The Royal Wulff Murders (27 page)

Ettinger made a face.

“What? Am I wrong?”

“I won’t
dignify that with an answer,” Ettinger said. “Let’s focus here, go over what we have while we’re waiting for Harold. Walt, you’re the big city cop, you start.”

The deputy looked down at the tips of his crocodile boots.

“Blood on my brand new Tony Lamas,” he said. “If that leaves a stain, ever’ time I pull them on I’ll be revisiting that trailer. Have to throw ’em away. Time will tell.”

“Walt!”

“Yeah, okay. First thing strikes me is no forced entry. The camp host either opened the door, or else left it unlocked.” He took another swig of soda and spat on the ground. “Two, the blow with the knife takes him by surprise. No sign of struggle. One thrust below the sternum so’s not to strike bone, the blade angled up into the heart; you figure its someone familiar with a blade, odds on a man.”

“Or maybe any cook in a kitchen,” Ettinger interjected.

“Three,” Hess continued, “I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s related to the floater in the river. We’re working on the assumption that the guy who drowned Beaudreux drove up here to set up the camp, leave the vic’s car at the site, so’s to throw us off his trail. Maybe he thought the host here spotted him when he was making the rounds, that he could make an ID. We know the poor bugger was half blind and only saw the figure of a man at the site, but the killer doesn’t know that.”

“Tying up loose ends.” Ettinger caught her chin between her thumb and forefinger and massaged it thoughtfully.

“I’ve seen it before.” Walt said. “It’s like a delayed reaction. You kill someone, your mind starts playing tricks. You see witnesses where there aren’t witnesses. You get paranoid. ‘I can’t take the chance he saw me,’ you’re thinking. Each day passes, you worry more. Finally you come back with a gun on your hip. Or a knife.” He looked at Stranahan. “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Third time it’s enemy action. Like Goldfinger said to James Bond.”

“You’re
a film buff now, Walt?” Ettinger said. “I would have never thought.”

She turned to Stranahan. “Well?”

Stranahan thought a moment, surprised she’d asked his opinion. “I was only inside a minute,” he began, “so I’ll have to take what Walt says on faith about the entry. The camp host had no reason to suspect anything, so the stabbing is the easy part. The tricky part would be getting here and then getting away without being seen. When did your ME think the man in there died? Last night?”

“The body temperature suggests last night, probably before midnight, any later and you’d think the table would have been made into a bed.” Ettinger waved away a mosquito. “I think we’re on the same page here. The killer knocks, enters, the vic has no idea what’s coming and takes one in the ticker. Our man escapes into the night. So, unless it’s someone actually camping here, how did he get here? He drives, he risks being associated with a vehicle. We can’t rule the camper angle out, but”—she paused—“Sean, what was it you were going to say earlier? I was preoccupied.”

“You’ll laugh,” Stranahan said.

“Do I look like I’m laughing?”

“What I was going to say is he could have ridden a bike.”

“From where? This is nowhere.”

“From that neighborhood on the Madison where I ran into you, where Summersby and Tony Sinclair live. Where Gentry, the taxidermist who whacked the antelope, lives.”

“We ruled him out for the Meslik shooting. There’s no reason to think he’s mixed up with Beaudreux.”

“I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about someone I met at Summersby’s party, a guy who rides a bicycle. His name is Apple Mc-Something-or-other, I can’t remember.”

“What makes you say that?”

“A dog.” Now it was out. “The guy who was driving the hatchery
truck. I told you I didn’t get a look at his face, but I did see his dog. It’s a heeler. Apple… McNair, that’s his name. Apple McNair. He brought a heeler to Summersby’s party.”

“So, it’s ‘The Case of the Dog in the Nighttime,’ is it?” Ettinger said. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“Because I wasn’t sure myself,” Stranahan said. “I couldn’t see the man, so all I had to make a connection was the dog. You know as well as I do that there are a lot of heelers in Montana riding shotgun in a lot of trucks. I knew it could be a coincidence, but when I saw the dog, McNair just popped into my head. The guy with his back to me, short and stocky. This McNair, same body type. I didn’t recognize the voice, but then I only heard a few words and people use different voices to speak to their pets. Plus he rebuilds old bikes. I thought of that when I saw the little girl on her bicycle. McNair could have ridden up here, stashed his bike in the woods and done the last bit on foot. Bike’s more inconspicuous than a car.”

Walt spoke up. “That cuts both ways. If someone saw a bike, they’d likely remember it more than a vehicle.”

Stranahan shook his head. “There isn’t much traffic. He could spot headlights at a quarter mile, pull off to the side, and take cover till they passed.”

Ettinger folded her arms across her chest.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Stranahan said. “I’m jumping at another thread. But your victim was stabbed. This guy McNair, he’s a knife maker. He showed me one of his blades, said something like ‘You could skin a bear with that.’ Man has a one-off look. He gives you the heebie-jeebies.”

“The heebie-jeebies? Come on,” Ettinger said, but her face had turned thoughtful.

Stranahan continued, “He lives on the river. He’s twenty miles from where Sam found Beaudreux, he’s no more than eight to Henry’s Lake
where Sam was shot. Plus the neighbors say he’s gone a lot. Fits in with being the delivery man for the hatchery.”

Hess glanced past them.

“Here comes Harold,” he said. “Now we can have a real powwow.”

Stranahan caught Ettinger’s scowl.

“Oh, for chrissakes, Marth. Lighten up. I got as much respect for the red man as you do.”

“You’re hopeless, you know that.”

“I am what I am.”

“Obviously.”

Harold Little Feather passed them without a word. He set his gear and the evidence bags in the cargo space of the Cherokee.

He smiled.
What a day, huh?

“Give me something,” Ettinger said.

The tracker rolled his neck.

“Got to get the cricks out. Hands and knees all morning do that to a man.”

He went on talking as he stretched. “I took a lot of samples, but routine, you know. Some fibers on the body. There’s blood and fingerprints to sort out in the state lab, you know how long that takes. Some caked mud on the floor that’s cracked off the instep of a left shoe, but no mud on the victim’s shoes, or any shoes in the trailer. To me the mud smells like silt deposits you’d find in a river or a lake, but could have been tracked in from just about anywhere.”

“Shoe size?” Ettinger said.

“Not enough to say. One thing, though, the mud under the instep tells me the shoe has a high arch. I’m guessing cowboy boot ’cause I found boot tracks outside.” He led them around to the back of the trailer.

“As you can see,” he said, sweeping his hand, “cheat grass, fescue, dandelion, hardpack earth. Maybe a Kalahari bushman could pick up a track here”—he shook his
head—“nothing stood out to me. But the duff under the trees tells a story. See where the so-called backyard ends, woods all the way to the road, it’s a natural line of approach if someone wanted to stay in cover. No need to go through the campground and take a chance of being seen. I got partials by those two lodgepoles”—he pointed—“the best impression is under this Doug fir.”

“I can’t make out anything,” Ettinger said, peering under the low-hanging branch Little Feather held up.

Stranahan said, “Cowboy boot.”

“’Bout a nine,” Little Feather said.

Martha nodded. “I see it now. Mostly it just looks like a shadow. Good work, Harold. You say this is the same guy who left the mud inside the trailer? Couldn’t just anyone be wandering back here?”

“The camp host, most likely, but he’s an eleven. Wouldn’t be any reason for one of the campers to be here. No, I figure this is the guy. It’s fresh; see how the nap on the duff hasn’t settled around the edge of the track. The grains of earth stand on end when they’re disturbed, can take half a day for the nap to collapse. And I can’t say for sure, but that bit of brown stain there on the pine needles, that could be blood he tracked over from the body. I waited to show you before I bagged it.”

Ettinger nodded. “This is all you found?”

“All I found that matters. Think back, Martha. Nine cowboy boot ring a bell?”

Ettinger felt the hair on her forearms lift. The tracks in the abandoned homestead cabin above Henry’s Lake were a nine cowboy boot.

“You’re saying this is the same guy who shot at Sam Meslik on the lake?”

Harold’s brow furrowed. “Somewhere between maybe and probably is what I’m saying. I’ll have to check the print against the tracings and the pics we took at the cabin.”

“Exactly what prints would those be? Exactly what cabin?” There was a cranky note in Hess’s voice.

“Don’t get your u-trou in a bunch, Walt. I didn’t tell you ’cause no one in the department had an interest. Besides, Harold and I were snooping in Idaho, which I didn’t want to explain. Now it comes together.”

“My u-trou?”

“Underwear.”

Walt glared a moment, then his eyes crinkled up. “That’s a good one, Marth, I’ll have to remember it.”

I
nterviews bled away the afternoon. A few campers had seen the host drive around the loops the previous evening, checking registrations, which confirmed the ME’s estimation of time of death as being later in the night, but that was where the observations ended. No one had seen a man riding a bicycle.

Harold was standing beside the Cherokee with the Manx tabby under his arm when Stranahan and Ettinger returned from their circuit. Hess pulled up in his county rig, said he was taking off for Bridger.

Little Feather and Stranahan climbed into the Cherokee with Ettinger. Harold stroked the cat’s cheeks to calm him as they started back up the valley.

“Figure I’ll leave him with my sister. He’d just starve on the rez.”

“I assume Janice married a white man,” Ettinger said. “What do you think about that, Harold?”

Stranahan, sitting in back, felt a tension in the Jeep. The question seemed out of place.

“Me, I’m for whatever gets you through the night. Greg’s a good guy and my sister, she’s always been a bit of an apple.”

“Apple?”

“Red on the outside, white on the inside.”

“You ever date white women?”

“You asking about my love life, Martha? I don’t know what to say.”

“Just makin’ conversation.”

An uneasy silence fell over the trio. Stranahan had the feeling that if he hadn’t been there, the words would never have been spoken. In his experience, a third person often acted as a buffer to keep the tone of a conversation light, even if the words were not. But the silence continued as the Cherokee dropped from Quake Dam into the valley.

“Don’t you think we ought to interview McNair?” Stranahan volunteered. They were passing the 87 turnoff to the riverfront community, where the old cabin slumped like a swayback nag in a herd of thoroughbreds.

Ettinger said carefully. “I’m not dismissing what you said. But if we knock on this guy’s door asking to see a rifle, or a knife, or some size nine cowboy boots, and he has something to hide, then do you think he’s going to produce them? Even if he was dumb enough to keep them in the first place? No, we’d drive away and any evidence he possessed would disappear long before I could get a warrant.”

“But there’s bound to be blood on the shoes, or maybe on the bike. The longer this goes on—”

She finished his sentence—“the more I wonder about your girlfriend.”

They drove in a silence a few miles. Stranahan remembered that he’d promised to call Sam about fishing in the morning and asked to use Ettinger’s cell phone.

“Reception will be touch and go,” she said as she handed it to him.

“Kimosabe.” Sam’s voice crackled indistinctly. “…you on?”

Stranahan thought, why not? If nothing else, he’d be able to have a second look at the logjam where Sam had found the body. Vareda was in Missoula, two hundred miles away, and obviously the sheriff had no more use for him.

“Yeah,” he said into the phone, “but I want to drive my own rig. I can spot your truck at the take-out. Can you hear me, Sam?”

“Ten-four, my man.”

They agreed on a rendezvous and Stranahan handed the phone back to Ettinger.

“You come up the Madison tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t want you looking for anything bigger than a trout. We’re clear on that, right?”

Before Stranahan could respond, the radio crackled. It was Walt, asking Ettinger to pick him up a grilled chicken cordon bleu sandwich at the Blue Moon Saloon on the way in. He’d already passed the joint, but didn’t realize he was hungry till now.

“Must a been one of those subliminal message things,” Walt said.

“Okay, sure.”

“Fries and a Coke. In a bottle if they got it.”

“Anything else, filet mignon, foie gras?”

“I don’t eat Frog food.”

The radio went quiet and they rode in silence for a few minutes.

Harold Little Feather spoke softly. “We passed the Blue Moon ’bout five miles back.”

“Shit,” Martha said. “I’m so screwed up I don’t know where I am anymore. Walt’s gonna have to settle for a slab of slow elk at the Ennis Café.”

From the backseat, Stranahan could see the Indian shrug his shoulders.

“Man wants the Cordon Bleu,” Little Feather said, “nothing else is going to do.”

“Oh, fuck you, Harold,” Ettinger said.

“You see, that’s why I don’t date white women. They make promises they never keep.”

Stranahan could see the back of Ettinger’s neck redden under the brim of her peaked sheriff’s hat.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

R
etracing the drive up the Madison Valley the following morning, Stranahan kept Sam’s trailer rig in his headlights. To the west he could make out the Sphinx, a lion-headed peak with its subordinate sister, the Helmet, squatting in starlit shadow. Montana in its vicissitudes continued to amaze him. Yesterday afternoon had been eighty-five degrees, not a breath of wind to deter the mosquitoes. The temperature had dropped forty degrees overnight, blanketing the warmer river in a serpentine wafer of fog. When Sean took the oars of Sam’s drift boat at blush dawn, it was cold enough that he chose his battered felt fedora over his billed fishing cap and pulled it down to the tops of his ears. Sam’s client, a square-jawed ex-jock named Frankie DiBacco, who owned a tire dealership in Steubenville, Ohio, smiled under his watch cap, a drop of liquid teetering on the end of his nose.