Crazy Mountain Kiss (20 page)

“Hear me out. I'm one of those people who thinks better when they think out loud.”

Stranahan blew steam from his coffee cup. Outside the window, a red-winged blackbird perched on a cattail, flashing his epaulets. “I'm listening,” he said.

Martha continued her train of thought. “According to Doc, Cinderella Huntington became pregnant either shortly before or after her disappearance. The only person we've ruled out for paternity is Anker.”

“We'll know whether Bear Paw Bill was the father inside a week,” Sean said. “This isn't like you, Martha. Speculating before—”

“Will you let me finish? I'm speculating because if it turns out our mountain man is
not
the father, we need to consider the consequences of that now, not wait for DNA corroboration. Say that Bear Paw Bill was acting as her protector, that she fled the valley of evil for the sanctity of the mountain, to use his own words. What else was he to her besides a refuge, a shield? Think about what she revealed in the documentary. She talked about brain damage from the accident, about her mother's drinking and her stepfather's disappointment in her, about her dreams of going to college. I'm waiting for the shoe to drop.”

“He was her confessor.”

“Exactly. And if I was that someone from the valley who made her take flight, I wouldn't be getting much sleep tonight. I'd be wondering what Cinderella told Bear Paw Bill. I'd be more than a little concerned about what he'd say when he came around, or what he might have told authorities already.”

“Do you think he's in danger?”

“McKutchen?” She shrugged. “Ten years ago I would have said that stuff's only in movies. But who knows? I'm going to have a deputy posted at the hospital at least through today and tonight. In the meantime, we release an official version of what happened up there and an unofficial one. The official version presents the facts of the rescue, including Joshua Byrne's involvement, but the department isn't releasing details because it relates to the ongoing investigation into the death of Cinderella Huntington. The unofficial version is that McKutchen talked to at least one of his rescuers, and that as a result, the investigation has taken a turn, focusing on the paternity of the child Cinderella was carrying. That should flush out the real father, if McKutchen isn't our man.”

“Why not release that publicly?”

“Because it would look like I'm fishing and it could scare somebody away. It's best to come from another source.”

Sean brought his finger to his chest.

“That's what I'm thinking. I'll drop a word here and there while you start knocking on doors, asking questions, stirring the voice of doubt in someone's head. Then we sit back and wait for that someone to do something stupid.”

“We can't keep eyes on everyone.”

“No, you're going to prioritize. You found the mountain man for us. I don't have to tell you how to do your job. In the meantime, let's hope Bill comes around and points the finger for us.”

“What if he points it at himself?”

“Best-case scenario. Case closed.”

“About Bill.” Stranahan reached into the pocket of his jeans. They
were the same jeans he'd worn when he'd gone to the cabin with Katie. He handed Martha the shotgun pellet and told her the story behind finding it. “It's a BB pellet. It's steel,” he said.

“So he's a Peeping Tom, like the lovers thought.”

“Or he was looking to take something from the cabin.”

“I don't see where it gets us, either way.”

“Neither do I.”

“Still, curiouser and curiouser.” Martha turned the key in the ignition.

At the Law and Justice lot, Martha idled to a stop behind Stranahan's Land Cruiser and peered in the rearview mirror. She ran a ChapStick across her lips, the closest she'd come to applying makeup since, well, since the dance the summer before at her cousin Bucky's wedding reception. It was the first time Sean had kissed her. No, she was the one who'd started the kissing. What should have been, what could have been. She shook her head at the memory. Now it was as if none of it had happened.

“You okay, Martha?”

“I'm just off to the wolves and not looking forward to it.” She snapped the cap onto the ChapStick. “That Gail Stocker at the
Star,
she'd eat her husband for a story, and she isn't married. After I read my statement, every reporter in the state's going to be ringing my number. I told you before I underestimated this thing, but I
really
underestimated it. You'll think it's me who's the movie star, not Joshua Byrne.”

“People already think you're, who's that actress?”

“I know who you mean, but that's just because she played a sheriff. I get Marg Helgenberger, I even got Connie Britton once but I don't know what they were smoking. I don't see the similarities. I'm tall, I'm . . . I don't know.”

“You're Martha. You don't need to be anybody else.”

“That's what mothers tell daughters who inherit the unfortunate half of the genes.”

S
ean ran his eyes around the walls. One unsold painting after another stared at him reprovingly, eliciting a clicking of his tongue over his tenuous financial situation, Etta Huntington's contract notwithstanding. He focused on the half-completed canvas on his easel, an impressionist piece of pointillism titled
Sunrise—Sawyer Key
. A sea of golden wafers was shattered by a tarpon at the height of its jump, its gill rakers beads of crimson. He prepared his palette but then failed to work himself into the mood of the painting. He put his paints away, found a legal pad, and had penned in a dozen names to plant the seed of doubt with when the phone rang.

“Kemosabe.”

“Sam! Where are you?”

“I'm at the fucking airport.”

“You're not supposed to be back until Memorial Day.”

“Well what do you know? I am. Let's say I've had health concerns. Get your ass over here and pick up your buddy. My flights got fucked and I spent all night in the Salt Lake airport surrounded by snoring Mormons.”

Stranahan tore the list of names from the pad and folded it into his pocket. The big man was waiting outside the sliding doors to the baggage claim, carrying four rod cases taped together and wearing a hoodie with the hood up over a ball cap.

“Traveling incognito?” Sean said.

Sam pitched his duffel bag into the way back and settled his bulk
into the passenger seat. He pulled off the hood and removed his wraparounds, revealing the ovals of pale skin around his eyes. The rest of his face, under a billed fishing cap that read
CRAIG
, MONTANA: A QUIET LIT
TLE DRINKING TOWN WI
TH A FISHING PROBLEM
, was burned the color of a pig turned on a spit. He removed the hat and shook out his hair. “Just drive me to Peachy's so I can pick up my dog.”

They were nearly to Four Corners before he spoke again.

“You know where I tie up my skiff at Garrison Bight, well, yesterday morning, no, day before, I'm supposed to be fishing Stephen Dunn, you been out with him.”

Sean nodded. “Trophy Man.” Dunn was a fund-raiser for nonprofits who sunk his profits into the pursuit of saltwater game fish. He affected a Belizian accent whenever he hooked up, saying, “The Trophy Mon's got a beeg one on.”

“Yeah, he's decent people,” Sam said. “Anyway, I'm late to the dock and Trophy's standing there and says, ‘What do you got under the tarp?' And I think, ‘What tarp?' Sure enough, there's a tarp on the bottom of my Maverick. I pull it back and there's an iguana, one of those red-head males looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Four fucking footer. Gutted like a deer, blood and God knows what all over the bottom of my boat. It's got its iguana tongue sticking out and get this, the tongue is wrapped around a cigar somebody's been smoking. Yeah, half smoked. I jumped right back onto the dock. I mean, it's your basic wake up with a horse's head in your lap. And Trophy, you got to hand it to him, he says, ‘Is this somebody's idea of a joke or should I start looking for another tarpon guide?'”

“Jesus,” Sean said.

“Yeah.”

“Did you tell him to find another guide?”

“I told
all
my clients to find another guide. They were referrals anyway. I only had to deal away a few dates.”

“So who did it?”

“Carolina's got this brother, Raimundo, the fuckin' little prawn.
She tells her mother about me, next thing you know this guy's on a plane. Turns out he's got a friend and Carolina's been promised to this friend, it's like it's already happened in the eyes of the family. Anyway, Raimundo takes us out to dinner at Louie's. Carolina excuses herself to go to the ladies' and he leans across the table and tells me she's spoken for, says Montana's supposed to be nice weather this time of year. I say what the fuck does that mean, and all he does is give a contented little belch. Next morning—iguana.”

“And you left, just like that?”

“No, I hunted the dude up to brace him, and he's talking with this other guy's got about six chin hairs, looks like Roberto Durán, the fighter. Raimundo hands the guy something, wraps his fist over it. I'm thinking bills. Understand, they don't see me, we're on Duval and there's a lot of fucking tourists, and the guy walks right by me. Then he stops, turns his head over his shoulder. Eyes as dead as a shark's. Pulls a cigar from his pocket and lights it. It's a Maduro Robusto with the yellow band. Same fucking cigar the iguana had in its mouth. Walks away.
That's
when I decided to look at a plane schedule. I mean, I could see things getting pear-shaped in a hurry.”

“Where's your boat?”

“Julio says he'll tarp it in his backyard, no charge.” Sam looked out the window and shook his head. “Raimundo doesn't know jackshit about Montana.”

“How so?”

“This is a fucked time of year to come to Montana.”

 • • • 

A
fter dropping Sam, Stranahan fed his Land Cruiser regular at the Sinclair station in Norris, eyeballing the green dinosaur in order to avoid watching the numbers flipping on the pump. At least this tank was being expensed to Etta Huntington, and thinking of her, wondering if she was still at the tipi, he pulled the list of names from his shirt pocket. He glanced down it, men to a man with one exception, Donna Anker, Landon's mother. Prioritizing, he circled her name, as well as
Earl Hightower, the Bar-4 ranch manager, and the horse trainer, Charles Watt. Hightower and Watt had been interviewed at length by Harold Little Feather at the time of Cinderella's disappearance. But Stranahan's acquaintance with them went no further than shaking hands, and Watt, at least, had been one of the last people to have seen Cinderella the evening before she disappeared. Stranahan tore the receipt from the pump and decided to pay a visit to the ranch. But first he'd have to pick up Choti.

Turning into his drive, he saw that Etta's truck was gone. She'd scraped a heart into the hard-packed earth of the tipi's floor, had etched a star inside it.

The Sheltie, curled at the foot of the cot, regarded him with her mismatched eyes.

 • • • 

E
tta answered Stranahan's knock sans arm, sans smile, wearing the same clothes she'd worn on the manhunt.

“Why are you here?” she said. “My husband's driving in tonight and it would be awkward for you to be here.”

So now he's her husband,
Stranahan thought.

“I thought you preferred calling him ‘that bastard.'”

“You think you know me, but you don't.”

Using her good hand, she pulled the empty sleeve on her right arm around her left forearm so that she stood, leaning back from her hips, with her arms crossed in a keep-your-distance posture. “That star in the heart wasn't you, it was Cindy.”

“I know it was. I'm not here for you, I'm here to talk to Earl Hightower and Charles Watt about the night she disappeared. And to give you this.” He handed her the elkskin jacket that they had found outside the cabin. As it was not evidence in a crime, Ettinger had released it to him and he had simply not got around to giving it to Etta.

“We believe McKutchen sewed it for Cinderella. I thought you'd like to have it.”

She took the coat without comment.

“I'm just doing the job you paid me to do.”

“Earl thought the world of her.”

“I'm sure he did. But the way I work is, you ask questions until you find answers.”

“You found Bear Paw Bill.”

“And that may be the end of it, but until he talks I'm working on the assumption that something else could have happened that night that caused her to run away.”

She nodded, and the guarded expression on her face was replaced with resignation. “I'm sorry. I've always been a person that people want something from and it's hard to open up the way I did with you. So I step back. It's just my instinct.” She looked past Stranahan toward the mountains.

“Did you tell your husband about what happened?”

“Between you and me?” She shook her head. “Of course not—oh, you mean about Bill. I called him an hour ago. He'd find out anyway and just get mad at me if I didn't. It's hard to stay civil as it is.”

“How did he react?”

“He said he'd never heard anything about a mountain man, but he'd kill him with no questions asked. That's just Jasper being Jasper.”

“How do you mean?”

“Jumping to conclusions, threatening to kill somebody. He's a hothead. You saw that side of him in the Pony Bar. But I've never known him to be calculating. Jasper's not a cold-blooded bastard, just a bastard.” She let go of the empty sleeve and turned to go into the house. “I'll call Earl and let him know you're coming. Then if you still want to see Charlie, drive around to the stables. The vet's here and we've got a mare ready to foal at a civilized hour for once.”

 • • • 

E
arl Hightower's house was built on three acres of floodplain he'd purchased from Etta Huntington five years previously. Stranahan took the turn, the Land Cruiser's tires lifting a sheet of water at the creek ford, then climbing out of the choked bottom through greening
cottonwoods to reveal a split-level ranch/rambler-style home, the roof topped with a weather vane shaped like a rooster. A border collie charged out, nipping at the tires. Hightower opened the door of his house, windmilling his arms.

“Keep a-coming. Don't pay her no mind.”

They shook hands as Stranahan read the map of the man's past in the broken capillaries of Hightower's cheeks and nose. He remembered what Jasper Fey had said about him being a sponsor in AA. But the eyes were clear and the smile was ear to ear over teeth that looked to have had a recent whitening. He led Stranahan into a living room dominated by elk mounts with glassy eyes and indicated a chair at a table with turquoise inlays. The place was ranch decor from ceiling beams to red oak floors, except for a painting of a seaside golf hole, breakers hitting the bluffs. The obligatory weak coffee came in cups with painted horses on them. Hightower's palms made a smacking sound as he placed them on the table.

“Etta said to tell you all I know, which isn't much. The night you're asking about I was parked right here, Lorraine my wife where you're sitting. I had the laptop, looking at vacation rentals on the north shore of Kauai. The missus and I go every spring after calving. Hell, it was just a month ago we were there. With everything that's happened since, it seems a long time.” He shook his head, then raised his eyes to Stranahan. “Life takes a hell of a turn, doesn't it?”

“It does.”

“Well, like I said, an ordinary night. The next morning Etta came roaring down in her truck all worked up about Cindy, asked if she was here. We're standing on the porch and I look off and there's a truck parked out by the blacktop direction of Wilsall. Just a speck till I put binoculars on it. We drove down there and it was Landon's truck. I said, ‘Etta, a dime takes a dollar they were driving down to the kid's folks' place for breakfast.' I thought they had hitched or hiked into town 'cause the spare was a flat, and we'd find them tucking into Donna's buckwheat pancakes. But they weren't there. You know all this if I'm not mistaken.”

Stranahan nodded. “Was Landon working that last evening Cindy was seen? Etta said your arrangement was loose.”

Hightower nodded. “Charlie or I gave him chores and he'd come over once or twice a week after school and on weekends, keep his own hours. He was a good kid. Used to be they was all good kids, but now you got no-accounts smoking weed and plinking gophers, pass it off as a day's labor.”

“Did you know he was gay?”

“He wasn't swishy, but I wasn't surprised when it came out. It wasn't my business. But to answer your question, he did drive past that day. Onto the property, I mean. I assumed he was going up to the south end to put a new H brace on the fenceline, something I'd told him needed doing. I was driving back here at the same time and he tipped his hat, I tipped mine. That would have been about seven-thirty, give or take.”

Stranahan had read about the brief encounter in Harold's report, but not if Hightower had heard the ranch hand drive back out later in the evening.

Hightower said he hadn't. “But you have to recall this was November, we had the place shut up and a fire going. About all I'd hear is snap, crackle, pop.”

“And you don't remember any headlights coming back?”

“No, there's a rise in the road where you see lights, but we had the curtains drawn. The way I calculate it, he could have driven back out anytime between say eight or eight-thirty and seven in the a.m., and the only one would have known would be Patches here.” He bent down to pat the head of a spaniel with liver-colored saddles that had materialized from some further recess of the house.

“Does Patches bark when a vehicle passes on the ranch road?”

“Only if she doesn't know the engine. This old girl can tell the difference between a 2.6-liter Mercury and the 3.1 at half a mile.”

“What about someone on foot?”

He nodded. “If she was sitting in the window where she can see out, and that's something she does most nights, why she'd let us know.”

“Did she bark that night?”

“She surely did. Woke me up.” He rubbed the dog's ears. “Didn't you, girl?”

“Do you remember when?”

“Actually I do. It was two in the a.m. or thereabouts. I couldn't get back to sleep so I came out here and slipped in a DVD of Jack winning the Masters back in eighty-six. I could watch him play Amen Corner a hundred times over. But you're asking if it was a vehicle, and I can't say it was. It could have been a person. Or a bear. Or a cat more likely. We got a bobcat with two kits. Patches and that cat got a pissing match going on, spraying trees all up and down the creek.”