The Royal Wulff Murders (31 page)

Martha jangled the keys in her pants pocket, realized what she was doing indicated indecision, and stopped. Beside her, Stranahan let the news of his newly appointed position sink in.

“Let’s look at the map,” Ettinger said.

A
twelve-volt lantern on the hood of the big Chevy illuminated the faces of the squad. Stranahan was introduced to the other deputies, who had gathered around a topo map spread on the hood. Jason Kent had sandy hair and was dressed in Carharrt overalls. A big man crowding fifty, he wore a weary face that reminded Stranahan of a farmer who’d seen too much weather. Sheriff’s Sergeant Warren Jarrett stood ramrod straight and offered a hard hand. His black mustache was neatly trimmed and shopped around as his front teeth worked on a toothpick. He looked to have been born to wear the uniform. Katie Sparrow had a petite build and couldn’t have been more than five feet tall.

“Pleased to meet-cha,” she said briskly, glancing toward Stranahan before turning back to the map.

“What do we have here?” Ettinger cut to the chase.

“You mean besides rain coming on and the highest density of grizzly bears outside Yellowstone Park?” Sergeant Jarrett said without the trace of a smile.

Ettinger looked at Kent.

“You’re
incident commander, Jase. It’s your show.”

Kent rapped the knuckles of his big hand on the hood.

“Tonight’s a nonstarter,” he said. “If this was a lost hunter who wanted to be found, I’d say go. Do an attraction and containment with the Hasty Team, build a bonfire he could spot from a vantage, send an ATV up every trail. We’d round him up. But in the night, man who’s probably armed, us shining flashlights, he’d more likely find us.”

“I’m willing,” Walt said.

“It isn’t about willing,” Kent said. His voice was matter-of-fact. “It’s about assessing risk and not being reckless.”

Ettinger set her right elbow on the hood and cupped her chin with her hand. She didn’t say anything for a long minute.

Then: “Jase is right. I don’t know if Walt has filled you in, but this guy’s suspected of killing two people and may have put a bullet into a third, who was damned lucky to survive. And his intentions toward Mr. Stranahan tonight were less than honorable. If he feels threatened, he’ll get one of us before we have a chance at him. Let’s do this by the book. We’ll have numbers up here tomorrow, we’ll get an all-points out, we’ll catch him in the net.”

“We’re here now.”

It was Katie Sparrow, the K9 handler.

“We’ve got point-last-seen. Lothar can give us direction-headed. We’ll work slow with no lights. We won’t give him a target. But I don’t think this guy will shoot unless we’re pressing him.”

“I don’t, either,” Walt said. “He’s trying to get away. If we can follow him far enough to figure where he’s headed, we’ll have a better chance tomorrow than if we don’t. I mean, he could pull a mountain man or head back down into the valley, be nice to know which.”

“Can I say something?” Stranahan felt five sets of eyes turn toward him.

“What the hell happened to your lip?” Walt said.

Ettinger sketched out the details of the evening in three terse sentences. Walt whistled.

Stranahan said, “I saw McNair carry something from his house and throw it into the bed of his truck just before he took off. Like a suitcase, or maybe a backpack. Was anything like that in the truck?”

“Warren, you checked it out,” Walt said.

Jarrett shook his head. “When the truck tipped over, a bicycle slid out of the bed. Other than that just a few rusty tools, vise grips, wirecutters, like that.”

“Katie?” Ettinger nodded her chin toward the white pickup, where the shepherd sat bolt upright in the passenger seat, his ears in silhouette. “If it rains tonight, can your dog still work the trail tomorrow?”

“That depends how much it rains. But we got heavy air and damp undergrowth to hold the scent, conditions are prime right now. This guy’s only got about a two-hour lead. Could I see what you brought?”

Ettinger motioned for Stranahan to retrieve the T-shirt from the Cherokee. Katie opened the ziplock. Walt dropped his head for a sniff.

“My Christ, Martha. That man’s got odor like a yeller dog. Be ’bout as hard as follerin’ a turd skidding down the icing on a wedding cake.”

Katie zipped up the bag. Stranahan noticed the steel in her gaze as she looked at Ettinger. In profile, her cheeks and the corners of her eyes had a corrugated look. Sun and wind had made a map of her face.

“So whatcha’ think?” she said.

Stranahan could see the sheriff’s resolve waver.

“I think Katie makes a point,” Ettinger said. “This is a chance we can’t pass up. No lights. We’ll only follow far enough to make an educated guess.”

A short council of war later, Katie Sparrow leashed the shepherd, fed him the scent, and led him in a perimeter search of the truck. Lothar hit a low note and strained with his head down.

“He’s got it,” she said.

Stranahan watched the cluster of red and blue LCD bulbs from the dog handler’s Carnivore Tracking Light cast rusty circles on the grass. It would make blood drops shine like diamonds in a coal mine. If McNair had injured himself he could be close by, which would place the team in danger much sooner than if he had disappeared into the timber on sound legs.

Sparrow held the dog at the forest edge as Stranahan and Ettinger, along with the two deputies—Warren Jarrett had a scoped rifle slung over his shoulder—came up to join her. Kent, as incident commander, would normally have remained with the rigs to relay radio messages, but as he and Jarrett had the most SAR experience, Walt had agreed to stay instead.

“Blood?” Ettinger asked.

Sparrow shook her head.

“Okay then, like we agreed on,” Ettinger whispered. “Jase and Warren stay five paces in back of Katie, Sean and I bring up the rear. Everyone has the roadblock marked as a GPS waypoint, right?”

Jason Kent slowly shook his head. “I still don’t like this,” he said. “Katie, you’re on point here. You’re assuming the biggest risk. It’s beyond call of duty.”

“Let’s just go,” the handler said.

The team took up the track, the sheperd leading them west into the forest, then turning to climb until it reached a game track worn deep by the hooves of elk. The dog contoured, then left the track to climb straight uphill, the slope so steep that Stranahan found himself grasping onto lodgepole trunks to haul himself up.

“The son of a bitch has lungs,” Martha whispered, her breathing heavy.

Clouds had slipped under the stars and Stranahan could no longer see the faces of the posse, only their profiles. There was a grumble overhead, a deep clearing of the throat that heralded the rain.

The dog hunted on through the first drops, then into a downpour so hard the rain bounced off his head. He stopped to shake.

“Well?” Ettinger said, water drops beading on the billed hood of her parka.

Sparrow shook her head. “The rain’s going to wash the ground scent, especially in the open areas. Lothar will still be able to stay on him in the trees, catch scent that’s trapped under the canopy, but it’s going to be a slow go. If the wind picks up, we’re FUBARed, pardon my French.”

“Let’s see where we are.”

A copse of spruce trees just off the track offered marginal canopy cover. Warren Jarrett punched up the map page on his Garmin GPS, the contour lines highlighted on a green screen. He tapped the Out button to change the scale. The triangle icon showing their position appeared under a whorl of contours marking Wolverine Peak.

“We’re about six hundred feet below the crest,” Jarrett said. “He’s climbed this high, I think we can assume he’s going to top over into the Hilgard Basin. That’s wilderness with a capital W.”

“Then let’s call it good,” Ettinger said. “With the dog working this slow we’re not going to catch up and I don’t think we want to. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I could use some sleep, even if it’s in the Jeep. We need to save our strength for the big push tomorrow.”

“Katie, you don’t agree?” The handler was shaking her head.

“No. I’m just pissed off at God.” She knelt down to let the shepherd nose at her face.

Kent spoke. “We go back down this trail now, someone could fall and break his leg. It’ll be safer if we take cover until the storm blows over.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of being the voice of reason?” Ettinger said. Stranahan caught the exasperation in her tone.

“I’m just stating the obvious,” Kent said.

So that was that. The group split up to shelter under the spruces.
Stranahan found one that offered enough dry space for both he and Ettinger to sit shoulder to shoulder with their backs to the trunk.

“Cozy, huh?”

“Don’t get any ideas.” Ettinger pressed up against his side.

“So I’m your deputy now, huh?”

“Deputy, slave, minion of my kingdom, take your pick.”

“Are you authorized to do that?”

“I’m the sheriff. I can do anything I want.”

Stranahan felt her take a deep breath, her side pressing into him, then she let it out in a long sigh.

“What did you expect, Martha—that we’d find McNair fast asleep under a tree like this one?”

“I’m just mad at myself for not seeing it before. If Walt and I had been more thorough, we would have found that pond. It didn’t show on the map, but that’s no excuse. And McNair. You were right about the guy and I wasn’t.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“You think it’s easy being a woman sheriff in this state? If I didn’t expect a lot out of myself I’d never be wearing the badge.”

They sat quietly for a while, listening to distant claps of thunder.

“So I know I already asked you,” Ettinger said, “but you’re absolutely sure those fish in the pond had whirling disease?”

“No, but the black tails, the misshapen heads, I’d be surprised if they didn’t.” Beside him, he sensed Martha shake her head.

“You don’t seem convinced,” he said.

“No, what I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around is why. Why is McNair, a guy who lives in a shack, driving a truck around the state dumping diseased fish into the rivers? And why put some into that particular pond? From what you said there must be hundreds in there. What’s in it worth killing two people, not to mention the Meslik shooting? You take those kind of measures, the payoff has to be commensurate to the risk.”

“Maybe there wasn’t much risk. If it hadn’t been for Vareda Beaudreux’s brother driving by that evening, no one would have known the difference. I think this thing just got out of hand and snowballed.”

“Even so, I’m still asking myself the same question—why? Is there a money angle we’re missing? And who’s this mysterious man he was talking to on the phone?”

“Have someone investigate the hatchery. That’s my advice.”

“Oh, I will.”

“Do you smell smoke?” Stranahan said.

“No, do you?”

“For a second there.” Stranahan tipped his head out from under the spruce. “No, it’s probably just my imagination.”

He wedged back against the trunk. He could feel Ettinger shiver against his shoulder.

“Here.” Stranahan put his arm around her and pressed the side of her more firmly against him. “Don’t worry. The minion of the kingdom won’t get any ideas.”

Stranahan could feel Ettinger’s regular breathing and had nearly dozed off himself when he heard footfalls approaching. Warren Jarrett lifted the lowest spruce bough to peer at them.

“Rain’s let up, Sheriff,” he said.

Ettinger cleared her head.

“Thanks, Warren.”

He backed away.

“Fuck,” Ettinger said. Her body had become rigid against Stranahan’s side. “He caught me sound asleep in the arms of a man. How’s that look?”

“Is it really bad as that?”

“No, Warren’s a boy scout. He won’t tell anyone. But he’ll look at me different. I’ll seem weaker to him.”

“Everyone here looks up to you. You’re underestimating yourself.”

“Yeah, right.” There was a note of resignation in her voice. “Come on. Let’s get back to the trucks.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

L
othar found McNair’s campsite at midmorning. The fugitive had sat out the storm under a spruce tree about a quarter mile farther up the mountainside from the tree that Stranahan and Ettinger sheltered under. He’d torn the corner of a 7.5 minute series topographic quad to start a fire; they found a curled edge of the map in the ashes.

“Son of a bitch,” Katie Sparrow said.

Ettinger bit down on her lower lip.

“Hey, Stranahan, get over here. Remember what you said? ‘What did you expect to find, McNair asleep under a tree like this one?’ Well, that’s right where the bastard was, damned near close enough to hear us talk about him. To think we were that close”—she pinched her fingers together—“we could have ended it if the big man up there had just decided to cooperate.”

“Maybe the big man did us a favor,” Stranahan said. “If it hadn’t rained, we would have got closer and he could have shot one of us.”

They stood by the tree—Ettinger, Stranahan, Sparrow, Jarrett, and Harold Little Feather, who had driven through the night from Browning after receiving Ettinger’s call from the satellite phone.

The shepherd cast in circles trying to pick up scent on the wet grass.

Stranahan shook his head. “I thought I smelled smoke. Remember me telling you that? It was this fire.”

Ettinger compressed her lips.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she said. “We
catch the bastard I’m going to kill him on general principles, guilty or not. You know what I mean?”

They were all tired as hell after a night in the pickups. Stranahan had actually slept under Jason Kent’s diesel half-ton, in a sleeping bag the deputy kept in the cab.

Martha Ettinger scratched her head.

Katie Sparrow pulled a dog biscuit out of her pocket and took a bite, then put her lips around the mouthpiece on the water hose of her Camelback backpack.

“Ah,” she said.

Ettinger looked at her with an expression she usually saved for Walt.

“I’ve been eating them for years,” Sparrow said. “But only on the trail. You want?”