Crazy Mountain Kiss (3 page)

K
ey West, Florida, is the end of the road in the way that the darkest bar is the end of the day. It's a place where shattered lives exhaust their final hours, where fortune-tellers manufacture hope for the hopeless for a ten-dollar bill, where men who can't recall when it all went wrong lean in 2 a.m. shadows among six-toed cats that are scarcely more than shadows themselves.

In Key West, people who would pause to consider if they were farther up U.S. 1, or farther up the ladder, don't. And those who don't smoke might just light one up.

When Sean Stranahan hopped onto his bicycle at five in the morning, the town was at slack tide, the only sound the hiss of the tires. A liquid trail of Spanish beckoned him toward the deli at the M&M Laundry, where he stopped for Cuban mix sandwiches to go and a shot of sweetened espresso.

“If you need sandwiches tomorrow morning,” the counter man said, “try the
Ernesto
.” He jabbed his chin toward a feral rooster pecking up scraps behind the kitchen. “It will be tough, but good.”

Ten minutes later he was at the dock, Sam Meslik waiting for him, fistfuls of fly rods bending over the pulsing jellyfish that floated in the oil-slicked water. The big man racked the rods under the boat's gunwales and they were idling past the sign for the Harbor Lights Restaurant—
ENTERTAINMENT, ROMANCE AND LIVE
BAIT
—then the skiff was up on a plane, shearing the moonstone surface.

Ten minutes later, Sam cut the motor inside a necklace of mangrove islands and Stranahan stepped onto the bow, feeling the way a
fighter feels when he dances into the ring to face a better man. Tarpon fishing had proved to be the most masochistic experience Sean had ever had holding a fly rod, not because tarpon were so difficult to catch, but because after the first few jumps it was just your muscles against theirs, and then after a half hour or so it was your heart against theirs and a sober question as to whose would give out first. Men paid $650 a day for the pleasure.

Sixty feet away, the reptilian-looking back of a tarpon arched out of the water as the fish gulped air into its rudimentary lungs, its scales reflecting the fire of the sunrise. Stranahan pulled the fly once, he pulled it again . . . the line stopped. There was a point early on when he was looking up at five feet of fish coming down, and another, seemingly moments later, when the tarpon was so far away that, jumping, it looked like a tangerine minnow imprinted against the mangroves.

“Tell me that wasn't more fun than eating a ham sandwich,” Sam said a half hour later, when the tarpon wrenched its head to spit out the fly. He smiled, showing the grooves in his front teeth.

Stranahan rubbed the muscles where the rod's fighting butt had ground into his gut. He'd wear the bruise as a badge of honor. But that first cast was the extent of his luck; after that it was just one mistake following another.

“The tarpon doesn't eat from that end,” Sam said, when Stranahan cast behind a cruising fish. “Not that left, your other left,” he'd said, when he tried to point out a fish at ten o'clock and Stranahan faced the wrong way. When Sean finally got another of the beasts to eat the fly, he forgot to bow to create slack line when the fish jumped. The leader snapped with the tarpon in midair, its gill rakers rattling like a diamondback rattlesnake. “You set that hook like you were in diapers,” Sam said.

At midmorning they anchored off Sawyer Key to wait out a tide change. “You're getting better with your insults,” Sean said, removing his sandwich from its tinfoil wrapper.

“Thank you,” Sam said. “I'm thinking about putting a shock collar on my clients, give 'em a zap when they make a bad cast. Say twenty
volts casting too short, fifty if they line one and it spooks. Anybody forgets to bow when the fish jumps, I juice him to his knees.”

“That will get you bookings.”

“They'll be lining up.” Sam shook his mane of graying copper hair. “These guys are all type A's, they've been ‘yes sir'ed all their life and they're tired of it. They want to be cuffed and spanked. 'Course what they really need is a dominatrix with a whip. A flats guide with a badass tongue is the next best thing.”

“Sam, you're full of shit.” Stranahan looked off toward the Gulf, marveling at the palette of colors as the depths changed—white grading to tan over the flats, a rind of lemon beyond, then one of lemon-lime, and cutting through the flat, a zigzag channel of deepest emerald.

The phone vibrated in his pocket.

“Don't you dare answer that fucking thing,” Sam said.

Stranahan flipped the phone open and listened. “I wouldn't call us friends,” he said. And after a minute: “No, I can't see that. He used to do a little blow . . . okay, maybe more. Max had this thing about writing on the level, balancing uppers and downers . . . I fly out tomorrow, I thought you knew.”

Sam extended a tube of sunscreen. Stranahan clamped the phone to his ear with his shoulder and rubbed the cream onto his nose. “If you can't pull her up, maybe you can push her down into the fireplace . . . I know that could make things worse, but you asked . . . You, too. Bye.”

“That was—”

Sam made a cross of his forefingers, as if to ward off a vampire. “I know who it was. She who must not be named. Not on my boat.”

Stranahan told him about the body in the chimney as Sam shook his head. “I don't know Jon all that well, I didn't even know he changed his name to Max, but I feel for him. Be hell to get an image like that out of your head.”

Stranahan removed the push pole from its chocks and stepped up onto the poling platform over the transom. “Your turn. I'll see if I can come up with some creative insults.”

“That be Sam's pleasure,” Sam said. He reached for the fly rod.

E
ttinger parked behind Harold Little Feather's truck at the road end and unscrewed her thermos cap. She looked back down the valley, her eyes following the switchbacks to the bridge across the river. The Shields was smothered in mist. Beyond it, low cloud cover lopped the top off Sacagawea Peak. A phrase came to her lips. “Into the gloaming.” Who had said that? Tennyson? Robert Burns? Someone from somewhere that saw a lot of rain. She sipped the coffee.

“Martha, my dear.”

Harold's voice came from the depths of his sleeping bag, which was spread across the bed of his pickup and carried a sparkle of frost.

“Thrange thing happened lass nigh.”

“Unzip so I can hear what you're saying,” Martha said.

Harold's head squirmed halfway out of the sleeping bag. “A woman tells me to unzip . . . ouch.”

“What's wrong?”

“Got my braid caught in the zipper.”

“Here, let me.” Martha set her coffee on the hood of the Jeep and climbed into the pickup bed. She frowned at the coarse black hair peeking out of the zipper threads. “I'm going to have to cut it. Goddamn it, stay still.” She wielded the scissors of her Swiss Army knife. “You move, I'll cut out your heart instead of your hair.”

“You already did that once,” came the muffled voice.

“Yeah, tell yourself that. There, I think I got it.” She forced the zipper down and Harold's head reemerged. He shook out his hair and saw her looking at him. “What?”

Martha shook her head. “Never mind.” She
had
cut his heart out once, at the same time he'd cut out hers and claimed it for his own. Then he'd taken back up with his ex-wife, who lived on the Blackfeet Reservation, and at some point Martha had given up waiting for it to fail. Two office romances, if you counted Stranahan, who had contracted for the county as an independent investigator on several occasions. It was strict violation of her own policy. But where else was she going to meet anyone?

She sat back and hugged her knees. “As you were saying,” she said.

Harold struggled into a sitting position. “Had a visitor last night,” he said. “Mr. Gallagher drove in, 'bout four in the morning. Seemed a little taken aback to find me blocking the road.”

“What did he want?”

“Said he forgot his computer. Wanted to hike in and get it because he could plug it in at Meslik's place.”

“So much for magic.”

Harold raised his eyebrows.

“Something he said about working on a manual typewriter. I'm just talking to myself.”

“You shouldn't do that, Martha. It's a bad habit.”

“So I've been informed. What did you tell him?”

“I told him to come back this morning. If he was looking to take anything away from the cabin, it's still in there.”

“Good. I got the impression he was hiding something. All that antebellum charm, he doesn't fool me.”

“Well.” Harold was examining the damage done by Ettinger's scissors. “The man hadn't slept in two days, so sure as hell something was bothering him to come all the way back here.”

Martha nodded. “I just got off the phone with Stranahan down in Florida. He said Gallagher powders his nose. Maybe he left some blow in the cabin.”

“That would be an illegal search, Martha.”

“I don't think so. But he can put a Canada goose up his nose for all I care. I'm wondering if there's something else he left behind, something that could tie him to the girl.”

“You're really thinking along those lines?”

“No. But he's the only person of interest we have.”

“So how's the morning shape up?”

“Kent's driving in. He's going to chain up and bust through the ruts, so we can caravan to the cabin. Walt's coming, so is Wilkerson; that way we cover our asses. This looks like an accident, but if it turns out the victim died somewhere else and was placed in the chimney, I want Gigi to conduct the evidence search before the place gets mucked up. Then, by God, we're going to get that poor girl out. I don't want to bust up the stonework, but if that's what it takes . . .”

“Any fairy dust?”

“Don't go Walt on me today, not even a little bit.” She blew a strand of hair out of her eye and felt the cold of the metal pickup bed working into her bottom. Far below, they could hear Jason Kent's four-by-four diesel grinding in third.

“This place gives me the willies, Harold.”

“You mean the legend of the crazy woman.”

“No, I think that's a myth. I don't mean it couldn't happen. Indians pincushioned their share of settlers, I just doubt that a woman whose husband and children were slain by the Blackfeet would go on living here by herself, or they would let her. Never mind that her spirit would haunt the place ever since.”

“Glad you're on our side.”

“No, it's these mountains. You go to other ranges, the Madison, the Absaroka, they have a soft side, meadows, flowers, they show you their beauty. You can feel the breeze, hear them breathe. But the Crazies are just a jumble of peaks. They're nothing but hard edges and cold winds. There's a remoteness factor, a godlessness. You aren't welcome here. You can feel it.”

“Rock has no heart.”

“Is that what your people say?”

“No, but aren't you the poet this morning?”

Martha shook her head. It wasn't like her to show a feminine side, to shed the insulation that hid her from the male half of the world.

“This one bothers me,” she said quietly. “Whether she's the Huntington girl or isn't, she was somebody's daughter. I woke up last night thinking about that crow mincing down the chimney and cocking his eye, wanting dibs. What must go through a person's mind at a time like that?”

“Nature might have given her a little mercy there, Martha. You figure she'd have been hypothermic in a few hours. You get dreamy. They say it isn't a bad way to go.”

“I hope you're right. Here's Jase.”

 • • • 

M
ontana was a country of three-fingered men. It was hard to find a bar where at least one of the regulars didn't shoot pool off a bridge made of knuckle stumps, and the sheriff's department's contribution to the count was Jason Kent. Kent powered down the driver's side window of his truck. He draped his big left arm out the window and drummed his pinkie, ring finger, and thumb on the door panel. The middle and first fingers he'd lost in a farm machinery accident and kept in spirits in a Mason jar in his bathroom. In the passenger seat, huddled in a puff jacket that made her look like a hand grenade, sat Georgeanne Wilkerson. She was eating a carrot.

“What's up, doc?” she said brightly.

“Good morning, Gigi,” Ettinger said.

Kent slowly nodded, moving his eyes from Martha to Harold. “You think you can move that truck for me, chief? Or are we on Indian time today?”

“No, I'll move it. I know white men can't walk.”

Martha looked from one to the other. Kent was a “just the facts, ma'am” man, as deliberate in his manner as a mudslide. Here he was trading insults with Harold at seven in the morning, an hour when Martha had scarcely ever merited more than a grunt out of him.

“You're getting to be downright garrulous in your middle age,” Martha said.

Kent seemed to think about it. “Just naturally talkative, I suppose. Now, who wants to lie down on the snow and help with these chains?”

 • • • 

H
arold's perimeter search was perfunctory. It had snowed and melted several times in the past couple weeks and any tracks the girl had made were long obliterated. What first caught his eye was a tag of animal skin sticking above the snow under the eave of the cabin's west wall. Upon excavation this proved to be an elkskin jacket that fastened with bits of bone. The jacket was stained to a dark color and had been crudely hand-sewn. Harold knocked the ice and snow off it and brought it under the porch. He continued his search, finding a link of chain that was attached to a metal contraption. He frowned, then, realizing it was a chimney cap, uttered a low whistle that brought Ettinger to his side. The cap was not a simple cover to keep rain out, but part of a top-mounted damper system that fitted flush with the chimney opening. The assembly was old and warped, the screws that had attached it rusted through, the gasket rotted away, but the link chain that dropped down the chimney so the occupant could open or close the damper was still attached. Harold thought it was possible that the girl had been strong enough to have pried the assembly off the chimney before climbing in. It threw a little water on Martha's suspicion that the victim didn't understand chimneys and might be from somewhere south, and he said so.

“If she had a flashlight, once she removed the damper she'd have seen it was a straight shot down into the firebox. She took off the jacket so she could fit. Maybe we need to give her more credit.”

“But she still managed to get herself stuck, didn't she?” Ettinger said.

Harold canted his head.

“You don't think so?”

“Just reserving judgment, like I was taught.”

Ettinger left Harold reserving his judgment and turned her attention to the cabin. Briefly she looked for the computer, but that was a waste of time. Gallagher had been lying, she was sure of that much. She noted that the floor had been swept by the last renter, the comb marks of the straw broom a pattern of whorls in the corners. She sat down at the table and began to leaf through the guest logbook, occasionally glancing at Wilkerson, who wore knee pads as she collected fiber and hair evidence.

“A lot of traffic,” Martha offered.

“I've got hair samples from at least a dozen individuals. Mostly Caucasian, a few strands of Latino or Native American. By the way, the Santa hat you bagged had samples from two people on it. Without doing the lab work I can tell you one is dark blonde, which Harold says is the color of the victim's hair, but there's also some curly hairs in a much darker brown. A lot of dogs have been in and out. Malamutes, huskies, longhair dogs. You'd think people came in here with sled teams.”

“At least one party did,” Martha said. “Here, look at this entry.” She pushed over the log. The entry was dated January 3.

Wilkerson read aloud, “Something was prowling around last night. The sled dogs set up a racket and Bill had to go out and calm them down, especially Molly. We found tracks this morning that were three lengths of a dollar bill. Bigfoot?”

The entry was signed, “Yikes! Carolyn.”

 • • • 

T
he electric line camera Harold lowered into the flue was scarcely bigger than a fountain pen. It offered a low-lux color recording that Ettinger, Wilkerson, and Jason Kent could view on the screen of Ettinger's battery-powered laptop. As well as manual focus and zoom, the camera had remote-control pan and tilt, and it quickly became apparent how the girl had become fixed. It was not, as Ettinger had surmised, because the flue grew progressively smaller, but because she had brought one knee up to her chest, after which she could
neither descend nor climb without dislocating her hip and was effectively trapped.

“Wouldn't that be more likely to happen if she was climbing up, not going down?” Ettinger's question was to the room.

Wilkerson nodded. “It could happen either direction. It's the kind of mistake you'd make if you were trying to hurry. Looks like somebody's going to have to go spelunking.”

Martha raised her eyes.

“We have to check the upper part of the flue before we pull her out. If we pull her up first, then the flue will be contaminated by fibers scraped off her clothes. The only way we'll know that she got stuck in the process of going down is by finding fibers scraped off on the descent.” Wilkerson held up a bag containing a clear plastic jumpsuit. “That's why I brought a condom. Do I go, or does anyone want to volunteer?”

It was a facetious remark. Wilkerson was the only one who would have any shot of descending the chimney, or, having done so, know what to look for. Ettinger was a strong, solid woman who stood eye to eye with many men. Walt was her size, add an inch. Harold was six foot two or more, and Kent, in his birthday suit, had to weigh 240 pounds.

“I'd volunteer,” Walt said, “but my package would get stuck. That's luck for the ladies, but the downside of an endeavor like this one.”

Everybody laughed, even Martha. “You wish, Walt.” She cocked a finger at Wilkerson. “If you get stuck . . .”

“I won't. I brought my Under Armours, just in case.”

Under Armour was compression underwear, and Wilkerson, dressed head to toe in stretch polyester with the plastic jumpsuit fitted over it, a neoprene cap to cover her hair, a face mask, safety goggles with a magnifying bifocal, and a headlamp clamped to her forehead, looked like a deep-sea diver as she climbed the ladder a half hour later. Martha had to hand it her. She wouldn't have gone headfirst down that chimney for anything. The thought of coming face-to-face with a face with no eyes made her shiver.

“This is like something you'd see at a Salem witch trial,” she muttered, standing at the base of the ladder beside Kent, as Walt and Harold stood on opposite sides of the chimney, holding Wilkerson by her feet as they lowered her into the opening.

Half an hour after her head disappeared down the flue, Martha heard Walt say that he could see her toes wiggling. It was the signal that she wanted out.

A tense minute later, at least for Ettinger, who had a bad habit of envisioning the next day's headlines—“
Crime Investigator Suffocates in Chimney, Hyalite County Sheriff Mum”—
they'd hauled Wilkerson up and she was sitting on the roof ridge. When she regained equilibrium, she rather shakily descended the ladder and took off her cap.