Gray Ghost Murders (9781101606070) (14 page)

Sean found himself leaning forward until the men's faces were no more than a foot apart. The darkness was back in Crawford's face. It was as if he exuded a magnetic force that drew Sean forward.

Crawford rolled the cigar-sized cartridge in his fingers.

“Now you take a Cape buffalo, you wound him, he goes off, he circles back on his trail, he waits, one ton of armor-plated m'bogo. He's sick in his stomach, he has hate in his heart. All his life force is directed at destroying the man with the stick that sounds like thunder. He's twelve feet long and he's black as midnight, but he can hide in the tiniest patch of thornbush. When he comes, he comes with his nose out, the boss of his horns flat, he comes with all the fury and menace in the world. It's true, you got your PH by your side. But believe me, in that moment you find out what you're made of. You've got maybe three seconds to raise your rifle, and if you don't get one into his spine or his brain, he'll knock you flat, he'll hook you in the guts, he'll pound you with the boss of his horns until you're a red smear on the ground. Each year, professional hunters and clients die in buffalo charges. The danger is real. It's a hell of a lot more real than tracking down a man who's holding nothing but a knife.” He rapped the cartridge on the table and set it back upright.

Sean, sipping his Irish coffee, felt his fingers shake on the glass. What had he heard Crawford say? For the past few days, he'd been trying to paint a scenario that ended with two bodies buried on Sphinx Mountain. Could it have been a deadly game, or two of them, with the victor ensconced in his home, sipping whiskey from a square tumbler under the eye of a buffalo? But if it was, if Crawford was involved, then why did he feel free to talk about it, even if he didn't know about Stranahan's relationship with the sheriff's department?

“Weldon,” he said, “what do you think about those bodies found on Sphinx Mountain?”

“I read about it. Sounds like foul play hasn't been ruled out. But who knows? Bodies turn up in the backcountry now and then. People underestimate the power of nature.” He shrugged. He didn't seem concerned. “Would you care to stay for dinner? I'm fending for myself tonight. I could rustle up a T-bone from the freezer.”

“I'd like to, but I have to drive to Bridger this evening.”

Crawford saw him to the door. The rain clouds had broken up. Every grass stem glistened. “I've got a range on the back acreage,” he said. “Come out day after tomorrow, say late morning. You can shoot the .470.”

“Sounds good.”

“No, I mean it. If I'm not here, just follow the sound of the gunshots. You won't mistake them for a .22.” Crawford stuck out his hand. Sean took it, still thinking about their conversation, the big cartridge standing at phallic attention between them on the coffee table.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A Study in Pointillism

E
ven conservatively dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and western shirt snapped high enough to remove any hint of provocation, Martinique was a hit with the members of the Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers Club. Sean had never seen her in a social situation and was surprised to find her outgoing, quick to laugh, and able to stand her ground when the conversation on the porch turned to African politics, Robin Hurt Cowdry's perspective colored by his experience growing up in Zimbabwe during colonial rule and then having his family's farm confiscated when Robert Mugabe initiated his fast-track resettlement program, Martinique's by her Fulani heritage.

“Yes, but of the two of us I'm the real African,” Cowdry said. “My family's been on the continent five generations, since it was Southern Rhodesia in the 1890s. We're buried in African soil.”

Martinique had told him to extend his forearm along hers. “I rest my case,” she said.

When Sean went inside to call Sheriff Ettinger on the club's landline, he doubted anyone on the porch would notice his absence. None of the members had taken their eyes off Martinique since she stepped out of the Land Cruiser. Ettinger picked up on the first ring. Without preamble, Sean sketched in the details of his conversation with the congressman. Her response—“hmm”—was followed by a half minute of silence. He could envision her rubbing her chin, staring into the middle distance. Then she said she also had some news, how about he drop by her house in the morning.

Patrick Willoughby was showing Martinique the proper way to grip a fly rod—“like you're shaking its hand, thumb on top,” he was telling her—when Sean rejoined the group outside. “My good man,” Willoughby said, “with your permission, Polly and I are going to spirit this young woman down to the river and teach her to flycast. It's always best to learn from someone who is not in the family, don't you agree, Polly?” Polly agreed. Martinique gave Sean a covert wink as they walked away.

“You might have argued you weren't part of her family,” Jonathon Smither said. He was turning a pheasant on the grill.

“I don't think it would have done any good.”

“Probably not. Just be thankful it isn't me teaching her how to cast.” He gave Sean one of his wolf grins. “I'd be teaching her about gripping something other than a cork handle.”

Cowdry, sitting in an Adirondack chair, smiled briefly. He was sipping a glass of Scotch and didn't look up.

So Sean fished alone in the hour before dinner. Above him was one of those summer skies that people who live in the East can't believe are for real, the light over the Gravelly Range lavender bleeding to pink, the clouds rimmed with golden light from the setting sun and the river a study in pointillism, as wavelets bounced colors back and forth and trout made quick swirls to take caddis pupae from the surface film. Sean felt the bamboo bend a dozen times before he heard the old iron triangle ringing from the porch. As he walked downriver to check on Martinique, her saw her sitting on the bank with Sorenson, engaged in deep conversation. Willoughby had apparently gone back to the clubhouse ahead of them.

“What are you two talking about?” he asked.

“Only the meaning of life.” Sorenson patted Martinique's hand. “I wouldn't let this one get away if I were you.”

Martinique stood up, her jeans wet from the grass. She gave Sean an impulsive kiss and they helped the old fly tier to his feet.

After dinner, when they said their goodbyes and were driving in the Land Cruiser toward Ennis where Martinique had left her car, Sean said, “Kissing me in public. I might have a chance with you after all.”

“I don't know,” she said. “You're used to the couch and the cats. Maybe you'll be content to stay downstairs tonight.” But she put her hand on his thigh as she said it. Then, in a wistful voice, “Poor Polly Sorenson, he doesn't know whether he has two months or two years. It's a reminder we don't live forever. We can't count on tomorrow.”

“He mentioned something about his health to me last week, having OPED, initials like that. He didn't say anything about it being that serious.”

“It's COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. For most people it isn't a death sentence, but he has some scarring between his lungs and chest wall from an old injury that compound the symptoms. Basically, his lungs are filling up with fluid. He's dying of asphyxiation and the only thing the doctors can do is slow down the progression with medication. He says he's lived a full life and made his peace with dying. He just doesn't want his last hours to be spent in a hospital bed, fighting for breath. I'm afraid I didn't learn much about fly casting from him. He opened up to me right away, he said I reminded him of somebody he knew once, some girl he fell in love with after the war and he always regretted they didn't marry. So”—she squeezed Sean's thigh—“in the spirit of no regrets, I don't think I'm letting you out of my reach tonight.”

After he had dropped her in Ennis and was following the taillights of her car north toward the converted grain elevator, he thought about what she had said. Many people suffer from debilitating diseases that end in prolonged, painful death. The fact that Sorenson shared a similar prognosis with the men whose bodies had been found on Sphinx Mountain could not be considered anything but a coincidence. What made Sean frown inwardly was something Willoughby had said at their first meeting, about Polly Sorenson being the only club member who had spent any time with Congressman Crawford. He had even been invited up to the mansion for dinner. Was that, too, a coincidence? He was too tired to think straight, and then he was on the driveway to the grain elevator and Martinique was waiting at the door, having beaten him there by five minutes.

She had already changed into a black silk kimono embroidered with red hibiscus flowers. She waited until they were inside before putting her arms around his neck, the loose sleeves of the kimono sliding up to her shoulders. She held him at arm's length the way she had the first time, in the coffee kiosk, when she had said, “I'll go out with you, Mr. Sean Stranahan who's nice to cats.” This time, she didn't say anything.

•   •   •

I
n the morning she served him cheese grits, saying that it was her father's favorite breakfast and he'd always told her that no one could make them the way she could.

“I take it you were a daddy's girl,” Sean said.

“I was.”

“Did he name you Martinique?”

“No, that was my mother. Martinique is an island in the West Indies. It was discovered by Christopher Columbus and the story of the name is that when his ship was coming in the women on the shore called out ‘madinina, madinina.' My mother always wanted to go there, to any tropical island really. But the closest she ever got was listening to Jimmy Buffett sing about them.”

She put down her coffee cup and took Sean's hand.

“My mother wasn't easy to live with. After Daddy died, she overdosed on lithium. She wasn't trying to kill herself, it was just that she got into the habit of taking a couple extra pills to treat her depression. I found her lying on the couch. That was March last year. Two years watching my father die and then that happens. It changed me. Last night I was afraid I would start to cry while we were making love, and you're so nice and you'd see me sad and you'd get yourself all dragged down with me and then you'd leave this morning and never come back and I couldn't blame you. And just look at me, I'm crying now.” She wiped at the tear track below her left eye.

“I'm still here, Martinique.”

She nodded, her eyes shiny. She tried to collect herself.

“Can I get you another cup of coffee? There's only a little.”

“I couldn't handle any more than a B-cup,” Sean said.

“Now you're making fun of me.” But she was smiling in spite of herself. “The guy who hired me asked me if I'd consider a boob job. He said I couldn't sell snow cones in the Sahara with these breasts.”

“Then why did he hire you?”

“He liked my face. He said when I smiled, it was so sad it made men want to take care of me. Some smile, huh?”

She stood to get the coffee, but Sean didn't let go of her hand and pulled her around to him.

“Do we have time? I thought you had to go see the sheriff.”

“The sheriff can wait.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

For Love of Fidelia

M
artha Ettinger was walking up the hill from the creek, wearing hip boots. A fly rod poked in front of her, the tails of her plaid flannel shirt were tied in a knot, there was a wicker creel on her hip. Stranahan rolled down the window of the Land Cruiser and told her she looked like a Norman Rockwell painting.

“I didn't know you fished, Martha.”

“I also know how to tell time,” she said. “You're late. I'll see you up at the house.”

When she met him on the porch, she opened the lid of the creel. Three brook trout with jade flanks patterned by creamy spots rested on a bed of ferns. The backs of their heads were starting to discolor where she had whacked them with a stone.

“Don't tell me you're one of the those fly fishermen who doesn't believe in killing a trout to eat,” she said.

“I have nothing against eating trout, especially brookies.”

“Good answer, 'cause that's what I'm frying up for lunch.”

“You're not mad at me for being late?”

“You mean for the second time this week, and this time you being on the county nickel and all. No, I'm not going to let anything spoil my mood on my day off, especially not a man at such loose ends he feeds a mouse just so it keeps him company. You're still feeding that critter, right?”

“Mickey,” Sean said. “Or maybe it's Minnie. And I have a girlfriend now, a human one. At least I think I do.”

“Katie? She's only making a play for you, that's obvious as mud. You don't watch out, she'll put a collar around your neck and start telling you ‘Fetch.'”

“It isn't Katie.”

Martha looked at him, raised her brow. Sean said nothing.

“Then don't tell me. So what do you say we drink iced tea on the porch and bat this thing around?”

They talked about the congressman's penchant for guns, his admiration for “The Most Dangerous Game.” Martha wasn't familiar with the story. Neither could make Crawford as a murderer, even if he had painted a credible scenario for the way the men on Sphinx Mountain were killed.

“This thing about Polly Sorenson. Crawford makes a point of getting to know the one member of the club who's seriously ill?” Stranahan made it a question, drank his tea as he watched Martha consider.

“Well, I don't know what to say about that,” she said. “It ties in in the obvious way, the bodies on the Sphinx, those men having terminal illnesses. That's why I wanted to talk to you this morning, to tell you we ID'd one of the victims.”

“Really? That's good work.”

“It's all thanks to Doc. The second body, the one you and Katie stumbled across, the guy had valley fever. It causes degenerative bone and nerve damage. Doc recognized the scars on the tissue and bones right away.” She sketched in the details of the disease and its prevalence among Hispanics.

“It sounds horrible,” Sean said.

“It is. There's a very high suicide rate. Anyway, it turns out one of Doc's supervisors in med school pioneered treatment for the disease. He had a patient who fit the description. The man bailed on his treatments last July and disappeared.”

Sean rattled the cubes in his tea glass. “Wouldn't you have to run a DNA match to know? From what you told me, there must be hundreds of Hispanics who have the disease.”

“There are, but only one had a wife named Fidelia.”

For a second Stranahan drew a blank.

“The wedding ring,” he said.

“I called the missing patient's brother. He confirmed it. Those bones belonged to a man named Alejandro Gutierrez. Called Aleko. From the brother's information he was born in a region called the Sierra Tarahumara in Mexico. There were originally three brothers, but the oldest fell off a cliff in the Huachuca Mountains on the Arizona border, trying to cross. The other brothers were luckier and ended up as pickers in the San Joaquin Valley. The one I spoke to, Diego, he's the youngest. The story is that he and Aleko worked their way up to being managers of a big ranch in Kern County. They got their citizenship and bought some land from the owner to get their start. The Gutierrezes' is one of only a handful of Hispanic ranches in the valley. They live in a hacienda, grow almonds, grapes, apricots, you name it.”

“How did our guy wind up in Montana?”

“The brother doesn't know. He says after Aleko got sick, he'd walk up one of the ranch roads, go into the foothills, and sit under the live oaks and read the Bible. Sometimes he'd walk back and sometimes he'd have his brother drive up and get him because he was in too much pain to walk back. One day last July, Aleko goes on his walk, he doesn't return. A vehicle the pickers use is reported missing, so naturally Diego suspects his brother might have taken it. A week later he gets a call from Bakersfield police. They've run the license of an abandoned vehicle. The truck was parked two blocks from the Greyhound station.”

“If he left on a bus, you ought to be able to trace the ticket.”

Martha shook her head. “You have to show state-issue ID to pick up a ticket if you've reserved it online. But if you buy your ticket over the counter, you can ride from Bakersfield to Bangor, Maine, without having to produce identification.”

“So the truck in Bakersfield is the end of the trail.”

“It seems so. But there's more to the story. After Aleko's wife died, the brother says, he went downhill fast. Diego got him into a group therapy program up in Modesto, where he could meet other gravely ill patients. He also encouraged him to log on to an online therapy site. But Aleko seemed to lose heart after a few weeks. Then a few days before the disappearance, Aleko asked his brother very seriously what he thought about assisted suicide. Did he think that was a sin? Diego told him that he didn't know what was in God's heart, but that the family loved him and would take care of him, please don't think about such things. Aleko said, ‘You don't know what it's like. I'm not the person you used to know. The person you crossed over with is dead.'”

Stranahan exhaled with a whistle. He said, “The congressman's idea of men hunting each other, it doesn't seem so far-fetched, does it? This Gutierrez is a guy who might have welcomed a bullet.”

“I think that's a stretch.”

“Not a long one.”

Martha nodded. “Maybe.”

“So where do we go from here?”

“We check records. Even if the bus company doesn't have paper on him, he could have rented a car or checked into a motel once he got here. Or bought a rifle, for that matter. If we can pick up his trail, a name might turn up along the way.”

“It would be nice to ID the other body and see if the profiles match,” Sean said. “Find out if anything else in the history correlates besides disease. Hunting, group therapy, death of a loved one, a car parked by a railroad station, whatever.”

“Yes, it would, but so far we've gone nowhere with the first victim. By the way, Warren ran down that lion hunter in Big Timber. I let him stew an hour in the interview room. The first rule of law enforcement is, ‘Everybody lies to the police.' Some 'cause they're guilty, some 'cause they're trying to protect somebody, and the rest just do it to get on my nerves. The second rule is, ‘Anybody who goes to sleep in the box is guilty.' You take a guy who's wrongfully accused, he's jumpy as a bug. This guy put his head down on the desk and fell asleep. But then, what's he guilty of? My guess is nothing but a game violation. He claims he didn't know anything more about the bodies than he'd seen on TV. Said it was a coincidence they were buried in the same district where he outfits. Warren had already checked that part with Fish and Game, and he's licensed to guide in District 360. So he's telling the truth there. My guess is he's a dead end. What? You look dubious.”

Stranahan drank the last of his tea, watered now that the ice cubes had melted in the Mason jar. “Doesn't it make you suspicious, Martha? I mean, who better to look at for this than a guy who hunts the area with paying clients? He knows the forests around Sphinx Mountain better than anyone. Plus he runs hounds. Maybe he uses the dogs to track the old guys down. That's what the count in the story does.”

“And he gets men of sound mind to agree to it? No, I don't buy that.”

“Still, I think he's worth looking at. You want me to ask around?”

“No. I'll have Warren do it. This guy put one and one together and knew it was you who ratted him out at the trailhead. His word. He told Warren the next time you meet, he's going to stick your head in a toilet bowl.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Probably not. But I thought I'd tell you.”

“What's his name?”

“Buster Garrett. He's one of those guys who always has a bone up his butt about something. I'd stay out of the Road Kill Saloon in McLeod. That's where he and his buddies do their drinking.”

“You don't think I can take care of myself?”

“Can you?”

“My father was South Boston Irish. He had me in boxing clubs from when I was ten. I placed second in my weight class at a tournament called the ‘Silver Mittens' in Lowell. Got to shake hands with Micky Ward. I might have gone on and boxed Golden Gloves but my dad died and we moved to the country.”

“I didn't know that about you. All the same, though, I don't want you mixed up with Garrett. You run down the bullet, the rifle that fired it, like we agreed on.”

She stood up. “I'm going to fry those trout. Then I'm going to tell you about a few acres down the road you might want to consider buying, so you don't have to keep thinking up excuses to see my pretty face.”

•   •   •

W
hen he crossed the bridge below Ettinger's place after lunch, his cell was ringing. It was Sam, telling him he'd lined up an evening float with an old client, someone Sean knew. They'd be putting in to float the lower Gallatin at six.

“You want to spell me with the oars?”

“Who's the client?” Sean said. He was thinking of Winston, the barber from Mississippi. Willoughby had said that Winston would be coming back to spend a week with the club later in the month.

“It's Frankie Dibacco.”

“Oh.” He hesitated a moment. Dibacco was an affable angler who looked like an NFL linebacker a few years and a few pounds out of the game. But Sam would have been his next stop anyway. Sean wanted to ask his help in pinning down the kind of rifle that had shot the bullet Katie's metal detector found. Sam knew everyone in the valley. If anyone knew who might have such a rifle, other than Congressman Crawford, it would be Sam.

“Yeah, okay.”

“You don't sound so enthused,” Sam said.

“No, let's do it.”

“Meet me at that VFW access in Logan. We're going to wade the good runs. Be a chance to get your dick wet. Better odds than you've got with that woman who sells stripper coffee. Dominique or whoever she is.”

“Martinique.”

He heard Sam laughing and the click as he hung up on him.

When Sean pulled the Land Cruiser up to the boat ramp, Sam was rigging rods and regaling Dibacco with an exaggerated account of Stranahan's kidnapping the summer before. The client buried Stranahan's hand in his giant paw. “I didn't know I'd be fishing with a celebrity.”

“Sean isn't a celebrity so much as a dipshit,” Sam said.

So it was old times, the men laughing their way down the river, Sam outfishing the others three to one where they stopped to wade.

“You couldn't catch goldfish in a toilet bowl tonight,” Sam said, when he and Sean were shooting pool at the Cottonwood Inn afterward. “Seemed like you were off somewhere in your head and it wasn't the river. That woman must really have you by the nads.”

“It's not her.” Sean lined up the six and scratched.

Sam caught the cue ball before it rolled into a corner pocket. He took the stick out of Sean's hands. “You can't fish, you can't shoot. What's on your mind?”

“You are, Sam. I'm trying to find a gun that chambers a particular bullet and I wonder if you can help.” He'd cleared broaching the subject at lunch with Ettinger, finally convincing her that Sam had the pulse of everyone in the county and could be an asset to the investigation. “He's the biggest bullshitter in the county, too,” she'd reminded him, but had relented on the condition that Sean tell Meslik no more than necessary; specifically, he was not to mention that they had ID'd one of the bodies. She was holding back that information from the newspaper, fearing that it could compromise the investigation if someone local was involved and knew a cold trail had grown warmer.

Sam shrugged the heavy slabs of muscle on his shoulders. “I'm afraid I can't help you, my man. I just buy Winchester Western loads off the shelf for my .270. I don't know squat about ballistics.”

“It was worth a try,” Stranahan said.

“I said I couldn't help you. I didn't say you couldn't help yourself. There's this thing called the Internet, been around a while now. Come back to the trailer and we'll boot up the Mac. You'll have your answer before I can make you a Bloody Mary.”

Stranahan wondered what he'd been using for brains half his life.

•   •   •

S
am's time frame proved to be wishful thinking. They batted around in cyberspace for half an hour before Sean found a site called Nitro Madness, which included a forum on big-bore rifles. He registered as a new member with the user name “Simba Sean,” finished Sam's V8 cocktail waiting for the moderator to email him his password, then logged on and started a thread. “My friend bought a bullet from a collector at a gun show. Diameter—.488. Weight—500 grains. He forgot what the collector told him about the cartridge and the gun that fires it. Help, anyone?”

“Watch,” Sam said, after Sean hit the submit button. “These boys are like ranch hands who chain up their half tons and drive down the road hoping to winch somebody out of a ditch. They'll fight each other to help.” He was right. The first response came within five minutes, under a postage stamp photo of a fat white man holding a spear. His handle, “Masai Warrior,” sounded optimistic.