The Royal Wulff Murders (36 page)

“I asked Apple point blank if he’d drowned her, something I had been afraid to do after she died. He said no, but admitted that Valerie had given him a ride home that day and maybe the man had seen them in her truck. Was I going to give him the money? The blackmailer, who was a drunk, only wanted $10,000.

“All this on my doorstep. Would I invite him into the house at least? Sean, he is my brother. I let him into the house. I tried to explain that the authorities would see through this drunk and dismiss his allegation as a belated attempt at extortion. Well, then, Apple told me, would I give him some sort of job so he could stay in Montana? I told him I didn’t work in Montana, which was true, though I did have business interests in the state. He told me he’d driven down on the Al-Can and planned to fish some rivers. He said he’d check back with me in a couple weeks. I was not encouraging and hoped sincerely that he would give up trying to reestablish our relationship. When I shut the door, I hoped I had seen the last of him.”

“What happened next?”

Ventura made a snorting sound. “Do you really think my talking will help you? Don’t insult my intelligence.”

He continued. “I’m telling you this because for years, understand, I’ve kept it inside. It creates a cancer, a gnawing in your gut that doesn’t go away. But how do you tell someone that you ran away from your boyhood life because you suspected your brother had murdered your girl? And that you did nothing about it?”

“How can you be sure he killed her?”

“You notice that the mailboxes for our community are at the gate? After Apple left, what do you think I found there?”

“I don’t know. A letter.”

“Come on. You can do better.”

Stranahan remembered what Ventura had said about his brother climbing through windows.

“Hair,” he said.

Ventura grunted approval. “Now you’re thinking, Sean. Yes, it was a lock of hair. Apple had torn open a bill in the mailbox and put it inside. Valerie was blond. The hair is blond. I know that you need follicles for DNA testing and the hair looks like it was cut. So maybe I can never be sure. But in my heart, I know it’s her.”

“Why don’t you turn him in?”

“No, I have other plans for Apple now.”

“So you know where he is.”

“Oh, yes. And closer than you think. Sean, as soon as I saw Valerie’s hair, I knew that this night was a possibility. I just didn’t expect that you would be a part of it.”

“What… ?”

“Just listen. You had questions about the fish. Missouri River Pisces is jointly held by two businesses in California. The business does not carry my name, but I do have the controlling interest. Why? The simple reason is that trout are my passion. You were correct in believing
Apple was placing fish infected with whirling disease into Montana rivers. You also were correct to assume that someone who owned land along the rivers intended to profit when fisheries depleted by the disease were planted with hatchery-reared fish.

“What you failed to discover”—Stranahan heard a sloshing sound as Ventura, who had been standing only a few feet from the boat, waded toward the black outline of a log jutting from the shore—“what you failed to find out is that there was a second component to this operation.”

Stranahan saw Ventura’s shadow compress as he sat heavily on the log. He was making himself comfortable, had rested the hand that held the pistol against his right thigh.

“As a fisherman yourself,” he went on, “you must know that a great deal of money has been spent to find a solution to whirling disease. Where those efforts have largely failed, I have succeeded. I will not bore you with too many details. What I will tell you is that a number of years ago, I made the acquaintance of a man who had studied whirling disease as a graduate student at the state university. This was before the malady manifested itself in the West and became front-page news. At the time I met the man, he was a geneticist that a film company had hired as an expert for a movie I had a piece of. We had fly fishing in common, that is how I came to know about his past. He understood that brown trout in Europe could withstand the ravages of whirling disease. His aim was to find a strain of trout native to our side of the pond that might do the same. Understand this was thirty years ago. He was just a student with no grant money. The customary avenues of obtaining trout for testing were closed to him. His professor told him, ‘You’re a fisherman, Marty’—the man’s name was Martin Dollack—‘go catch some fish, infect them with the spores, see what happens.’

“This he did. One of the populations he tested was from an alpine lake in the Mission Mountains. The rainbows had been aerially
planted and were remarkable because they showed no effect of whirling disease when exposed to the spores. But Marty’s findings were based on an insignificant sample and his professor never submitted them for publication. He graduated, moved to California, and never thought about whirling disease again until about fifteen years ago, when it became news in the angling fraternity. Thinking his old research might be of value, he contacted the state fisheries. A biologist asked him about the lake, but he couldn’t remember the name and wasn’t sure it had one—am I boring you, Sean? No? Anyway, the biologist thanked him, but said it wouldn’t matter what lake it was, because it had probably been stocked many times since his graduate days—they bomb those alpine lakes with fingerlings on a five-year rotation—and the strain he tested would have died out or been diluted by crossbreeding. In those years, you see, the state stocked whatever hatchery rainbows were cheap and available, a cocktail of genetic strains. So the strain he had studied was not only untraceable but probably nonexistent. No one was interested in a thirty-year-old study that couldn’t be genetically replicated.

“Except for me, that is. I was quite interested and had already invested in several hatcheries. They were vanity projects, I admit. I wanted to develop rainbow trout that were the biggest, the hardest fighting, the most likely to take a fly from the surface. So I questioned Mr. Dollack. I ordered maps and he was able to retrace his steps and pinpoint the lake. My next step was to look up the stocking data. What I discovered was that the alpine lakes in that area had been written off the program fifteen years before because they fell within readjusted borders of the Flathead Indian Reservation. I put in a call to the regional biologist and asked him, as an interested sportsman, mind you, if any of the lakes that were no longer stocked still supported trout. He said that one could, if it was deep enough to avoid freezing out and had suitable spawning habitat in the inlet or outlet stream. Ah, I thought, so there was a window of light, just a chance
that the original strain might have survived. I thanked him and thought to pursue this thread, but I was up to my neck in a cutthroat business and when the movie was wrapped the entire matter was put on hiatus.”

Stranahan heard a metallic snap as a flame flared in the darkness. He caught the cherry glow of a cigarette.

“A pernicious habit, Sean. But I find it moderates the anxiety.”

Ventura smoked in silence a few moments.

Stranahan thought of something Vareda had said—“They can put it on my tombstone: She inhaled.” All that seemed so long ago, now.

“The geneticist passed away,” Ventura said. “I heard about it after I moved up here. It reminded me of our discussions. By then, I had a controlling interest in Pisces and was in full pursuit of the perfect trout. I dug out my old maps and put on my hiking boots. The lake that my friend had fished turned out to be a beautiful tarn with a low-gradient inlet stream of small spawning gravel—I had my hopes up. And sure enough, I caught trout. Not big, but thick-shouldered. Broad stripes, rosy cheeks, just as nice a rainbow as a lab ever made.”

Ventura sounded animated. He was completely absorbed by his story. Stranahan noted his own shallow breathing. He felt dreamy in a shifting-color way, as if slipping toward unconsciousness, and tried to snap out of his lethargy. He focused on the burn in his chest. He was gathering himself to tip the boat; better to go down swinging. He had a gut feeling there wasn’t much time left.

“Absolutely of no use, understand,” Ventura continued. “The fish were adults and the disease only affects the young. But the next time I came back I had a seine, I had a five-gallon tank with an aerator, I came off the mountain with my sample. I infected the fingerlings with parasites from other diseased trout and crossed my fingers. The fish manifested no signs of disease. I decided to take another trip. Sean, I studied those trout over the course of the next two years, crossbred them with other rainbow strains, subjected the smolts to conditions
they might encounter in a riverine environment, all the while masking the experiments so that employees like the young Mr. Beaudreux wouldn’t suspect. There was only one person at the hatchery I could trust, so most of the research I did on my own. I didn’t want anyone spilling the beans prematurely. I could see the state preempting the study and taking the credit. You see, I’m a vain man. I like money, but I like recognition more. Anyone in my business who says otherwise is a liar.

“So I waited until I was sure of the product. And that product, Sean, was a rainbow trout that would thrive in Montana rivers regardless of whether those rivers harbored the spores of whirling disease. What’s more, it was a trout with a fast growth rate to an acceptable adult size—two to four pounds—and we had grown some to eight pounds.

“It was time to act. Like other hatcheries, we accepted funding from the Anglers Against Whirling Disease Foundation and periodically reported our progress. I hinted we might have something promising, feeling out the response. I approached the state fisheries with the same careful steps. And I found out that”—Ventura paused for effect—“no one cared.

“Can you imagine that? I tell you, it was a slap in the face.

“And why? Why because their reasoning is entrenched in the conservative, because Montana has a wild trout program and the state’s commitment was to improving the existing fishery, not finding a new trout to supplant it.”

Ventura uttered a bitter laugh.

“They were devoting their efforts to working with irrigators to ensure tributary flows so that the baby fish could grow past the danger stage in water temperatures unfavorable to whirling disease; they were spending their money educating the public about transferring disease from river to river. It was a Band-Aid approach, not a cure. Basically, everyone was just hoping that the trout would develop
genetic resistance. When the Madison River rebounded, the state took it as a victory, conveniently overlooking evidence suggesting that the river was naturally restocking itself with fish that migrated into it from the reservoirs. The Madison trout were not recovering on their own at all.

“So here I am”—Stranahan could hear the bitterness in Ventura’s voice—“here I am with a Christmas gift wrapped in a blue bow that no one wants to open. What arrogance!”

“So you said, ‘Fuck them,’” Stranahan prompted.

“I said fuck them. I said if they don’t want to solve their problem, I’ll solve it for them. I’ll pollute their rivers with infected fish until there are no wild trout to catch. I’ll wait until public outcry demands that the state institute a stocking program. And when that day comes, I’ll be a hero, for I have the trout that will save Montana’s rivers. It’s called the Ventura strain. It has a ring, don’t you think? The only thing that held me back was that I didn’t want to dirty my hands. I couldn’t see myself driving around in the dark with a load of rainbow-striped contraband, you might say. It would be unseemly.”

Ventura paused.

“Then Apple knocked on your door,” Stranahan said.

“Yes, Sean. Then Apple knocked on my door.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

“A
pple was the last piece of the puzzle. When he came back from his fishing trip, I said I might have a job for him, after all. I didn’t mention the lock of hair. Acted as if I hadn’t seen it. I had the riverfront property next door with the homestead cabin. I had papers drawn up to put it in his name, though it is I who really own it. I also placed Apple on the hatchery payroll as a driver.

“And, well, I was on my way to realizing the dream. I already owned several properties on streams that had declined due to whirling disease or else had historically offered marginal fishing, like the Blackfoot, where mining had compromised the fishery. That land would appreciate, the only question was how much. I would buy more land as the disease spread and opportunity knocked. Little or no risk with Apple doing the lifting. Then, like a fool, the hatchery manager hires that Boy Scout Beaudreux. Apple was not supposed to kill the young man. He says it was an accident. I say maybe.”

“He had a trout fly stuck in his lip,” Stranahan said. “That part didn’t make the papers.”

“So probably not. It confirms my suspicions.”

“Shooting Sam, stabbing the camp host, it didn’t stop with Beaudreux.”

“No, it didn’t. What will happen tonight, it’s something that should have happened a long time ago.”

“What’s that?” Stranahan had a dreadful feeling he already knew. He shifted his weight as far as he dared to the left-hand side of the boat, the side that faced the log where Ventura’s black bulk was sitting.

“I’m going to write an end to a Shakespearean tragedy,” Ventura said flatly. “If Apple was caught, he would open his mouth. You are the witness to his crime, the pressure to bear that would make him talk, and I would become a casualty of his sins. But I will wait to kill him until he is through with you. As far as your sheriff is concerned, you will have killed each other and I…”

Stranahan rocked hard to the right, tipping the boat. He felt the shock of the water before the sentence was finished. Surfacing, he pushed the stern of the boat away from him, hoping that Ventura would think he was dragging it as a shield. He lunged in the opposite direction.

Ducking under, he heard Ventura’s garbled shouting. Then, a muffled explosion. A shot? Another voice rising against the first. Stranahan reached forward, pulled his arms against his sides, reached forward, pulled. He swam underwater until his outstretched hands scraped the trunk of a pine snag. He grabbed the trunk and slowly lifted his head. The shoreline was a thin band dented by the phosphorescence of the water. He craned his neck. There, farther up the bank. He could see the boat and beside it the figure of a man. Ventura must have righted the craft. The sleek silhouette began to glide toward him, a spot of light glinting in and out, then sweeping in his direction. The widening V of the beam tugged at his head.