Crazy Mountain Kiss (21 page)

He tucked his hands under his arms. “Isn't this sort of beside the point now? You got the one can answer your questions up at Deaconess. I heard it directly from Etta.”

“It's a guess whether he'll come around again, at least in this world.”

“What did he say when you found him?”

“Not much. He called Cinderella his chickadee.”

“His chickadee.” Hightower's voice had a bite of sarcasm. He smiled, but his eyes didn't smile, and Stranahan watched as the mask of hospitality dropped away, the jaw finding a set, the lips pursing out as the cheeks hollowed. The pupils were black as obsidian, a hard glitter from deep folds of flesh.

“I'm trying to read between the lines here and figure just what you're getting at. That I had something to do with what happened to Cindy, or I'm covering for somebody? 'Cause I'd sure consider that an insult. After all I done for Jasper and Etta.”

“I know this isn't pleasant to talk about.”

Hightower didn't appear to have heard. “I'm talking to you in my own house as a courtesy to Etta and because it would be a good thing all around to put some closure on this thing. I loved that girl of hers. She could make the sun come up in the morning.”

“I understand.”

“I'm not sure you do.”

“Mr. Hightower, sometimes you can't find out who is behind someone's death until you eliminate who isn't. If you're so certain no one at the ranch knows anything that could help, then who does?”

“You don't think I haven't asked myself that? I'm watching a good woman go to pieces and there isn't a damned thing I can do about it. No sir.” He blinked and Stranahan saw that his eyes were shiny. The hard jaw began to crumble. “Go on now. I'm sorry getting hot like that. You keep asking your questions. You find out who done this.”

Stranahan rose, then stopped himself as he caught sight of the dog lying under the table. “Mr. Hightower—”

“It's Earl.”

“Earl. On the night that someone cut the tails off the horses, did Patches bark?”

“No, she didn't. I asked myself that, and I'm pretty darned sure she didn't. Etta said the dogs up there didn't bark, either. That's what got that detective thinking it was an inside job, and I see the logic, only there wasn't anybody inside, myself and Charlie excepted, and we'd both left the stables by seven o'clock. It really doesn't matter anymore. You have to wonder, what does?”

Stranahan left a half a cup of coffee on the table and Hightower shaking his head about what mattered, looked up from the porch to see the rooster spinning, the wind having picked up as it does as the day warms, and drove to the stables to see a horse born at a civilized hour.

 • • • 

E
tta waved to Sean from the entrance to the stables and led him to an empty stall, where she sat on clean straw with her back to the wall, her head tipped back, hat brim hiding her eyes, a stick of straw in her teeth. Her jeans were pulled down over the cowboy boots with the rose stitching.

“You look like the woman who kicked out the stars,” Stranahan said.

A halfhearted smile. “Was Earl any help?” She breathed deeply. “God, I'm tired.”

“I'm not sure. Probably not.”

“I could have told you that. Charlie won't be, either.”

“I'd still like to talk to him.”

“This isn't a good time. The mare won't accept anyone she doesn't know in the stall. Plus she's a maiden, so it's new to her. She doesn't really even want Charlie there.”

“What about the vet?”

“He'll stay hunched in the corner. The only way he'll come out from under his hat is if it's absolutely necessary.”

“How will you know when it's time?”

She pulled the walkie-talkie from her belt holster as it crackled. A low voice: “She just broke.” Etta stood up and dusted the straw off her pants. “You can watch. But you have to be quiet.”

She led the way to a stall where a stepladder was unfolded. “Just high enough to peek over,” she whispered.

“What about you?”

“I've seen a lot of horses born. I'll sit this one out.”

Climbing the ladder and peering over the divider, Sean saw a chestnut mare lying on a bed of hay. Her tail was wrapped and her rear legs were shiny with amniotic fluid from the rupture of the placental sac. The mare nickered. After a few minutes, she rolled onto her belly and struggled up, standing with her head down. The two men who were sitting with their backs to the foaling stall didn't move. The mare looked back at her side and nipped at it. Time passed and she lay back down. Her eyes were large and brown and, to Stranahan, seemed surprisingly calm. Charles Watt lifted his chin and met Stranahan's eyes in a tacit acknowledgment of his presence. Stranahan pumped his feet on the rungs of the ladder to keep the blood circulating. A whitish sac began to protrude from the mare's vulva. Inside the sac, Stranahan could see a hoof with a few inches of leg behind it. A second hoof showed, the sac elongating as more of the
legs emerged. Each time the mare pushed, her ribs collapsed and there was a shiver of her hindquarters. Minutes passed, the mare occasionally lifting her head off the straw to look back along the spine of her body.

Stranahan saw the vet nod. Charles Watt unsnapped his shirt and peeled it off. Dewlaps of flesh hung over the waist of his jeans, but the rest of his upper body was muscle and sinew. A ruff of reddish hair whorled around his pectoral muscles and hung in a wispy thatch under each arm. A stripe of light gray hair ran up between the pectorals to flower at his throat. He washed his arms in a liquid poured from a plastic bottle, then toweled them dry.

Moving slowly, Watt knelt behind the mare and used scissors to cut through the viscous sac covering the foal's forelegs. He reached behind him for a towel the vet extended. He wrapped the towel around the two hooves, then pulled the legs down toward the mare's hooves. The foal's head emerged, then, with gentle but firm coaxing, the shoulders. Watt let the mare rest, then pulled again, the hindquarters emerging with a soft plopping sound. With only the rear legs of the foal still inside the mare's body, Watt crabbed backwards and sat beside the vet. Stranahan watched the foal turn so that its chest was against the straw. The rest of the saclike material broke, spilling more clear liquid. The foal's ears flopped like limp rags as it struggled to breathe. Sean saw the vet tap his watch. Watt moved forward again. He pinched one of the foal's nostrils, took a deep breath, and exhaled into the other nostril. The foal jerked its head and started breathing.

Stranahan felt a tapping on the ladder. It was Etta motioning him down. She asked what was happening and he told her, matching her whisper.

“They'll rest like that a while,” she said. “It's important that the umbilical's intact because it's still bringing blood into the foal. When the mare stands up, the umbilical will break and it will be over. We'll have had a successful birth.”

But when Stranahan climbed back up the ladder, it was neither over nor was it beginning. The sensation of standing without being
connected to earth, and which was not a function of the ladder but of his own excitement, that had started when Charles Watt shrugged his shirt off, was unchanged. It remained unchanged even after the foal staggered to its knees, lurched, and crumpled back to the ground. It was only after Watt had painted the raw navel of the foal in an iodine solution and put his shirt back on, covering up the tattoo of a face on his upper right arm, that Sean felt the swimming sensation in his veins abate and his body settle slowly to earth.

T
he trainer was cordial enough after the birth. Stranahan trailed him as he walked with the veterinarian the length of the stables. Watt said, “Phew,” doffing his railroader's cap and wiping it over his brow, shook hands with the older man, whose crow's feet made a pattern like a river delta at each temple, and then, after the vet had driven away, offered Stranahan a smile and a wink.

“Anytime you have to go mouth to nose, it makes the ticker skip a beat,” he said, patting his pocket for a cigarette. He lit the cigarette, his cupped hand shaking as he held the match, and dragged deeply.

“What happens now?”

“When the colt stands up, Etta will guide him to the teat. Me, I'm going to hit the hay. I've been in that stall all day and half of last night, ever since Trudy's nipples waxed up.” He flicked the ash of his cigarette. “I heard about that mountain man fella. Wouldn't want to be in his position, no sir.” He drew on the cigarette and the smoke snaked out of his mouth with a hissing sound. “No, I would not want to be that man in this valley. That was a beloved young woman.”

He faced away from Stranahan as he spoke, and Sean didn't know what to make of it. Was he trying to deflect attention from himself? But then why would he think he needed to? He was difficult to read.

The tattoo wasn't. That the inked face on Charles Watt's arm was the same tattoo he'd seen on the masked man in the Mile and a Half High Club video, he had no doubt. Not because of its detail. The image in the video had been too blurred to identify, and in the birthing stall he'd been too far away for Sean to identify his tattoo as a match,
even if the resolution had been sharp. But it was a similar size and in the same location as that tattoo, and the skunk stripe of chest hair was all Sean needed for confirmation. To this point the coincidence of Cinderella's death occurring in the cabin where members of a sex club held their lurid “assignations” was just that, a coincidence. Strange but true, but then that was life. And Charles Watt being a member of the Mile and a Half High Club? It really wasn't any stranger than anyone else being in the club.

No, what had raised the hair on Sean's forearms was the tattoo. Even from ten feet away, it was clear to Sean that the face was that of a clown. A painted face with sad fat lips and carroty patches of hair. There had been letters inked in a banner underneath the face, perhaps a name, though the script was too small to read from Sean's vantage on the ladder.

THE CLOWNS ARE HERE

Sean said the words to himself, the words that had been scrawled in dying ink on the open page of the guestbook at the cabin. Cinderella's words, as he had assumed when he'd shown the page to Martha.

THE CLOWNS ARE HERE

Had she meant Charles Watt? And if so, who else? He decided to take a shot in the dark.

“We'll have the paternity test back in a couple days. If it turns out the mountain man didn't get Cinderella pregnant, the focus will shift to finding who did.”

The information about Cinderella's pregnancy had not been made public, and Stranahan watched as Watt brought the cigarette to his lips. The hand was steady enough but his lips tremored. Watt spat the cigarette and ground it out with his heel.

“I didn't think that whippersnapper had it in him,” he said under his breath.

“If you're speaking of Anker, he didn't. His sister provided DNA for a paternity test. It wasn't him.”

“Then I'm afraid I can't help you.” When he spoke again his voice had lost its drawl. “That girl wasn't herself since Casper. She had a scratch to itch she might have itched it with anyone swung a dick. I'd be looking at her schoolmates, that rodeo crowd she hung with. I'm sure Etta could draw you a list.”

“That's an idea. I'll do that.”

“So correct me if I'm wrong, but if it isn't this McKutchen fella and you come up with someone you suspect, you can't just ask him to spit in a cup, or can you?”

“You can ask anything you want, but no, you can't force him to provide a sample unless there's corroborating evidence. Then you can get a court order.” Stranahan was talking off the top of his head. He had no idea if you could obtain a court order for genetic testing without first making an arrest. “But if someone says no,” he continued, “that's as good as an admission of guilt. The next step is to try to tie that person to Cinderella or to the location of her death. If the sex wasn't consensual, it's reasonable to assume that Cinderella was running from the responsible party. That's the sheriff's thinking and I agree. If that led to her getting stuck in the chimney, even though months passed between the two events, then there could be serious charges.”

Watt's eyes had become remote. “Mebbe she knew she was knocked up and didn't want to face the music. That's why she skedaddled.” Again he patted at his shirt pocket, but it was a nervous gesture and he wasn't reaching for a cigarette.

Stranahan let the moment stretch, watched the man not meet his eyes. “Cinderella kept a journal,” he said. “It wasn't on her when she died. We're going to go back up tomorrow and look through the cabin for it, and who knows what we'll find. Did you ever see her writing, maybe when she was in Snapdragon's stall?”

“No, I can't say I did.”

Stranahan handed Watt one of his cards. “Call if you remember anything that could help.”

Watt accepted the card without comment.

“Thanks for your time,” Sean said. “It was fascinating, watching that colt be born.”

Watt nodded. “That was an easy one, you don't mind blowing the snot out of a horse's nose.”

They had shaken hands and Sean, having put the worm on the hook as he would tell Ettinger an hour and a half later, turned away, feeling the whisperer's eyes on his back. It took him twenty minutes to drive into Wilsall and pick up a bar of reception to leave Martha a message. It took another twenty before she returned his call and a few more to sketch in his suspicions. The sun was two fingers from the horizon when she drove to the rendezvous point at the Shields River bridge, a grudging smile on her lips as Sean's sheltie bounded to greet her, the shadow of its tail slicing like a scythe through the gold of the grasses.

“Why the suspense?” she said.

“Because if I tried to explain it over the phone, you'd just raise your eyebrows like you are now.”

“I drove my truck. I brought my gun case. I've got the geocache like you said. Talk.”

She stood with her hips cocked, sliding her lips over each other as he related the events of the past couple hours. When he wound down, she brought out her ChapStick. “Goddamned dry air,” she said. “You'd think I've been necking with my paramour, and the only loving I get is from a dog.” She gave Stranahan a reproving look. Making light to ease the discomfort.

“You didn't get the DNA workup on McKutchen yet, did you?”

She shook her head. “Wilkerson says tonight, tomorrow for sure—that's if it's not a match. If the graphs show similarities, it will require more tests to confirm. So what makes you sure Charles Watt fathered the child?”

“I'm not. But he was alone with her in the stables on a regular basis. He was in a sex club whose members met in the cabin where she died.
‘THE CLOWNS ARE HERE.'
It seems pretty likely to me that he's the clown, one of them. Did you find that pen to see if her fingerprints are on it?”

“No pen. And we checked Watt out last fall. He has an arrest record for assault, but that was in his rodeo days. No marks on his permanent record, certainly no sexual offenses.”

“Even so. If he goes back up there, he's trying to cover something up. You can catch him in the act.”

“Of what, crossing a Caution ribbon?”

“Removing evidence from the scene of a suspicious death. I figure the least he'll do is take the camera card in the geocache. As far as he knows, he and the woman he was with were the last couple from the club to have been there.”

“But we took the card.”

“He won't know that. I have one just like it in my camera.”

“That's entrapment.”

“All I told him was I was going back to the cabin to look for Cinderella's diary. It's the truth.”

“Are you going to tell me your plan, or do I have to guess?”

 • • • 

B
y nightfall the pieces were in place. Ettinger's unmarked truck was parked at the access a hundred yards from the forest cabin. Her unzipped gun case was in plain sight on the passenger seat. The note on the windshield was penned in felt marker.

To Whom It Concerns
(that means you, Jen),

I'm backpacked up the South Fork, back on Saturday. If not, then I have a bear down and will be packing hide and meat.
DO NOT
call Search and Rescue like you did last time!

Love, Dan

The note had been Ettinger's contribution. It was just quirky enough to read true and ought to satisfy Watt if he was alarmed to find a truck at the trailhead. The empty gun case added authenticity as well.

They had mulled over the idea of removing the combination lock to the cabin door, finally deciding that it would be more damning if Watt broke in through a window. Watt had been exhausted after staying up with the mare and Sean thought it likely he would do as he'd said he'd do, drive home to his place first to get a few hours' sleep. But there was also the possibility that he would be too anxious to sleep. In the one case, their wait would be long, in the other, short. But if he was coming at all it would have to be tonight, under the cover of darkness. He couldn't take the chance that Sean would search the cabin when it grew light.

“We should have picked up a pizza,” Sean said. He hugged the arms of his heavy wool shirt.

“We should have our heads examined, is what we should do.” Martha had brought a horse blanket and spread it over their thighs. She nudged her shoulder against Sean for the extra warmth and then seemed to think better of it, patting the blanket for the dog to lie down between them.

From the forest's edge they had a clear view of the cabin, the pond below it mirroring the clouds and the sweep of escarpment falling away toward the blacktop of the Shields River Road. Ettinger offered Stranahan a piece of gum and they chewed in silence. Sean watched a crow with a stick in its beak fly to the roof of the cabin. It disappeared with the stick into the flue. A moment later a flock of crows alighted on the gnarled branches of an aspen snag, jockeying for position amid a flurry of curses. Their hierarchy sorted, the crows brooded silently, as black as ebony statuettes. Sean glanced at Martha, who raised her eyes. Then, as if by common consent, the crows took wing, the one that had disappeared in the chimney cawing after them, taking the day with them, leaving only the funereal smear of the twilight.

“In England they call it a murder of crows,” Martha said.

“Do you figure that's the same crow that pecked out her eyes?”

Martha chewed. “When I interviewed the guy who found the body, your buddy Smither, or Gallagher, or whoever he is, he told me this counting crows rhyme. I hadn't cleared him at that point, so I looked it up to see if he was messing with me. It's Old English, goes, give me a second.” She spit her gum into a tissue and folded it into her pocket. “‘One crow sorrow, two crows mirth, three crows a wedding, four crows a birth. Five crows silver, six crows gold, seven crows a secret never to be told.' How many crows did you count?”

“I didn't.”

“There were six in the tree, the one in the chimney makes seven. That's what I'm afraid this is”—she waved her hand—“this poor girl's tragedy. It's a story that will never be told.”

Another piece of gum and an hour later, any pretense of physical autonomy had dissolved. Stranahan had his arm around Martha's shoulder and Martha's head was buried against his neck. Sean remembered the first time they had become entwined to keep from shivering. It had been during a manhunt in the Madison Range, a hundred or more miles to the south.

“Remember when we sat under a tree like this, up Beaver Creek?”

“I remember.”

“That's the first time I wanted to kiss you.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No. I'm telling the truth. Makes me want to kiss you right now.”

“Be serious.”

“We could make out. Stay warm and help pass the time.”

“Forty-year-old women don't make out. And you're involved with that one-armed truck salesman anyway, aren't you?”

“If you mean Etta Huntington, not really.”

“What kind of answer is that?”

“The only one you're going to get. You left me, it wasn't the other way around, if you remember.”

“Yes, I did.”

She sighed, her shoulders slumping as Stranahan worked his fingers into the muscles at the back of her neck.

“Come on, one for old time's sake.”

“No.” But she was looking at him, their faces a foot apart.

He lifted her chin and she turned her head away.

“All right, just one.”

“You can do better than that.”

She did, her lips warm and her mouth tasting of mint, then abruptly broke it off.

“This is not happening. It's ridiculous. I'm the sheriff of Hyalite County.”

“Hold that thought, Martha. We have company.”

The headlights that had veered from the river road swept rows of wheat, then ghost snarls of sage as the access road dipped and rose. Where the road turned along the foot of a hill, the cones disappeared and only a milky haze betrayed the rig's progress. Sean felt Martha's hand tighten on his arm.

The truck—they could identify its silhouette when it appeared beside the pond—ground in a lower gear. It drew alongside Ettinger's T100 and stopped, the motor idling. A figure stepped out. In the lens of Stranahan's binoculars, the figure was discernibly that of a man wearing a Kromer-style cap, tall or perhaps only angular and spare. The man was holding a flashlight and moved to Ettinger's truck, shining the beam.