with two-by-four rails, one driver, but no dog and nothing in the bed but the obligatory waffle metal storage box. Stranahan turned his attention back to the trout, which gradually tired until it was finning near his boots. He held it alongside his rod so he could measure it later—the fish so big that his hands trembled—then he worked the hook from its jaw and released it. He decided to retire the lucky fly, a double-breasted streamer called a Madonna, and was placing it into a clip in his fly box when he first heard and then saw a second truck cross the bridge. This one was heading the other way, coming from Cascade. Another flatbed, also with slatted wood side rails but this one had a white metal drum in the bed. A rusty Ford half-ton in two-tone blue. It was just a glance. The truck went down the road, lifting a ribbon of dust that swallowed it from sight.

“Well now.”

He snapped the fly box shut, then on second thought opened it and tied another fly on. If this was the truck, it would be a while before it loaded up at the hatchery and he needed to look like he was doing something purposeful when it returned.

An hour went by. Stranahan heard, then spotted a truck driving back. It was the half-ton, all right, going more slowly this time. Past nine o’clock, but there was plenty of light to see the white drum in the truck bed. The driver was a man, but without man’s best friend for company. Still…

By the time Stranahan gunned the Land Cruiser to life, the truck had disappeared into the town. At the on-ramp, Stranahan turned south with only a moment’s hesitation. North was nothing but rapeseed and canola fields stretching to the Alberta border, no major trout rivers. He pushed the Land Cruiser to seventy. Spotting the truck in five minutes, he lifted his foot off the accelerator and felt a flush of goose bumps lift the hairs on his forearms. Tired all day, he was suddenly wide awake. He might still be many miles from the answers he was seeking, but for the first time since the shot rang out over Henry’s Lake, he felt like he was heading in the right direction.

A
t twilight, Stranahan closed to within fifty yards and held there, waiting for the driver to switch on his headlights. He’d no sooner thought it than the taillights popped on. The housing of the right rear taillight was cracked so that the light shone through in two colors—red over white. Following in the dark was going to be easier than he had thought.

“I got you,” he said under the rumble of the old straight six. “You’re in trouble, and you don’t even know it.”

The feeling of elation didn’t last. Rather than continuing south toward Helena, the truck exited the interstate at Wolf Creek, then turned right onto Route 434, a winding two-lane heading west.