Crazy Mountain Kiss (23 page)

“Hell and tarnation,” Walt said. “What's all that?”

“The ribs of the upper left quadrant are separated from the sternum. Evidence of compression with the left rib cage folded over the right upper chest quadrant, creating a linear bulge in the dermis. There's a scar of roughly three centimeters diameter on the lower right quadrant.” He started to say something else and stopped. He turned off the recorder.

“I've never seen anything like this. Have you ever seen anything like this, Gigi?”

They all stared. The chest looked to have been cracked into two parts, with the left rib cage detached from the sternum and overlapping the right rib cage. In addition to this grotesque disfigurement,
the abdomen was bulged and there was a ropy-looking lumping of the tissues.

“Looks like there's an alien under there.” Walt gave a shudder. “I never did get over that movie. When that creature come a-poppin' out of that guy's stomach, I—”

“Walt, that's enough.” Martha held up her hand.

“I'm just saying I per near lost the lunch.”

“I saw something similar when I was in CSI school,” Wilkerson said in her breathy voice. “A man was constricted by a Burmese python when he was trying to feed it a rabbit. It looked like he'd been sandwiched in a car crusher. Both shoulders separated, cracked rib cage, and so many Tardieu spots you'd think he had the chicken pox. Give you the heebie-jeebies.”

“How big was the snake?” Walt said.

“Thirteen feet. It weighed about two hundred pounds.”

Martha caught her lower lip in her teeth. “Not too many of them in these parts. If Bear Paw Bill wasn't in the hospital, I'd say this has his name written all over it. Who else could crush somebody like this?” She paused, the shoe dropping. “He
is
in the hospital. Walt, tell me he's in the hospital.”

Walt walked back into the house to use the landline.

“Hey Hunt,” they heard him say. “How's the mountain man doing tonight?” A long pause.

Martha lifted her eyes to the stars.

“No, I was out of the office . . . no, Judy didn't transfer. You should have called me directly.”

“This is what you call the ‘Oh shit' moment,” Wilkerson said.

W
hat I want to know is how a three-hundred-pound man with half a leg walks out of a hospital and nobody notices? I'd like to ask Huntsinger to explain that to me.”

“He's pretty embarrassed about it, Marth. He's got a touch of the stomach flu—”

“Don't they have cameras in those rooms?”

“Only in the emergency ward and ICU. McKutchen was moved to a standard room this afternoon. Like I was saying, Hunt had to drop a deuce but couldn't find the
Field & Stream
in the magazine rack. So he went up to the second floor to look and that's where he hit the head. Said he was gone fifteen minutes tops. When he came back, he took his seat outside the door. Didn't think anything of it for an hour or so when I guess it crept up on him he couldn't hear the man snoring. A nurse was coming by to change the drip and they went into the room together. Man had pulled out his IV and his catheter and just plain vamoosed.”

“Vamoosed?”

“They had crutches in the closet and they're gone. Hunt said all he'd have to do was hop about fifty feet of hall and turn into the fire escape staircase. Door's always unlocked. I wouldn't be too hard on Hunt. When he went off shift tonight we weren't going to have a guard posted, anyway.”

“What did he do, hobble away?”

“Looks like he stole a vehicle. Hunt said an ER doc reported his
Explorer gone. Had a tricky ignition, so he just left his key in it twenty-four seven. Hunting rig. Locks were shot.”

“You gotta love Montana,” Martha said under her breath.

“Man was missing his left foot. I figure he drove with his crutch on the clutch. Yep, that'd be the way, all right.” Walt kneaded his Adam's apple.

They had moved away from the body and Martha called over to Wilkerson.

“Gigi, you didn't by chance get the DNA results on McKutchen?” She raised her eyebrows to make the question.

“I just finished that up. The graphs aren't a match, not even close. He isn't the father.”

“We seem to be having a lack of communication around here. Why didn't you tell me?”

“You had a full plate and I didn't see how it related to this. You guys don't keep me in the loop enough. I'm not trying to hijack your investigations.”

“You're right. That's my fault.”

“I had a look at the severed foot.” Wilkerson widened her eyes, which were already magnified by the lenses of her glasses. “Like a size twenty-five. The puncture wound under the arch was through and through. That's where the gangrene spread from. I found iron particles inside the foot. I can't say if they're from the same source as the nail that broke off in Cindy Huntington's foot, but it's a very good chance.”

Martha looked up to catch Sean's eyes. He met her expression, acknowledging the coincidence.

“What's up with all this?” Wilkerson said.

“I wish I knew. Go ahead back and help Doc. Make sure you swab the bastard.”

“He's the one who did it to her, didn't he? This Watt guy,” Wilkerson said.

“Yeah, he raped her.” Martha's voice was flat. “Either that or he had leverage to make her do what he wanted.”

When she was gone, Martha turned to Walt and Sean. “Harold, I want you to hear this, too.” Harold switched off his tracking light.

“I think we all know what happened here. Bill McKutchen knew Charles Watt fathered Cinderella's baby. It doesn't matter how he knew but my guess is she told him. He stole a vehicle, drove up here, and revenged her. In his mind it was justifiable homicide. But this isn't case closed by a long shot, because we still don't know how she wound up in that chimney. Remember the story about the crows? Everybody recall that?”

She waited until they had nodded.

“Earlier tonight, Sean and I saw some crows at the cabin. It started me thinking about how the crow takes the eyes of the dead to heaven. And then the other part of it, when something so bad has happened the gods can't restore the soul and the crow has to fly back to earth to set matters straight. Well, I took a vow up there I was going to set matters straight. I'm going to be that crow. Harold, you're going to be that crow. You too, Sean. And you, Walt. We're all going to be that crow and we're going to find out what happened, so her soul can rest. Now let's help load the body for the morgue and get some sleep. Walt, why don't you run the crime tape while we're waiting for Doc's okay.”

“Okay, Marth, but aren't we going to put out a BOLO on the vehicle?”

“Sure, Walt. Why don't you do that when you get back to the office.”

“That won't be until nine in the morning.”

“That's all right.”

She looked from one face to the other.

Walt shook his head. “You start going down that road you never come back. He might be able to tell us what happened to her, you think of that? No, we gotta call it in. What he done might be jakey with the big guy up there, but we got to follow the law.”

“Sure, Walt, you do what you have to. And while you're at it, you can take the dog home and drop it at animal services tomorrow.” She turned and walked away.

“She's mighty loquacious tonight,” he muttered.

“What's that, Walt?” Harold picked at his teeth with a stem of grass. “You learn a new word?”

“Yeah, it means voluble or garrulous. I'm thinking about becoming a cowboy poet and you got to know a lot of words to rhyme with things.”

“But you're not a cowboy.”

“That's what would give me the edge. You got to set yourself apart from the pack.”

Sean left Walt and Harold to their discussion of poetry and rejoined Hanson. “Doc, can you cut the shirt on the upper right arm? He's got a tattoo I'd like to take a look at.”

It was a sad clown, as he had remembered. Tears tracked down its cheeks. The banner read
Sarabell
.

Sarabell?

“Sounds like a clown name,” Wilkerson said. “Does it have a meaning for you?”

“Some, not enough. How about a wallet?”

“I bagged it,” Wilkerson said.

“What's the name?”

She looked through her notebook. “Charles Angus Watt. Age forty-seven. Hair brown. Eyes brown.”

“How long will the DNA match take?”

“Three days.”

“What about the blood?”

“You mean to determine if this is McKutchen's blood on the porch?”

Sean nodded.

“Two, if I push it.”

He thanked her and found Martha standing by herself, away from the lights.

“I didn't intend to do that,” she said without turning to face him. “I don't know what got into me.”

“If you were trying to rally the troops, you did a good job of it.”

“I meant it. Even the stuff about the crows. But who am I kidding? There's two people know what happened up there, and Cinderella's dead and Bill's in the wind. What do you make of the wounds, the both of them having iron in their feet? You think they both stepped on that bear window with the nails that Katie found? Cindy's wound hadn't turned to gangrene.”

“Maybe they stepped on the same window, but her at a later time.”

Martha shook her head. “Still a lot of questions.”

“We're going to solve this thing, Martha.” Sean looked at the haloed moon. “So when you kissed me up there, you were thinking about crows, huh?”

“No.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Fool that I am, I was thinking about us.”

P
eople fish for different reasons. They fish to shed the cataracts of age, to relive the thrill that was the dancing of a bobber as a sunfish nipped the worm and that thirty years later is harkened by the rising of a trout to a mayfly. They fish because a cast is a prayer for the believer and a hope for the heathen, and the more casts you make, the more likely your prayer will be answered or your hope be realized. And they fish because a fish is a miracle of nature, its fins as wondrous as the wings of a bird, and because you can touch the one but not the other.

Though he could not have expressed it if asked the question—and there was no one around to ask along the stretch of the Madison he drove to the next morning—what Sean Stranahan fished for were a series of moments. The wings of caddis flies pulsed over the river like dust motes in shafts of sunlight when Stranahan's imitation vanished in a swirl. That was one moment. Another came when the trout leapt, and a third when the leader tippet snapped. Stranahan waded to the bank and sat down, consoling himself with the thought that a fish lost is still a moment caught, for the hollow feeling that is counterpoint to the elation upon netting a fish remains an essential touchstone of the sport.

Or so he told himself. A trout will make a philosopher out of you, especially a big one.

Sarabell?

He whistled up Choti and said the name aloud as he dug his fingers into the fur of the dog's neck. “Sarabell.” What he'd told Wilkerson was true. The name held no meaning and had given pause only
because of its association with another word that rang in his memory—what was it?
Sherry?
No, not Sherry.
Shirley
, that was it. Shirley was the name that Charles Watt had told the librarian, Ariana, to call him on the night of their “assignation.” When she'd said Shirley was a silly name, he'd said call me Gus. Gus made sense. The name on his driver's license read Charles Angus Watt.

But why tell her Shirley at all? Why not Sarabell, the name on his arm? Ari had said the members chose their own club names. Sarabell would have come to mind immediately, so why not choose it? For several days Sean had meant to stop in at the newspaper to have a look at the assignations as they appeared in the classifieds, if for no other reason than to satisfy a prurient curiosity. But perhaps they could shed some light.

He whistled again for Choti, who had strayed from his side and had her head down a gopher hole. Forty minutes later he pulled into the lot for the
Bridger Mountain Star,
which was housed in a brick building that had once served as a slaughterhouse. “
Where News Goes to Be Butchered,”
someone had tagged on the side of the building, and the
Star
had endured as the butt of the joke ever since. He found the receptionist painting her nails and said he wanted to look in the archives. The woman indicated the only other person Sean could see in the building.

“Talk to Gail Stocker.”

Stocker, a petite woman with straight hair the color of brown sugar, had a phone to her ear, or rather a foot from her ear, when Stranahan stopped at her desk. She held up a pencil—
one minute—
as Stranahan listened to a muted tirade. The reporter rolled her eyes. “Anger issues.” She mouthed the words, and brought the phone to her ear.

“With due respect, Congressman,” she said, “I didn't say you were an asshole. I said that was something an asshole would say.”

Sean heard the click as the party hung up.

“Asshole,” the woman said. And looked up at him with slate-blue eyes. “What?”

She twirled the pencil in her fingers and shook her head. “We have a computerized databank, but only news and sports. We don't archive the classifieds. How far back are you interested?”

“February.”

“Then we might still have the newspapers. We keep them for one year, but sometimes people want to buy back issues, so it isn't a complete set.”

Ettinger had likened Stocker to a black widow spider, but, standing up, five feet no change, she didn't seem particularly black widowy. She shrugged into a double-breasted trench coat, belted it, put the pencil behind her ear, and led him to a room at the back of the building. The room was uninsulated, cold and dank. Metal files of newspapers stood against three walls. A fold-up table was unfolded against the fourth.

She switched on overhead track lights. “Do you know the date?”

“Ballpark.”

“Do you know what part of the classifieds?”

“Personals.”

“Still looking for that blonde who waved out the car window?”

“Something like that.” Stranahan smiled.

“You're the private detective. It's Sean, isn't it? I interviewed you on the phone after Weldon Crawford got his brains splattered on Sphinx Mountain. I never heard back after the story came out.”

“That's because you quoted me correctly.”

“Is this about the mountain man? I tried to get to Ettinger after the press statement, but she won't return my calls.”

“What makes you think I'd know anything about that?”

“She released the list of people on the search. You were named. So was Etta Huntington. She won't take my calls, either.”

“They must have their reasons.”

“Come on,” Stocker said. “Just between you and me.”

“Right.”

“You're shaking your head. Does that mean yes?”

“No.”

“This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”

Stranahan had to smile. “Tell you what. When the time comes, you're the first person I'll tell.”

“You're as noncommittal as my almost ex-boyfriend.”

“Best you're going to get.”

When she'd left, Stranahan pulled out his notebook and found the notes he'd scribbled down after meeting Ariana. Her assignation with the masked man had been on Valentine's Day, February 14. She'd got the information from a classified ad, she'd told him, at the beginning of the month. Did that mean the first?

It did. The ad was in small type, no boldfaced letters or numbers.

Love In Thin Air

Shirley and Book Girl 41/2

N” 74'6—64

W” 71'82—011

2574
Trapdoor

Stranahan penciled the information into his notebook, reversing the numbers to break the simple code for the GPS coordinates, the date of the assignation, and the lock combination to the door. He circled “Shirley” and put a question mark after it.

Ari had said that the man was physically “not as advertised,” had called him a creep. That didn't sound like someone who would be admitted for membership in a club with the standards Ari had touted. It raised a question. Had Charles Watt stepped in for someone else, someone who called himself Shirley? If so, who was Shirley? He reshelved the newspaper, knowing, if nothing else, his next destination. Stocker was on the phone and spun the pencil around her ear.
Call me.
He gave her an agreeable smile, but his mind was down the road.

 • • • 

T
he detective's here. I'd almost lost faith in him.”

Ariana Dimitri looked up from the checkout desk in the library.
Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, revealing earrings in the shape of handcuffs. Today's lips were pink, the eye shadow lavender, her scent rosewater. She made her mouth a heart and crossed her arms, lifting to deepen her cleavage.

“I had a few more questions.”

“You're not here because you want to see me?” She looked down and away, then raised her eyes demurely.

“As much as I'd like—”

“As much as you'd like . . . what?”

“Ari, you're incorrigible.”

“The man remembers my name.”

A boy approached the desk, extending a book called
Slim Green,
with a green snake on the cover.

“Ooh,” Ari said. “That's a classic. Do you have your library card?”

“You can't get one until you're twelve.”

“Silly me.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You just look so mature I forgot.”

The boy's mother advanced with a stern look and Ari checked out the book to her.

“He has a crush on me but his mother doesn't approve.” She looked after them. “Story of my life.”

“Ari, he was eight.”

“But he was so cute.”

“Can we talk outside?”

“Okay, but it's your turn. I usually give Henry a couple dollars.”

Stranahan fed the yawning guitar case as the homeless man looked up with rheumy eyes. “God bless,” he said. They stopped at the same picnic table where they'd talked before.

“We've got to stop meeting like this.” But the lilt was gone and she held his eyes, bracing for the unwanted question.

“Ari, that man you were with was Charles Watt. He was a horse trainer who worked at the Bar-4, where Cinderella Huntington lived. She's the girl who was found in the chimney.”

Ari looked away. “You knew that when you came before and you didn't tell me. I had to find out on the TV. Shame on you.”

“It was police business and I wasn't at liberty to say. Watt's middle name was Angus, that's why he told you to call him Gus. He was killed last night.”

“Don't tell me you found him in a chimney.”

“No. He was murdered at his home. Somebody squeezed the breath out of him.”

She crossed her arms, but this time it was a defensive gesture. “God. My mother always told me I was the kiss of death.”

“Ari, I need to know more about that night. You said the man wasn't ‘as advertised.' What did you mean?”

She shuddered. “Okay, the deal is we all submit profiles. Amoretta mails out a list to everybody, your profile with your club name. She uses the profiles to match us up. So when she makes an assignation, you can link the name in the ad with your list and get an idea of the person you're supposed to meet—physical appearance, fetishes, that kind of stuff. That way you can back out if something about your partner isn't your cup of tea. You can put an ad in the paper saying you can't make it and she'll set up another assignation.”

“So who was Shirley supposed to be?”

She curled tendrils of her hair around a forefinger. “It said he was a rancher and had worked on movies. Handsome, broad shoulders. Short, but ‘not short where it counts.' That you take with a grain of salt, every man says he's well endowed.” She unwound the hair. “What was important was he wasn't into anything rough, no BDSM for me, no thank you. But then this guy shows up and he's tall and he smokes. It's in my profile that I don't want to be with anybody who smokes. Amoretta's meticulous about that stuff. I mean a joint, okay. But she'd never set me up with a smoker. This guy . . .” She shook her head. “After we turned the camera off, he got rough. I don't mind rough when it's a kid who's so excited he wants to be everywhere at once, but it wasn't that kind of rough. It was holding you down so you can't
move while he rams himself into you. He kept calling me ‘a bad little girl,' telling me if I didn't want it why did I come on to him. I got scared, and I don't scare, but then afterwards it was okay, it was like he was contrite without exactly apologizing. He said he'd sleep in the main room and I could have the bunk room to myself. Told me he'd cook me breakfast, make eggs on the woodstove. I was trying to think how to get out of having sex again because it's sort of the point of being there, but after we had coffee the next morning he said he had to go work. He actually shook my hand. That's a first.”

“Did you complain to Amoretta?”

She hesitated.

“Ari, if you know who Amoretta is, I really need to talk to her. Because that man you were with, we believe he raped Cinderella Huntington last fall and she ran away from him, that's why she was missing. I want to know whose place he took for your ‘assignation,' who you were really supposed to meet.”

“I told you, all I know is his club name. But why does that matter who it was supposed to be, if this other guy's the one responsible?”

It was a good question, one that he'd been turning over ever since he'd lost the trout. He thought he knew, and it wasn't a pleasant thought.

“Oh all right, I'll tell you who Amoretta is,” Ari said. “Just don't tell her where you got it.”

When she confessed the name, Stranahan shook his head. He ought to have known, or at least suspected.

“Now you owe me that ‘or something' we talked about before,” she said.

Stranahan was turning to go when she caught his arm and moved her face up to his, her lips pooching out,
I'm sad, aren't you going to kiss me?
—then lifting into a smile,
You will kiss me, you will.
She touched noses with him. “You don't get away with an Eskimo kiss, mister detective.” It was as she brought her smile closer yet that he thought of a question.

“Ari,” he murmured.

“Mm-hmm.” She kissed his upper lip.

“Ari.”

“Mm-hmm.” She kissed his lower lip. “My you taste good.”

“Ari.” Firmly.

“Okay.”

“Charles Watt had a tattoo of a clown. It said ‘Sarabell.' Did he say what it meant?”

She took a deep breath and let her shoulders fall.
Poor unwanted me
. “It was his clown name. Back when he was in the rodeo. He told me he'd saved his friend's life by jumping in front of a bull and the bull got him in the stomach with its horn. He showed me the scar. When he got out of the hospital, his friend took him to a tattoo artist and they both got one, to make them blood brothers or something. I think he was trying to impress me, but I was on the side of the poor bull.”

This time it was Stranahan who kissed her. She looked at him with drowning eyes and pressed against him. For a slight-looking thing, she was a lot of girl in his arms. It was with some reluctance that he extracted himself from the embrace.