Crazy Mountain Kiss (6 page)

B
y the time Ettinger reunited Stranahan with his dog and dropped them at the tipi, the evening had all but died. He checked the fluid levels in his '76 Land Cruiser, made a note to change the oil, and settled behind the wheel as the engine thundered out of a monthlong slumber. He motored into town to check the mail that had been held for him at the Bridger Mountain Cultural Center, mulling over Martha's advice to get in touch with Max Gallagher. The truth was, buying a tank of gas to drive up the Madison Valley didn't appeal to him. Still, it was the logical step and he thought about it for the twenty minutes it took to drive into town and climb the stairs to his art studio. Gallagher, standing outside the studio door, saved him the decision.

“Blue Ribbon Watercolors. Private Investigations.” Gallagher read aloud the lettering etched into the frosted glass. “All you need is somebody to scratch in a pistol with smoke curling out the barrel.”

Stranahan ushered him inside. “You need a bath, Max,” he said.

“I haven't exactly been sleeping. Or eating. Or washing up.”

Stranahan waited while Gallagher's bloodshot eyes crawled around the paintings on the walls. When they stopped and narrowed, Stranahan knew that he'd noticed the watercolor of the Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers Club. It was evening in the painting, the co-owners gearing up on the porch as a swarm of caddis flies mobbed the light over the door. Gallagher was flanked by Robin Hurt Cowdry, who was stringing his fly rod, and by Kenneth Winston, whose long ebony fingers were tying on a fly. Patrick Willoughby, the club
president, sat on the bench pulling up his waders, his round glasses giving him the look of a professorial owl. The initials P.S. were carved into the door, as homage to Polly Sorenson, the club's founder who had died on the bank of one of his beloved Catskill streams a couple years before.

“Don't tell anybody yet,” Stranahan said. “It's a gift to the club for voting me an honorary member.”

“Maybe if I had your talent I wouldn't have to pay my dues, either,” Gallagher said. “I've been a little strapped lately.”

“So the sheriff informed me.”

Gallagher nodded. “Does she really think I had anything to do with that girl dying in the chimney? I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of, but the only person I ever hurt was myself.”

“Would your exes agree to that assessment?”

“Well, those two witches aside.” He grinned, the canine leer Stranahan remembered from the day he'd introduced Martinique to the club members, some two summers ago. Gallagher had bent to kiss her hand, making a
titching
sound, as if he wanted to devour her arm with a side of fava beans. Martinique had told Sean it made her think of the quote by Lana Turner—“A gentleman is simply a patient wolf.”

Martinique.
That sweet, unaccountably shy woman with a soft spot for cats had become the love of his life, long before he'd ever worked a jigsaw puzzle with Martha Ettinger. No one could have told him that the relationship would falter after Martinique had been accepted into the veterinary medicine program at Oregon State in Corvallis, that she would gradually pull away, his phone calls going straight to message.

“I seem to have caught you at a bad time.”

Sean swam out of his reverie. “No, I've just got jet lag. Why are you here, Max?”

“There may have been something I didn't think to tell the sheriff. I'd like to ask your advice.”

“In a professional capacity, or as a friend?”

“I can't afford to pay you.”

Sean reached for the lower right-hand drawer of his desk, brought out the fifth of The Famous Grouse, and poured shots into two cups. He brought out the nose with a few drops of tap water. “It isn't branch water from your creek,” he said, “but I doubt you'll object.”

Gallagher didn't.

Stranahan said, “I heard you tried to go back to the cabin in the middle of the night. Why don't we start with what you were looking for. It certainly wasn't your computer.”

“Oh, that. I thought I'd left some blow in the drawer of the table. But it was in my duffel, stuffed in a sock. I'd forgotten.” He dismissed the matter with a flick of his hand. “You could say I was understandably confused.”

“So, false alarm.”

He nodded. “Scared the shit out of me at the time, though.”

Stranahan smiled unsympathetically.

“It's just a damned coincidence, the girl dying like that.”

“How's that?”

“Do you have time for a story about how bad a man can fuck himself?”

“It's what pays the rent.”

“Good line. Don't sue me if I steal it.”

“I won't.”

“Okay. You know I used to be a reporter? Well, it's been back a few years, but I wrote a story about a professor at UC Santa Cruz who tried to break into her former lover's house. He had a restraining order against her and she wanted to confront him about why he'd left. So guess what she did?”

“She crawled down his chimney.”

“How did you know that?”

“Why else would you be telling me?”

“Yeah, okay. Well, it gets better, I mean worse. The boyfriend was part of a farming co-op and had signed up to harvest artichokes in Castroville, see what it's like to fill immigrant shoes. When he returned home two days later, the ex was dripping body fluids into the
fireplace. They had to jackhammer a hole in the chimney to get her out.”

“Did she live?”

“She not only lived. She married him.”

“True love,” Stranahan suggested.

“True story. So you see my predicament? I had knowledge of a particularly unusual circumstance, and now the same scenario is repeated. It stinks of coincidence, or I guess the opposite.”

“Every newspaper in the state must have carried that story.”

“Well, yes, but that isn't the end of it. My last relationship was a literature professor at San Jose State. Barbara Louganis. The night she broke up with me—mind you I'd told her that story—I said she was going to change her mind and come back to me. She said, ‘Like hell I will,' and then she started throwing books. My books. I have all the editions in this wall case and she was picking them out and throwing them at me one after another. I sort of tackled her to get her to stop and she called the police. We were standing at crossed swords when they arrived.

“And”—he laughed mirthlessly—“this you gotta love. I told her I wouldn't take her back even if she wrapped herself in cellophane and came down the chimney with a red ribbon around her neck. I told her that
in front of officers of the law
. When I saw the Santa hat and climbed up on the roof, guess what was crawling around the back of my mind? I mean, Barbara's certifiable. For all I know she followed me here and that was her in the chimney.”

Gallagher had elbowed forward on the desk as he talked, his whiskey breath heavy in Stranahan's nostrils. “Now is that fucking yourself, or is that fucking yourself?” He nodded, looking straight into Sean's eyes. Then he sat back in his chair.

Sean shook his head. “The body in the chimney's a teenage girl who went missing last fall. How old is Barbara Louganis?”

“Barbara's thirty-five, but she looks younger. That thing I was looking at in the chimney had a round face. Barbara has a round face. I don't know how the hell she could have followed me out here, I
didn't know I was coming myself until I did. But it scares the hell out of me.”

“The CSI says the person in the chimney was dead two or three weeks, so that scenario is impossible.”

Gallagher shook his head. “They could say I was here earlier and came back just to report the body, to remove myself from the suspect pool. I work alone, I live alone. It's not like I have a fucking alibi for every night in April. There'd be gaps in credit card records, phone—”

Stranahan held up a hand. “I can think of about ten reasons it can't be your girlfriend, starting with how she could get here. But I'll tell you what I'll do. If this doesn't turn out to be the person we think it is, I'll make some calls.” He tore a Post-it note, scribbled a few lines, and pushed it over. “These are directions to Law and Justice. The sheriff's at the morgue, so ask to see Warren Jarrett. Tell him what you told me. He'll make you squirm, but it's better to do this now rather than wait and have it come out. Besides, if you don't, I will.”

“I talked to you in confidence, Sean. Isn't that what private investigator means, your communication is private?”

Stranahan shook his head. “You ought to know better. In criminal matters, I turn over any pertinent information I get to the authorities. I'm just on someone else's payroll.”

“Is this a criminal matter?”

“Not yet. Think of it this way. Even if it was this woman, as long as she died of exposure, she's just a crazy person lusting after her former lover. It would be one hell of a story and you'd get burned as a contributing cause, but my guess is it would sell books.”

“Any publicity is good publicity?” Gallagher cocked his head. “I suppose you're right about that.”

“Get out of here.”

Sean felt his cell phone vibrating against his thigh. He checked the number. It was none that he knew, but the 578 prefix included the Shields River Valley.

“Hello, this is Sean Stranahan. Could you hold a second?”

He took the phone from his ear and shooed Gallagher out the door. “I'll call Warren and tell him you're coming.”

“Why do I think I'm off to the gallows?” Gallagher said. He smiled, the commas fissuring his stubbled cheeks. He shut the door. Stranahan waited until his footsteps faded on the travertine floor tiles.

“Mr. Stranahan, are you there?” It was a woman's voice, a nervous one.

“Yes, I'm back.”

“This is Etta Huntington. I've just had a call from Dr. Hanson at the coroner's office. That was my daughter who died that horrible way.” The voice broke up and Stranahan could hear her ragged breaths.

“Mrs. Huntington—”

“It's Ms. Huntington.”

“Ms. Huntington, I'm very sorry for your loss. It's a terrible tragedy.”

“Yes, I suppose those are the words people say at a time like this. But they are little consolation, even though I have been preparing for this day for almost five months, or trying to. I felt her spirit for so long and so I thought she was alive, and now I know she really was, all that time she was alive and I was right to hope . . .”

Stranahan could hear her labored breathing.

“Could you drive down to the ranch? I would like to see you before dark, so you get a sense of the place.”

“Did Sheriff Ettinger give you my number?”

“She said you're a man who can get to the bottom of a dark river. I intend to hire you to find out how my daughter ended up in a . . . in that place.” There was a silence, a sound Stranahan took as a swallow and a dull rap like a lowball glass being set down on a tabletop.
Well, I might be drinking too under the circumstances,
he thought.

“You understand that this is an active investigation. You'd be paying me to do a job that people with more resources are doing as we speak. It might be wiser to wait—”

“I have already waited once for authorities to fail Cinderella before taking matters into my own hands. I won't make that mistake again.”

Stranahan told her he could be on the road in an hour. “I might be intruding on your dinner. I wouldn't want to disturb you.”

“Mr. Stranahan, you must not have children. I have not eaten. I don't know when I will ever eat again. I have no appetite for food. Surely you understand that.”

Again he heard the swallowing sound and the click of the imagined glass.

“Ms. Huntington?”

There was no answer. She had hung up.

H
ow are the boys?” The county medical examiner's customary greeting came out as one word, “Howrtheboys?”

“David will be here for four weeks starting Memorial Day.” Martha Ettinger paused a beat. “I can't wait.” She lifted her eyebrows and let them fall.

“Are you being sarcastic, or do I detect a note of apprehension?”

“I'm scared to death. Ever since he went to college I'm down to seeing him three weeks a year, tops. He chose his dad after the divorce, you know that, everybody knows that and it makes people look at me funny, like I must be a cold fish. I can live with looks. What you don't know is David's been having a lot harder time growing up than Derek. I guess because Derek's older and he just came out of the chute sure of himself and rolling with the punches. But David's sensitive. He just hides it well.”

“Like you hide it?”

Martha grunted. She shifted her eyes to the sheet covering the body on the morgue's examination table. “You said you confirmed the ID. Teeth or bone?”

“I got the X-rays from the compound fracture of Cinderella Huntington's forearm and compared it with the ulna of the body.”

“Cause?”

“That's harder to determine. No brain or spinal injury, no sign of aneurism, and no arterial failure or scarring of the heart muscle or lining. Frankly I would be surprised if there was coronary system damage with a person this young. Toxicology was negative. Her body,
under her clothing, was filthy, her palms and the pads of her fingers are cracked and callused to a very unusual degree for anyone but a homeless person. Third degree frostbite on four fingertips of the right hand. And she'd lost three toenails. It's all consistent with a life of exposure, hiking around on rough ground. But that's immaterial with regard to health. The only signs of trauma, beside the dislocation of her hip, which I understand was a result of the extraction, are two pairs of nodules on the vocal cords and an injury to her right foot. The nodules are sometimes called screamer's nodules. No doubt the poor girl hollered her head off.”

“Could she have been moved postmortem?”

“Stuffed down the chimney?” Hanson shook his head. “Livor mortis is as you'd expect in the dependent portion of the body, in her case the feet and right hip. There's no evidence that the body was shifted or that she died anywhere but the chimney.”

“So we're going with exposure?”

Hanson nodded. “Hypothermia. The time of death is mid-April, give or take a week. During that period average nighttime lows were right at the freezing mark. They dipped as low as the upper teens. This is at the nearest weather collecting station with similar elevation. So we're guessing a corresponding temperature curve, but the bottom line is it was cold. All she had on were jeans and a polyester pullover and maybe that Santa hat. Even with the highest temperatures of the period, we're looking at death within twenty-four hours. She may have survived a day but probably not a night. I made the call to the family an hour ago. Her mother had heard about the crows, so I took the liberty of assuring her that in all probability her daughter had died before that happened. I hope I didn't overstep my authority.”

“No, that's fine. You said something about her foot.”

Hanson led Ettinger to the table. The antiseptic odor was very strong, but not strong enough. He pulled back the sheet covering the victim's feet.

“Note the pooling of blood during her time of suspension.” He lifted the curled toes and pointed with a steel probe to a circular
puncture wound under the right arch. A starburst of angry red lines radiated from the wound. “The puncture extends to the distal area. It stops just under the skin, you can see the contusion. The infection is in an early stage. That suggests the wound occurred in the same time frame as her death.”

“What made it?”

“A corroded iron nail. I can say that with certainty because the last centimeter broke off inside her foot. I extracted it and carried it to the forensics lab, handed it to Wilkerson personally. Isn't it a relief to finally have a facility of our own? It got so tiresome sending everything to the state lab in Missoula, flagging for priority and waiting in the queue. I heard Gigi helped make that happen.”

“She's a wonder.”

“Is that sarcasm I detect?” The furry caterpillars that were the medical examiner's eyebrows flexed half an inch.

Martha ignored the comment. “There's been talk about this girl having a relationship with the young man who disappeared at the same time. Is it possible to determine if she was a virgin?”

Hanson shook his head. “The hymen is far from a perfect indicator of virginity, if that is what you're getting at. But in this case the state of intactness is irrelevant. What you may have mistaken for postmortem bloating—I initially did—was the swelling of a second-trimester pregnancy. The fetus was 13.3 centimeters long. It's hard to close the window on the time of conception because the fetus has lost weight since the mother died and mortality presents other complicating factors.”

Martha felt her gut knot. “How far along?”

“Five months, that's approximate.”

Martha thought back to her own pregnancies. At five months, could she feel the baby kick? Wasn't that about the time it had started?

“So it had hair, teeth?”

“She. It was a girl. The fetus can make faces at that age, even what looks like a smile.”

Martha sought the pulse in her throat, feeling for it with the latex
sheath on her forefinger. It took effort to control her voice. “So that means she got pregnant at the time of her disappearance.”

“Just before or after. If before, the obvious question is did she know. Did she perform a pregnancy test and that's why she decided to run away? Perhaps she felt like she couldn't go to her parents. I know I don't need to tell you this.”

Martha had stared off toward a shuttered window.

“Martha?”

“I heard you, Bob. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Did you inform Loretta Huntington?”

“No. I called to provide cause of death only.”

“This is going to strengthen her belief that it's the young man who worked at the ranch. I'll have to contact his family for a DNA sample to confirm paternity. What's best, a sibling?”

“Or the parents. But she was age of consent at the time of conception. According to the form I was provided, she turned sixteen the previous June. If no crime has been committed, I wouldn't think there would be a legal obligation to comply with your request.”

Martha pressed her lips together. “They'll want to know. I would if it was my son.”

“Yes, you're probably right. We've seen this kind of story before, haven't we? The sexual urge is so strong. I just wish we were better at convincing teenage boys to put a wrapper on it.”

Martha nodded. She noticed that Hanson was tapping the floor, though the paper booties he wore over his sandals smothered the sound.

“How do I put this?” He seemed uneasy. “No, I won't go there.”

“Go where, Bob?”

Hanson turned his eyes from Ettinger to pull the sheet back over the foot. He spoke with his back to her. “It's none of my business, Martha, but what happened with you and Sean?”

“You're right. It isn't any of your business. But I'd appreciate it if you looked at me when you ask about my personal life.”

Hanson looked at her, peering over the top of his glasses.

Martha pressed her lips together. “Are you guessing or is it common knowledge around the department?”

“It's all over town, just as everyone knew about you and Harold breaking up a couple years ago.”

“If you know, why are you asking?”

“Because I care about you. Because . . . oh, I'm just going to say something I'll regret . . .”

Martha saw a slight tremor of the salt-and-pepper mustache.

“It's me. What's this about, Bob?”

He sighed and folded his glasses into the pocket of his lab coat. He motioned with a latex finger for them to walk away from the table. “Do you remember the bucket list I made after my coronary last year?”

“You told me. I was moved. We were all worried about you.”

“Do you remember me mentioning a night I'd like to relive up on Lake Superior?”

“You made love with a young woman.”

“Vicki Pendergrass. Do you know the reason I thought about her?”

“Just tell me, Bob.”

“Well, God knows I love Elizabeth, we'll have been together forty years in August, but people change. We've been living separate lives now for a long time. She has her book group, her knitting circle, all the volunteer work she does for the university's foreign students, and bless her for that, but that's not my world. I have to be outdoors. I have to feel air moving over my skin or I get grumpy and start feeling old.”

“Are you thinking about separating?”

“No, no, we're comfortable, we take care of each other. And there are the kids—even though they're grown it would come as a shock. But, and this is hard to say, in terms of sexual energy we're not on the same page at all. To look at me I'm just an old walrus like everyone says, but I still have a libido, and facing my own mortality made me realize how precious life is, how precious having a full life is in the time I have left. My wife has put all matters of the flesh behind her, it's like her body's gone into hibernation or lost its nerve endings. The
medication she's taking is a good part of it, but knowing why doesn't help. We've moved into separate bedrooms, it's been more than a year. Now when she lets me in the door it's an act of kindness, there's really nothing there but the act and it doesn't even bring us closer, it just makes us aware of the distance we lack the courage to bring up.” He shook his head. “Listen to me go on.”

“You're really broken up about this, aren't you?”

“I just thought . . . oh hell, you're going to slap me or quit talking to me, and that's the last thing I want, and I'm too old for you.” He smiled while shaking his head.

“Are you propositioning me?”

He couldn't meet her eyes. “I've always been attracted to you, Martha. In every way.”

“But we're friends.”

“Are we? I can count the times we've seen each other on social occasions on one hand. All we've ever really shared is a body on an examining table. But I've always felt a connection.”

“I don't know what to say.” Martha shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

“Say you'll think about it. I just want to touch somebody who wants to touch me back. To feel alive that way, even if it's only one time. That's what a bucket list is, whether it's climbing Pilot Peak or the last kiss, you want that shudder in the bloodstream before the hands reach midnight.”

“I don't do things lightly.” Martha heard herself saying the words she'd uttered to Stranahan before she finally relented and unbuckled her gun belt—how long ago had it been, ten months?

“Look where that's got you,” Hanson said. “I sense you're as alone as I am.”

“I . . . I'm just not built for casual sex.”

“Nor am I.”

“Bob, this isn't the time—”

“Of course not. Please forgive me. It's just it's something I've been thinking about.”

“Let's just—”

“Martha, you don't have to say a word. No, really. I'm actually proud of myself for getting it off my chest. Holding things in may have contributed to my heart attack last year.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “So with regard to Cinderella Huntington, I'll have the full report to you tomorrow morning.”

Martha pressed her lips tightly together. “I want to see her.”

Hanson nodded and started walking back toward the examining table.

“No, the fetus.”

“There's nothing to—”

“I have to see it.”

The stainless steel tray on the counter was a cold bed for the question-mark curl of Cinderella's unborn child. For two weeks it had lain in decomposing amniotic fluid and yet its color remained and the expression of the face was calm under the fair, nearly invisible eyebrows. She could see the tiny hands, even the fingernails. Martha's lips moved in unspoken words.

“Did I ever tell you you're a scary woman?”

“Yeah, Bob. Everybody has.” She nodded. “Okay. Now the mother.”

At first Martha avoided the face. Her eyes traveled from the blackened feet to the flaccid belly, the small freckled breasts to either side of the zipper incision, the thin but muscular arms and surprisingly large hands with broken fingernails, where Huntington must have clawed at the walls of the chimney. She looked at the hair, lank and dirty. Finally she looked at the eye sockets. She looked at them, into them, for a long time. She wanted to believe the story of the crow, but she also remembered the opposite coin of the folklore, that sometimes something so bad had happened that the gods could not restore the soul, and the crow would then fly back to earth as an avenging angel.
In that case,
Martha thought,
I'll be the goddamned crow.

“That's long enough.” Doc Hanson put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her aside. He reverently pulled the sheet back over the body.
He turned to Martha with his mustache quivering and they were where they were before.

“Come here, Bob. Come on, we can be adults about this.”

He didn't move, and Martha took a step and hugged him to her.
Why can't someone give him what he needs?
she thought. She couldn't, though, and when she turned to leave she heard the two-step intake of his breath.

“I'll see you around,” she said. The words meant nothing and she instantly regretted them, but there they were, reinforcing the gulf that had spread across the marble floor.