The Royal Wulff Murders (32 page)

W
ith the tip of his belt knife, Harold Little Feather pointed to a depression in the mud a hand span from the base of an alpine fir. The indentation was shaped like a narrow horseshoe.

“This is where he set the rifle butt when he was collecting wood for his fire. Tilted the barrel against the tree trunk. Recoil pad has a waffle pattern.”

So he was armed. The news came as no surprise to Stranahan, but it cured some of the doubters on the hunt who couldn’t understand why so many resources were being expended upon a person who had yet to be formally charged with a crime. Ettinger had held off processing the kidnapping charge with the DA until the department could do a proper investigation.

But there was no further progress. The rains came and went, Lothar shook his coat and worked into the wind, but couldn’t pick up the scent. After three days, county funds began to dwindle. The manhunt, which had grown to include a chopper, ham radio operators, and a highbird radio repeater mounted on a single-engine
Cessna to relay messages among two dozen ground pounders, was scaled back once and then a second time.

On the fifth day after McNair disappeared, a team consisting of Stranahan, Walter Hess, and Martha Ettinger convened on the upper Madison River to conduct a second investigation of McNair’s cabin, a CSI borrowed from Sweet Grass County having already been through it the morning after Stranahan was kidnapped. On that occasion, blood had been found on the instep of a size nine cowboy boot, which had been sent to the Missoula crime lab for a DNA match with a sample from the camp host who’d been stabbed at the Beaver Creek Campground.

“T
his place is a litter box,” Ettinger said. “I can’t believe how men live. All of you ought to be ashamed. Just look at this room. He’s got a dumptruck’s worth of shit in here.

“And the kitchen.” She shook her head. At some time, the power had been shut off and the freezer had leaked a pool of blood onto the floor. It had gummed up and darkened, but still stank to high heaven.

“Maybe he got behind on his power bill,” Walt said. “Then he made amends but never got around to cleaning the mess.”

“Then it ought to be in the records. No man is an island, not one who owns land in Montana. There ought to be a paper trail—gas, phone, electric. Bank statements. Property taxes. Did somebody from county pick them up when they did the investigation?”

“I don’t think so.”

“We just conducted a detailed search here. You’re telling me the man doesn’t have records?”

“Maybe he keeps them in the knife shop,” Stranahan said.

The knife shop was as he remembered. Stranahan took the team through what had happened that night.

“You’re lucky to be alive, young man,” Walt said.

Ettinger found the records under a display case of McNair’s custom knives. They were neatly labeled in manila folders in a stack of Rubbermaid file boxes.

“Christ, he’s even got collision insurance on that heap he wrecked up the creek,” she said, sitting at McNair’s workbench with the papers.

“Seems out of character, wouldn’t you say so, Martha?”

“Yes, I would. Considering how he lives the rest of his life.”

McNair had bimonthly pay stubs going back sixteen months from Missouri River Pisces, where he was listed as Staff, Temporary. He even had sales records for the knives, mostly sold at gun shows, from a client list that stretched several pages in a ring binder.

“He’s making just enough to keep the grizzly bear from the door,” Ettinger said at length. “But where did he get the money to buy this in the first place? Forget the cabin, the land’s got to be worth what, a quarter million?”

“It might have been, it might not be now.”

Ettinger looked at Stranahan.

“I thought riverfront was recession-proof.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Stranahan said. “I’ve been told that sales have slowed. Property values are climbing now that the fishing’s coming back, but the market’s still soft.”

Ettinger raised her eyebrows.

“Sam Meslik,” Stranahan said. “Guiding is a leisure dollar business. He’s got his finger on the pulse of this valley.”

“You don’t say,” Ettinger said, fingering the papers. “Look here,” she said.

She spread out a few sheets of paper.

“Copy of the deed says he bought this place for… $137,000. Was that before or after values dropped?”

Stranahan looked at the date on the deed. McNair had only owned the place for two years. He said, “Whirling disease hit here in the mid-’90s. This is long after land values began to fall.”

“Have prices gone up in the past couple years?”

“You could ask his neighbors. Sinclair and Summersby, they’re board members of the homeowners’ association. They’d know.”

“I’d like to know how he paid for it,” Ettinger said. “You look at these bank statements, he’s got $600 and change in a checking account, no savings, nothing about IRAs or other assets.”

She turned her attention to the papers while Walt and Stranahan methodically searched the shop.

“Two or three of these pinups are new. But most must be thirty years old,” the deputy said, gazing at the glossy photos on the walls. “Yep. Back when women didn’t barber their pubic hair. What do you think about that, Martha?”

Ettinger grunted. “Won’t dignify,” she said without lifting her eyes.

A minute passed. Ettinger pushed back in the chair and stared at the walls.

“You know you’re right, Walt,” she said in a thoughtful voice.

“What’s that?”

“About the pinups.”

“That’s what I said.”

“But what’s it tell us?”

“The man likes a full bush?” Walt asked. “Can’t say I blame him. I lean toward a natural look myself.”

“No, Walt. That’s not what I mean.”

Stranahan spoke. “It means he brought these centerfolds with him when he moved into this place.”

“Either that or found them at a garage sale or something,” Ettinger said.

“No,” Stranahan said. “He brought them. Here’s a stack of
Playboy
s.” He lifted the magazines out of a drab olive ammo box stacked against the wall and glanced at the spines. “They’re all from the same year, 1979. Twelve issues, a complete set.” He was rifling through the pages. “Some are missing centerfolds, maybe some of these tacked
on the walls. Subscription address is a Jonathon L. McNair, 13 King Salmon Avenue, Kuskok Bay, Alaska.”

“Let me see one.”

Stranahan handed her a thumb-worn magazine with a crazed cover.

“Can you spot the bunny?” Walt said.

Ettinger ignored the question.

“I told you McNair was from Alaska, didn’t I?” she said.

The two men looked at each other. Ettinger had been in the office during the last two days of the search. Stranahan hadn’t talked to her since Tuesday.

“Well, sorry I didn’t mention it earlier, but I just learned. Judy did a background check. McNair grew up in a place called Cordova, father was a commercial fisherman. Went down with his boat when the boy was ten years old. Mother took off—she was half Indian, an alcoholic. McNair and an older brother moved to Kuskok Bay to live with an aunt, the father’s sister. The aunt was white, also an alcoholic. The brother attended Bristol Community College a couple years, that’s right in town, then left for the lower forty-eight. McNair dropped out of school in the tenth grade. Stayed in Alaska for the next sixteen years, right till he came down here.”

“What did he do for a living?” Walt said.

“Worked in canneries, did some commercial fishing, but there’s no record of him running his own boat. Before he moved to Montana he was guiding for a couple lodges in Bristol Bay that cater to fly fishermen, taking anglers up and down the rivers in jet boats. Both outfits fired him. The people Judy called said some of the clients actually liked the man, or the idea of him, you know, Alaskan stoic of few words, most beginning with
f
and ending in
k
. But off the water he was too rough around the edges. He got in a fight with a camp cook and broke a steel fish cooler over the man’s head. About killed him. Would have gone into the tank but the cook wouldn’t press charges.”

“So
what brought him to Montana?” Stranahan asked.

“Judy didn’t say. Consensus among the people she talked to was that he kept to himself. Basically hibernated all winter in a cabin, a real misfit or a typical Alaskan, take your pick. Just a fringe person, the kind in a small town you know mean trouble and never try to sit next to on a bar stool.”

She pushed the magazine aside and wiped her hands on her pants.

“Ugh. I don’t even want to think of the cooties on those pages.”

“Why are you so interested in the magazines?” Walt sounded perplexed.

“Because it’s odd behavior,” she said. She pointed to an Alaska license plate nailed to the wall above the door. “That license plate’s two years old, from the time he left Alaska. My guess is that McNair drove his truck down here on the Al-Can and brought his belongings with him—including these
Playboy
s. Now why would a man of what, thirty-five, do that? And keep them all this time? Help me out here, boys.”

“Don’t look at me,” Stranahan said.

Walt made a cross with his fingers, as if fending off a vampire.

Martha shook her head. “It makes me think that this guy dropped out of society in adolescence, that his thought process stopped moving forward before he came down here. These pinups are tokens of a time warp he lives in. And then there’s the hostility, the way he’s pierced them with knives. Maybe something happened back there to make him hostile to women, that turned him into a recluse.”

She scratched her head. “Am I making too much of this? Walt, you took criminal psych classes at the academy.”

The deputy shrugged. “Sounds reasonable, I suppose.”

“Who do you figure”—Stranahan glanced at the address on the magazine cover—“Jonathon L. McNair is? The older brother?”

“That would be my guess,” Ettinger said.

“What happened to him?” Stranahan said.

“Judy didn’t
follow up, she had her hands full as it was, but I think he’s worth looking into.”

She stood up. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Walt, I’m putting you on hatchery detail. All we know is it’s owned by an outfit in California. Dig deeper. I’ll help Judy look into the family. Sean, you work the money angle. Talk to some real estate agents in the valley. Land sales are public record. You can use this.” She took a card from her breast pocket and scribbled a note on the back. “Anyone has a question regarding your association with the department, tell him to call my cell.”

“What is my association? I know I’m not legally a deputy.”

“Helper-outer, how’s that sound? I’ll find a way to pay you for your time, if that’s your concern.”

“No, it’s just that I might have to persuade someone I’m worth talking to. Helper-outer doesn’t sound very… authoritative.”

“Okay, consultant. Happy?”

“That has a better ring,” Stranahan said.

At the Cherokee, Ettinger found a liter bottle of water and poured it over her hands.

She shook her head.

“Disgusting,” she said. “Positively disgusting.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

S
tranahan spent the following day on the phone, attempting to learn more about property values on the Madison. Sam was his first call, and subsequent inquiries with real estate agents confirmed what the fishing guide said. The disease had caused riverfront stagnation, with prime parcels simply not moving off the block for a dozen years, up until the past couple when anglers started catching more fish. During the same period, the asking price for similar properties on rivers that had escaped the depredations of whirling disease, the Big Hole for example, had more than doubled. This was interesting, but Stranahan still couldn’t see how someone deliberately infecting a river to ruin its fishing could profit. Not unless the dynamic changed and property values, rather than holding, tanked in the wake of a disease outbreak. Then someone could buy up lots and, later, when the fishing came back, sell them for much more than his investment. Let the disease have its way and a lot that cost $150,000, say, might be bought for half that, then resold for anywhere from the original, predisease price to a quarter million or more when trout once again dimpled the river surface. Buy one large ranch to subdivide and a man could up his worth by millions.

He remembered something Apple McNair had said:
The trout is the key that unlocks the land.

Well, thought Stranahan, this was one way that key could turn. But there was a snag. The investor had to know for a certainty that the river would rebound from the disease.

When his eyes began to water from staring at the computer screen in the cultural center’s common room, he headed to the Bear Trap on the Madison, fly rod in hand. An hour and a couple of small brown trout later, he was hiking along the bank when the answer came to him. The quickest way for a river to recover from a depleted fishery was to plant fish back into it. And that, he thought, was where the hatchery came in. True, Montana had a wild trout program in place, meaning its rivers were sustained only by natural reproduction. No hatchery fish could be introduced. But state policy could change, especially if the disease affected the tourist industry. Sam had told him that fishing brought $500 million to the state each year, and already the fish and game department had come under pressure from angling groups to stock rivers decimated by whirling disease. The Madison’s gradual recovery had stalled that movement, but if whirling disease became epidemic, those voices would become loud again, and they would be heard.

As he stepped into the next riffle and sent a soft hackle searching through the current seam, a biblical verse wormed into his head. “The Lord giveth,” he said to himself, “and the Lord taketh away.” Then as he cast a second time, he changed the words. “The hatchery taketh away, and the hatchery giveth back.” An hour later he was in Bridger, repeating the phrase to Martha Ettinger over the phone.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You’re saying this hatchery is deliberately infecting rivers with diseased fish so that property values fall. Then, whoever is initiating the collapse is going to buy up riverfront property, knowing that the fishing will rebound. And that the whole operation hinges on inside information, that whoever’s behind this knows the state will renege on its wild trout program and stock the rivers with hatchery trout.”