Wicked Eddies (3 page)

Two

If fishing is like religion, then fly-fishing is high church.

—TOM BROKAW

A wet lick on
Mandy's face awakened her the next morning. She rubbed her damp cheek against the shoulder of her lamb-print sleep shirt. “Cut it out, Lucky.”

Her golden retriever was unrepentant. When Mandy peeked, the dog's tail was violently swishing back and forth, carrying his whole back end with it. He stared intently at her, mouth open in a wide grin and panting in anticipation of some morning play time. She gave up pretending to be mad at him and reached a hand out of the covers to scratch his ears.

The radio alarm clicked on.

“How do you do that, dog?” Lucky's timing was impeccable. He usually rose from his dog pillow at the foot of Mandy's bed just before the alarm went off.

She stretched and her hand hit the empty pillow next to her.
Rob hadn't come to her place last night because he'd had his regular Monday dinner in Pueblo with his mama and whoever else showed up from his large, extended Hispanic family. He had taken
Mandy with him a few times. She had enjoyed meeting some of the clan, though she still had trouble keeping all of their names straight.
From the welcome she'd received, Mandy knew Rob's devoutly Catholic mama approved of her, though not of Rob sleeping with her before marriage.

Mandy got out of bed. Frowning, she wondered if Rob's mama had pressured him again last night about proposing. “I wouldn't be surprised, given the hints she kept dropping last time I was there,” she said out loud.

Lucky tilted his head and lifted his ears as if trying to figure out what she was talking about.

Mandy laughed. “You know, the lady who gave me a large beef bone for you last time. She's already got you on her side, and you haven't even met her.”

Lucky nosed her again with impatience. Morning sunlight was already streaming through the window, and he had business to conduct outside.

Mandy went through her morning routine—letting Lucky out in the fenced-in yard and feeding him, watering the marigolds she'd planted alongside her concrete patio—in between spoonfuls of raisin bran and milk. She tied her shoulder-length hair into a ponytail and donned her off-the-water ranger uniform consisting of black jeans and a black shirt with the AHRA logo. During it all, she mulled over Rob's suggestion to sell her uncle's place. It made a lot of sense, and her head agreed with him.

Her heart, however, was another matter.

On the drive to the Chaffee County Sheriff's Office, she popped in one of Pink's CDs. She turned the female pop rocker's music up loud so she wouldn't have to think anymore about selling Uncle Bill's home. She parked in front of the old blonde-brick Chaffee County Administration Building on Crestone Avenue that housed the whole county government. After entering the building, she climbed up the wide, worn stairs to the third floor where the detectives' offices were located. She tapped on the frosted glass door of Detective Quintana's office and entered after his “Come in” invitation.

He rose from his gray metal desk under the window to clear a stack of case files off the guest chair placed within easy reach next to his own chair. After pushing the guest chair back a few inches, he waved for her to sit down. “What's the ‘something important' you need to tell me, Mandy?”

“I've got some information on the fisherman case.” She told him about Gonzo's friend, Newt Nowak.

Being the first responder, Mandy was a member of the investigative team for this case, and she had a vested interest in getting it solved. She and Quintana would need to keep in touch until it was closed, so she could include whatever he found out in her incident report. Besides, the AHRA rangers and the Chaffee County Sheriff's deputies were good buddies. They trained together, invited each other to summer barbecues, and jointly investigated serious crimes that occurred within the park boundaries.

Quintana wrote down Newt's name. “I'll be sure to question him. Thanks for the lead.”

“Did you find out who the fisherman was?” Mandy asked.

Quintana leaned back in his office chair, making it creak. “Howie Abbott. You know his niece, I think. Cynthia?”

“Yeah, yeah I do.” Mandy nibbled on her lip. How was her best friend going to take the news about her murdered uncle? “Does she know?”

“I informed his closest relative, his sister Brenda Ellis, and her family yesterday. They may have called Cynthia after I left their house. It was not a good scene.”

A memory of the grief that had totally incapacitated Mandy after her Uncle Bill's death washed over her, rendering her momentarily speechless. She blinked back threatening tears and clenched her hands.

As if sensing her need for a moment to compose herself, Quintana gazed at an email displayed on his computer monitor before giving her an appraising glance. “Do you know the Ellis family?”

Mandy shook her head. “Cynthia told me when her aunt's family moved back to Salida in the spring, but I only met Brenda's husband, Lee, briefly, at an Arkansas River Outfitter Association function in May. They've been living in New Mexico the past few years.”

Quintana nodded. “They never got used to it, Brenda said, and they moved back to the Arkansas River Valley to be near family, her brother Howie and niece Cynthia. It was Cynthia's father who was related to Howie and Brenda, right?”

“Cynthia's dad was the oldest, Howie was in the middle, and Brenda was the youngest.”

“And now she's the only one left. As I recall, Cynthia's dad passed away awhile ago.”

“Yes, of lung cancer three years ago. Cynthia went back east for the funeral.” Mandy remembered trying to cheer up her friend back then and wondered how badly this second loss would affect her. “Cynthia's parents were living in Connecticut. Her mom stayed there after the funeral, said she'd put down roots. Cynthia and her mom aren't close.”

“Well, apparently Brenda and Howie were close. She seemed pretty broken up by the news. Plus, this bad news was a second blow to them. Brenda's fifteen-year-old daughter, Faith, ran away from home sometime Saturday night, and they haven't seen or heard from her since.”

“Bummer. Was she unhappy about the move?”

“Seemed to be. Brenda said the girl became sullen and uncommunicative a few weeks after they moved here.” Quintana extracted a thin case folder on his desk out from under the thick one with Howie Abbott's name on it. The thin folder was labeled with Faith Ellis's name. “Since Faith had been gone almost forty-eight hours by yesterday, I said I'd open a missing person's case file.”

He pulled out a sheet of paper containing the photo of a teenage girl sitting on a large boulder with the sunlit choppy water of the Arkansas River behind it. “Maybe you can distribute this among the rangers and ask them to keep an eye out for her.”

“Sure.” Mandy took the photo. The girl was petite and thin but had a shapely figure. Her long, straight brown hair was swept back over one shoulder. A large mole under her left eye somehow added to her beauty instead of detracting from it. “Did Howie have a family of his own?”

Quintana folded his arms awkwardly over all the equipment on his uniform belt. “No, Brenda said he was somewhat of a loner, and had a temper on him. No woman seemed to tolerate him for long.”

“Think one of them was mad enough to hatchet him?”

“I kind of doubt it. Brenda said he hadn't dated anyone steadily for a couple of years. But, I'll sniff around for old girlfriends, of course.” Quintana leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees. “Here's something interesting. You remember Unger saying Howie had something slimy on his face?”

Mandy nodded.
Where is this going?

“Well, once Paul gets a bee in his bonnet, he goes after it until he's satisfied with the answer. He had the lab test the substance right away. Guess what it was.”

“Probably not something as mundane as sunscreen or bug repellant, but I don't know what else it could have been. Was it some kind of food he didn't wash off after eating?”

“Nope, it was all over his face.” Quintana waited, stroking his mustache and obviously relishing his secret.

Mandy shrugged. “I give up.”

“It was pepper spray.” A wide grin split the detective's face.

“Pepper spray? Why pepper spray?”

“Curious, isn't it? And what's more, Paul says it was sprayed on after Howie was hatcheted. Droplets overlaid the wound's initial blood flow, and Paul found some inside Howie's mouth and on the handle of the hatchet.”

“That's really odd. You think the killer did it?”

Quintana cocked his head. “Let's see if you reach the same conclusion I did. Why would the killer squirt Howie Abbott with pepper spray after swinging a hatchet into his neck?”

Mandy flinched at the violent scene Quintana's words invoked. “Because he was deranged or really, really mad at Howie?”

“Maybe. What other reason can you come up with?”

She closed her eyes and tried to envision the attack. She put herself in the role of the killer, wielding the hatchet, hearing Howie scream and stepping back to pull out the spray can….

Her eyes flew open. “You think the killer was afraid that if the hatchet didn't do the trick, Howie might come after him?”

Quintana slapped the arm of his chair. “Bingo. So what does that say about the killer?”

Mandy pondered this for a moment. “That he—or she—may be smaller, older, or weaker than Howie, not confident of defending himself or herself against the man, even though Howie's life was pouring out of his neck.”

“And that not only did the killer bring a hatchet to the scene, he brought pepper spray, so this probably was a premeditated act.”

“I'm not so sure,” Mandy replied after a moment's thought. “Some women always carry pepper spray in their purses. And it can be used against bears, so both the spray and the hatchet might have
already been at the campsite. The killer could have made a last-
minute decision and discovered everything he or she needed right there. Did you find any evidence yet about who else was there?”

“No, but we do know someone else was at that campsite. We matched Howie Abbott's fingerprints to some of those on the beer cans that were in the trash bag, but we found other prints that don't match his. Neither Howie nor his friend reserved or paid for the campsite, though, so we don't know yet who was drinking with him.”

“Could you match the prints to the CBI database?” Mandy knew the Automated Fingerprint Identification System maintained by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation wasn't complete by any means, but sometimes they got lucky.

“Not yet,” Quintana answered. “But we haven't finished pulling all of the prints off all the evidence. And, it takes time to do the comparison analysis.”

“What about campers at other campsites?”

“Steve only found one reservation for last weekend at Vallie Bridge.” Quintana peered at her. “You guys need to police your campgrounds better.”

Mandy rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it. We know we're losing revenue like crazy, but it takes money to make money. Right now we can't afford to pay for extra ranger shifts to do campground checks. And the word is getting out that campers can get away with not paying.”

“I sympathize. We've got the same problem with parking violations in Salida. Anyway, I assigned a patrol officer to interview the family who made that one reservation. Hopefully they saw something—or someone.”

“So, nothing yet.” Mandy sighed and stood. She tapped the photo of the missing girl that she held. “I'm going in to do the paperwork on the body discovery. I'll copy and post this photo while I'm at headquarters. We've also got some big meeting this afternoon about the fly-fishing tournament next week. You involved in any way?”

Quintana shook his head. “Too busy trying to catch a killer to catch flies—or fish, for that matter.” He stood. “Thanks for the tip about Newt Nowak. We'll keep in touch. You going to see Cynthia soon?”

“Tonight.”

“Please give her my condolences about her uncle.”

While Mandy walked back to her car, she rehearsed what she could say to Cynthia about her uncle's death, but everything came out lame. Even though Mandy had been to hell and back after her own beloved uncle's death and could relate, Cynthia had never mentioned her uncle and how close she was to him. So, Mandy had no idea how upset her friend might be upon hearing about his death—by the hand of a hatchet and pepper-spray wielding assailant.

What a way to go!
An involuntary shudder shook Mandy's spine.

_____

Mandy slipped through the conference room doorway at the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area headquarters building a few minutes after two. Juggling a much-needed mug of coffee and a notepad and pen, she searched for an empty chair. All the chairs around the long oval table were taken, as were most along the two side walls and the back wall in the crowded room. Spotting an open seat along the far wall under the window, she shuffled sideways past knees and conference table chair backs, nodding to familiar faces, until she could plop her butt in the empty chair.

A fireman she'd gone through whitewater rescue training with that spring winked at her. “Welcome to the sardine can.”

“Let's just hope it doesn't start to smell like one,” Mandy replied.

She took a sip of her coffee and wished she'd thought to make it an iced coffee. With all these bodies, the room would heat up soon. The room was crammed with rangers, firemen, ambulance crew, sheriff's deputies, and anyone else involved with emergency rescue situations in the Arkansas River Valley who wasn't currently out on assignment.