Crazy Mountain Kiss (5 page)

“So, drug addicts looking to score?”

“Smash and grab, or in this case snip and run.”

Stranahan turned to the report on Anker's disappearance, but Martha stopped him by placing two fingers on his arm.

“You've read all there is to know. Etta Huntington made the call and Harold caught it. He ended up interviewing everyone the report mentions, all the kid's friends at school and probably half of Wilsall and Clyde Park, plus the boy's relatives up in Ringling, where the Anker clan is from.”

“Isn't that where you grew up?”

“No, our place was out of Roundup.”

“Ringling, Roundup, same bit of nowhere.”

“Tell that to your gas tank. You've been here three years. Learn your geography.”

“I know where all the best trout streams are.”

“
Anyway
,” she said, drawing out the word, “nobody contradicted what Huntington told Harold. Nobody reported seeing the kids after they disappeared or ever heard from them. Neither set of parents envisioned the two of them running off, and even if they had, you'd think they would have surfaced. There were rumors Landon Anker was gay, but his parents denied it. They described the relationship between Landon and Cinderella as more like brother and sister than boyfriend-girlfriend.”

The road rose abruptly and there were the Crazy Mountains, the ridges puzzled with snow, but green showing in the lower elevations. Maybe summer would come, after all. In Montana, you held your breath.

“How much farther?” Stranahan said.

Martha frowned. He sounded bored to her, maybe indifferent was the better word. “Do you see that bald ridge running north and south? The cabin is tucked under it.”

She slowed for a doe whitetail deer to cross the road. Heavy with fawn, her winter coat was already patchy, the gray shedding in clumps to reveal the rich reddish coat underneath.

Martha nodded toward the folder. “What's your take on this?”

Stranahan seemed to shake himself awake. “What did Harold think?”

“I'm asking you.”

“If I didn't know about the chimney? I'd say the most likely scenario was they drove off in the Anker kid's truck, maybe he had a place they could go and be alone, and then they broke down and somebody came by, a drifter, and said he'd give them a lift into town. He killed them, maybe the boy first so he could have his way with the girl. He disposed of the bodies down the road. Like those long-haul truckers who prey on prostitutes in the rest areas. The bodies turn up two states away. I read a book called
The Monster of Florence
about a serial killer in Italy who preyed on young couples making love in cars in the countryside. This reminds me of it.”

“The Monster of Montana,” Ettinger said.

“It happens.”

“How do you explain her living through the winter and ending up here?”

“Well, that makes the drifter theory less plausible. It makes me think if she was abducted, the perpetrator lived nearby, either knew her or knew of her. It could be like one of those cases you hear about, where the girl escapes after months in a cellar.”

“But isn't a cabin in the mountains out of the way for anyone running for her life to wind up at? And she was wearing an elkskin jacket that was homemade. It seems odd.”

“You're right, I could be way off.”

“Maybe not. The scenario you painted is pretty much the same conclusion Harold drew. Frankly, if either of you had come to me with
that fifteen years ago, I'd have said you watched too much TV. When we got a 187 you never had to look farther than the husband. Now we have murder for no reason. Do you know what happened while you were getting a sunburn? A housepainter in Miles City with no criminal record told his buddy he wanted to kill somebody, anyone would do. The friend went along, to use his words, ‘for giggles.' They killed a young man with a sledge hammer.” She shrugged. “It's a disease, like hantavirus. You never think it will reach the border and then someone breathes in mouse feces in some hunting shack and winds up dead.”

“What's Montana coming to, huh?”

“It's no joking matter.”

“No, it isn't.”

Martha pushed the four-wheel-drive button as they turned onto the access road. Heading east toward the ridge Martha had pointed out earlier, the road rose, yellow snow packed into the ruts. Stranahan spoke over the growling of the gears. “So did you ever meet her, the lady Huntington?”

“A couple of times. She had a feral quality, an aloofness. I can't say I got to know her. Look, Stranny, are you okay? I'm having a hard time reading you.”

“I'm just tired from the flights.”

“Did you get into any trouble down there?”

“Not really. You know me.”

“That's just it. I do know you. Or I did.”

Stranahan shut his eyes. When he spoke, his voice could barely be heard above the engine. “Whose fault is that, Martha? Do you have any idea how many nights I walked Choti up the road last fall, just so I could see if your light was on?”

“You know I can't talk about that.”

“Then let's not talk about it.”

Martha downshifted. “Quit staring at me,” she said.

“I'm sorry.”

“Sorry for staring?”

“Sorry for bringing it up.”

“Just don't start being someone I don't know, okay? That fight you had with Buster Garrett, February, right? I heard about that. The man I know doesn't go into a bar picking fights.”

“He said the next time he saw me he was going to flush my head in the toilet.”

“That was two years ago, Sean. I'm the one who told you he'd said that, remember?”

“Two days, two years, it was out there. It needed to be addressed. I addressed it.”

“The way I heard it, he didn't even remember who you were.”

“I reminded him. He swung on me, I put him down. Long story short, as Sam would say.”

“You could have wound up in jail.”

“The Roadkill Saloon's in Park County. It wouldn't have been your jail.”

“That isn't the point.” Her exhalation made a bubbling sound. “You have a way with people, they're drawn to you. It isn't because you're all that goddamned charming, either. It's because they sense you're genuine. No, don't give me that roll of your eyes. I care about you. I don't want to see you lose what makes you you.”

“Is that why you're trying to throw a bone my way, to bring me out of my funk?”

“No. Because I'm a mother and it could have been my child in that chimney. Because Cindy was special. But that's only part of it. This one gets to you. You don't walk away from it the same person. We'll be there in a few minutes. You'll understand what I'm trying to say.”

She took her right hand off the steering wheel and again pressed her first two fingers against Stranahan's arm. “We okay?”

“Sure. We're okay, Martha.” He moved his arm away.

A
s a boy, Sean Stranahan had befriended a trapper in the Berkshire Mountains who bequeathed him the uncured hide of a red fox. His mother wouldn't let him bring it into the house, so Sean hung it in a tree until the taxidermy kit his father mail-ordered arrived. The result, his father told him, looked like the Tasmanian devil and smelled to high heaven. The odor inside the cabin recalled the memory. Ettinger left the door standing open and showed Sean the fireplace where the body had fallen onto Harold's lap.

“She looked like a Raggedy Ann with her eye buttons missing.” Martha shook her head. “In all my days . . .”

Stranahan nodded. He could feel it, all right, what she'd talked about earlier. There was death in the room, in this cabin in the woods. A different kind of darkness.

“I didn't tell you before,” she was saying, “but Cinderella was wearing a Santa hat. When your buddy Gallagher jabbed the poker up the chimney, the hat fell down into the fireplace.” She made a face. “I guess it makes more sense if she had it in a pants pocket. Wilkerson found some strands of Cinderella's hair on it; it matches hairs she found on the elkskin jacket I told you about. But there were hairs on the hat that weren't hers, too.”

“Oh?”

“Darker.”

“Does that mean anything to you?”

“Just that someone else had worn the hat.”

Sean nodded. “I really can't see Max being mixed up in this,” he said. “He comes across as a rogue, but that's an act.”

“Wrong man, wrong place, wrong time, huh? Yeah, I can't see him for it, either. Still, he's covering up. Maybe you can ask him about it. If I call on him he'll just antebellum up with the charm and turn his head so I'm looking at the pretty side of his face.”

“Is that even a word?”

“You know what I mean. I told him not to leave the valley.”

“I'll pay him a visit. What are we looking for, Martha?”

“I wish I knew.” They moved back into the main room and Martha began pulling drawers out of the built-in cupboards and setting them onto the floor. “Nobody ever detail searched this place,” she said, squatting down and shining a flashlight into the dark recesses. “Gigi bagged a lot of fiber evidence—that's another thing . . .”

“What?”

“She found fibers from the girl's shirt both above and below where she was found. It makes you think she broke into the cabin by shimmying down the chimney, then got stuck trying to climb back up.”

“But once she was inside, couldn't she get out by opening the door?”

“No, the lock's on the outside. You saw it.”

“How about climbing out a window?”

“I suppose she could have. If I had all the answers we wouldn't be here. You can stand around with your thumbs in your pockets or help me look.”

“Anyone check the root cellar?”

Ettinger shook her head. “You want the honor?”

“Not really. Last time I climbed down into one of these things the situation went south, if you recall.” He was remembering a cabin in the Cabinet Mountains, where he'd been shot at while cowering in the cellar.

Ettinger's grunt was unsympathetic. She handed Stranahan her flashlight. “I'll notify next of kin.”

The table was positioned over the cellar entrance and Sean had to
pull it aside to lift the iron rung recessed into the door. He pulled the door up and over, the hinges groaning. The cellar was little more than a crawl space, about the size of two stacked coffins. The earth had a smell like leaf rot, but compared to the odor above the floorboards, it wasn't unpleasant. Sean noted scattered pieces of two-by-four, not much else except a chipped shovel with half a handle. That wasn't surprising, given that the cellar had doubtlessly been ransacked by every teenager who skied in with a rental party. A trapdoor exerts a magnetic pull akin to the attic door in a horror movie. The skin crawls when you open it, but you open it.

Stranahan smiled at the way his mind tended to wander, and then his brow furrowed. He was looking at an anthill of dirt a half tone lighter than the rest of the floor. He shone his light on it, then raised the light up the nearest wall. At about waist height, there was a discoloration in the packed earth. The soil here was loose and he dug with his fingers. Only a few inches behind the wall his fingernails scraped against metal. He picked up the shovel. In less than a minute he had unearthed a rectangular metal box the size of a brick. He thumbed the soil away from the lid. It was a shortbread cookie tin with the image of a Swiss miss on the lid, wearing a scoop-neck frock that strained to contain her charms. She was holding a plate of cookies. He carried the tin up the steps and replaced the trapdoor.

“Buried treasure,” he announced, placing the tin on the table.

Martha grunted. “Gimme. No, don't touch it again. Let me put on my rubbers.” She donned a pair of latex gloves to examine the box. “This reminds me of the fruitcake tin my mother would bring out every Christmas. We'd put sugar cookies in it.” She pried the lid off with her fingernails. Inside was an unopened pack of playing cards with pictures of old fishing lures on the backs. She extracted a paperback book with a blonde on the cover.
A Purple Place for Dying,
by John D. MacDonald. She fished out the last item in the box, a miniature troll doll with green hair.

She bit her lip. “I think this is a geocache. I've never seen one before, but I think that's what this is. Do you know how they work?”

Stranahan nodded. “Last fall I found one in an abandoned boxcar up on the Big Hole. You sign up online to access a databank that lists a bunch of coordinates. Then you pick one in the area where you're headed and find your way with a GPS. There's an online logbook you sign when you get back home.”

“Uh-huh. And these are what, gifts?”

“The etiquette is, if you take something, you leave something else in its place.”

Ettinger fingered the troll doll. “There's something in it,” she said. She shook it. “Hear that?”

“Pop its head off,” Stranahan said.

The ticking sound had been made by a wafer of black plastic the size of a postage stamp. It was a four-gigabyte memory card for a digital camera, sealed in a plastic snap case.

“You wanted to know why I brought you along, Stranny? It's 'cause of stuff like this.” Ettinger pointed an accusatory finger. “This is what I mean when I tell people you manage to step into shit even if there's only one horse in the pasture.”

She got her laptop from the Cherokee. The card held one file, a high-definition video that opened with a wide-angle view of a narrow bed. The date of recording showed in white letters in the upper left corner—February 14. There was a woman's indistinct voice. Ettinger tapped the volume key.

“Go sit down,” the woman was saying. A man appeared, shirtless, and sat down on the edge of the bed, which squeaked under his weight. His face was obscured by a Venetian carnival mask, a devil face with red-and-black ram's horns. He was thin and looked tall, with a slight potbelly and chest hair distinguished by a whitish skunk stripe along the sternum. The hair on his head was combed straight back.

The video shook as the woman pulled the camera backwards. The frame settled. Now most of the bed was in view, as well as the chinked walls behind it.

“Stop it there,” Stranahan said.

Ettinger gave him a quizzical look.

“See that knot in the log? It's shaped like a heart.”

“I know what you're getting at,” Martha said. She paused the video.

They got up from the table and went into the bunkroom. There was a knot in the cabin's north wall identical to the one in the video. The bedframe in the video must have been one of the rusty steel frames stacked against the west wall. Stranahan's eyes ran up to the mattresses, which were suspended in loops of rope from J-hooks screwed into the ceiling beam, to keep mice out of the ticking.

“What are we looking at, Martha?”

The question was rhetorical and they sat back down and Martha resumed the video. In a few moments, the man was joined by a unmasked woman whose slightly bulging eyes made the rest of her face look narrow. A horse's tail of dark curly hair cascaded to her waist. She reached out of the frame to find what looked like a joint and took a hit, then placed the joint into the slit in the mouth of the mask. The man exhaled, a cloud of smoke rising from the sides of the mask, as if the devil was breathing fire. In a matter-of-fact manner, the woman removed her clothes, showing tufts of hair under her arms as she pulled up her gauzy top, and fished the man's penis out of his shorts. She performed oral sex in a lazy manner, like a cat washing itself, and lifted her eyes to look into the camera. “Welcome to the Mile and a Half High Club,” she said.

They made love, or rather had sex, in half a dozen positions. At first the woman would glance over at the camera and seemed to be putting on an act. Then for a while there was just the sound of the springs squeaking and the woman's moaning. She moaned for a long time, dragging her hair back and forth across the man's chest. When the man clasped the woman's buttocks, his right shoulder revealed an ink-blue tattoo the size of a silver dollar. Some kind of face, Stranahan thought, with words in a scroll banner. The resolution was too poor to reveal details. Finally the woman collapsed on top of him. The microphone picked up the sound of their breathing. The woman sat up and reached to turn off the camera. Rings glinted from all her
fingers. “Put that in your pipe and smoke it,” she said. And then to the man: “Talk about sleeping with the devil. Wow, huh?” The screen went blank.

Ettinger's face was crimson.

“I think I need a cigarette,” Stranahan said.

“Shut up.”

“Martha, come on, I mean you got to be able to see the humorous—”

“I said shut up.” She ejected the card and checked to make sure she'd properly copied the file onto the hard drive. She fast-forwarded through the video to the twelve-minute mark, when the couple shifted positions for the last time, the woman climbing on top, then leaning over to reach out of the frame, toward the floor. “Happy Valentine's Day,” the woman said, pulling a Santa hat over her head and tucking her hair behind her ears.