Death Takes a Gander (2 page)

Once freed, she gathered the loose end of the net in her arms. When in use, the net was clipped top and bottom to two ten-foot metal poles, then stretched loosely between them like a volleyball net. When not in use, the webbing was furled around a single pole like a stowed jib on a sailboat. The wind must have torn this one free.

Reeling in the cloth, she worked her way toward the far pole. Metal struck metal, and she snapped her head up. A dark figure lurked near the pole.

Angela’s heart leapt to her throat. Her free hand found her gun. “Ian?”

No answer.

Whoever it was appeared to be standing on a rock beside the mist-net pole. The pole itself leaned at an odd angle, and the top appeared wedged in a tree.

“Ian, is that you?” Her voice sounded sharp and fearful in her ears. Adrenaline pumped through her veins. She fought the urge to turn and run. Instead, Angela raised her arm and leveled her gun. “Identify yourself.”

Again, no answer.

Keeping her eyes and gun trained on the figure, she moved closer. Beneath her feet, the land took on new contours. She stumbled. A gust of wind blasted the trees, filtering through with icy fingers that stroked the back of her neck.

The figure twisted and struck the pole, causing it to bend, and nearly knocking it free of the tree.

Metal struck metal.

Her stomach flipped.

Tangled in the mesh, toes dancing on the ground, Ian’s body swung in the wind.

“It’s official.” William Kramner,
director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Mountain-Prairie Division, stood in front of Angela’s desk and rustled a sheaf of papers in his hand. “Come with me.”

Angela spotted Ian’s name scrawled across the front of the report and rose to her feet.

“Is that the autopsy?”

Without answering, Kramner turned, gesturing for Angela to follow.

“Excuse me, sir, but—”

“Up-p-p-p-p,” the director clucked. He was slight and balding, and thin fingers had worried his remaining fringe of hair into horns at the back of his head. His regulation brown uniform dangled on his frame, his shirt billowing out behind him as he wound his way through the cubicles.

He looked like a greater prairie chicken strutting his stuff, thought Angela, pursing her lips. No doubt her unkind assessment had to do with the fact that Kramner had kept her tethered to her desk for the past two weeks. Maybe if the investigation on Ian’s death were closed, he would assign her back into the field.

“Shut it,” he ordered, striding through the doorway of his office and circling the desk.

Angela swung the door closed.

“Take a seat.” He pointed to a chair facing a window that offered a fabulous view. Rooftops and treetops gave way to the mountains, a jagged line of purple peaks crowned by white caps of snow, stretching along the horizon, looking like the negative image of a hot fudge sundae.

Angela pulled her attention back to Kramner and folded herself into the chair. He sat down behind his desk and opened the report. “I’m going to cut to the chase. The investigators ruled Ian’s death a suicide.”

Angela felt the blood drain from her face.

An accident maybe, but suicide?

“That’s crazy, sir.”

Kramner folded his hands across the pages of the report. “Maybe, maybe not. There are reasons.” He pushed the file folder toward her. “Take a look.”

Angela hesitated, then leaned forward and picked up the report. She skimmed the contents.

Two things jumped out. One, Ian’s pending retirement wasn’t solely voluntary, and two, the mist net had been tampered with.

According to Ian’s doctor, Ian had been recently diagnosed with a heart condition. Instructed to take it easy, there would have been no chance of his passing his periodic physical, and he would have been forced out of the Service. Family members claimed he was despondent.

Then there was the mist net. It had been wrapped three times around his neck, and the pole wedged against the trunk of a tree in order to lend support under the strain of his weight.

Angela closed the report and laid it back on Kramner’s desk. “I don’t believe he killed himself.”

Kramner’s head snapped up.

“What makes you so sure?” he asked, standing and circling his desk. He started pacing the floor between the chair she sat in and the window, a trampled strip of carpet signaling the behavior as his standard M.O. “Well?”

“My gut.” Not that he would place a lot of stock in her instincts. “Ian had plans for retirement. He’d already lined up another job. He was going to work search and rescue.”

Kramner stopped pacing and flicked a finger against the report. “According to his wife, the health issue knocked him out there as well. He learned about it the day of his death.”

Angela swallowed. “Then why did he call me for backup?”

“Who knows? Maybe he wanted to save the swan. Maybe he didn’t want some tourist finding his body.” Kramner eyed her through thick black glasses that dented the bridge of his nose. “I know it’s hard to accept, but—”

“How about his field notebook?” she interrupted.

“Nobody ever found it.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“Look, Ian was a good man, but we both know he took lousy notes. He kept it all upstairs.” Kramner tapped the side of his head and resumed pacing. “We searched the lake area, searched his vehicle, and had his wife check at home. I doubt he took many notes that night, and if so, I’ll bet you they landed in the lake.”

“How do you figure?” She felt the tension building in her body and considered joining Kramner in his self-imposed march. Instead, she gripped the arms of her chair.

Again Kramner gestured toward the report. “His clothes were wet. The evidence indicates he wrestled with the swan. He must have called for backup when he realized his heart condition wouldn’t allow him to carry the bird out.”

“So the consensus is, he called for backup and then hung himself?” Even Kramner had to realize how ludicrous that sounded.

“Do you have a better idea?”

Angela glanced back at the report.

“It could have been an accident.”

“Not the way the net was wrapped around his neck and wedged into the crook of the tree for support. That was staged.”

“Then maybe someone murdered him.”

Kramner’s step faltered.

She took it as a sign to go on. “Ian was meeting with someone that afternoon about a case he’d been working for more than a year. He didn’t share the details with me, or a name, but what if that person gave him a lead that led him to Barr Lake? What if his cover was blown?” She gave her words time to sink in. “Do you have any idea what he was investigating?”

“You were his partner,” Kramner said. “You tell me.”

The words struck home. Angela recoiled against the back of her chair. He was right. She
was
Ian’s partner, his brand-new rookie partner. Yet, it was her job to know what he was working on and to protect his backside. She had failed him, and now Ian was dead.

Kramner pivoted and walked toward her. “It’s my policy to let my agents operate with autonomy. If they need help, they can come to me, but I believe in allowing my men to do their jobs without a lot of interference.” Reaching the end of his arc, he spun around again. “Besides, we both know what he was doing out at the lake. Dispatch relayed a call about the swan to him shortly after six o’clock.”

A little more than an hour before dispatch had relayed the backup call from Ian to her.

“For now,” Kramner said, spreading his fingertips across the folder on his desk, “this report stands.”

Angela swallowed. “That means his wife and kids are out the insurance money.”

“Unfortunate,” agreed Kramner.

“He would never do that to them.” Besides, Angela had seen him around animals, especially birds. There was no way he would have taken his own life if it had also meant taking the swan’s. “Plus, he would have died trying to save that bird.”

“Perhaps.” Kramner moved back behind his desk. “Sometimes there is no telling what goes through a man’s mind. The important thing now is what happens next.” Kramner sat down and scooted his chair up to his desk. “With Ian gone, I don’t have a supervising agent, and you haven’t completed your training yet.”

She braced herself for the blow. Was he planning to fire her?

“That means I am now your acting supervisor, and everything you do must be cleared through me. In your case, autonomy is out of the question.”

Angela frowned. “Why is that, sir?”

Kramner pinned her with his googly eyes. “Your own partner didn’t trust you, as evidenced by the fact that he withheld information from you on the case he was working on the night he died.”

She couldn’t refute that.

“For right now, you can tackle clearing out Ian’s desk.”

“I was hired as a field agent.”

“And I’ll do my best to get you back out there. But for now, your job is creating order out of chaos. Perhaps in your quest to unearth Ian’s desktop you’ll find the answers you’re seeking regarding his death. Regardless, it should keep you busy for a month.”

Much to Kramner’s consternation, it had taken Angela five days.

For the first three, she had pored over the rubble, seeking some semblance of order. In the end she had bowed to Kramner. To have called Ian a lousy note-taker was generous. Her partner had scribbled his notes on napkins, bits of paper, tattered legal pads—anywhere one could apply pen to paper. His chicken scratch was worse than that of any doctor, lawyer, or engineer, and there seemed to be no method of organization—no dates, no case references, few names. In short, she figured it would take a crack decoder months—no, years—to unscramble the mess. How Ian had compiled his cases and earned such respect was beyond her.

Again, the answer seemed to fall in line with Kramner’s assessment. Ian kept track of details in his head. According to his wife, he had a photographic memory. He jotted things down, but once written he never looked at the piece of paper again.

Okay, thought Angela, he may have filed everything in memory, but he amassed a pile of notes. He had to have some system for retrieval. Picking up a piece of paper from his desk, she studied it, then retrieved another. There had to be a common denominator. Her eyes blurred the words. She blinked and focused.

Animals
.

Angela reached for another piece of paper. That was it! Every piece of paper referenced an animal. If she sorted the collection by type and taped them onto 8 1/2 x 11-inch sheets of paper, she could bind the collection in spiral notebooks by category.

It took her two days to accomplish the task. If the chicken scratch mentioned an animal, it went in the corresponding notebook—fish with fish, bird with birds. The most recent notes—the pieces at the top of the pile—went into the books toward the front. The pieces farther down went toward the back. Little by little, piece by piece, she applied method to the madness.

“Impressive!” Kramner said when she’d finished, turning one of the notebooks in his hands. “Did you unearth any information to further your theory?”

“In relation to Ian’s death?” She hated admitting defeat. “No, sir.”

Kramner’s mouth twitched. “I didn’t think so.” Setting the notebook down on his desk, he paced toward the window. “I take it you want back out in the field.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You do understand, without a field supervisor I can’t assign you much?”

She nodded, feeling her pulse quicken. A case was a case.

“I do have something I could use your help with.”

Never speak ill of the dead
.

Or what? she wondered. They’ll come back to haunt you? What if you never actually spoke? Could the dearly departed read your mind?

“Don’t even think about it,” Angela said aloud, chasing back Ian’s specter. His death had haunted her for weeks. If she’d gotten out to Barr Lake sooner, he might still be alive. Of course, the same could be said had he trusted her and told her what he was up to.

And
that
was why Kramner had assigned her the duty of checking fish at a local tournament. Not because Ian possessed him to do so. But because Kramner didn’t trust her either.

Angela glanced at her watch. Five thirty a.m. She was on time. So where was John Frakus, the director of the Elk Park Chamber of Commerce, the man in charge of this show?

Pulling her keys from the ignition, she dropped them into her pocket and reached for her gloves. Except for her truck, the Elk Park Visitors Center parking lot was deserted. Two streetlights bathed the area in a yellow glow, highlighting one set of tire tracks in the six inches of fresh snow. Hers.

Maybe she should check out the building? It was possible he’d come in from the other side.

The center was a large two-story building with a huge wraparound deck covered with benches and snow. In front, an oversized sculpture of a Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep highlighted a circular entrance. In back, the deck jutted out over Black Canyon Creek.

Angela tried the doors on both sides. The building was locked up tight. Above her, wind-pummeled trees shook snow from their branches like dogs shedding water, and she dove for the eaves. Then the wind died, and a high-pitched honking shattered the dawn.

That’s odd
. To her way of thinking, geese normally honked in oboe tones. These were definitely honking in clarinet.

Angela headed down the bike path. Blanketed in snow, it wandered eastward, separated from the golf course to the north by a thicket of willows and alders stripped bare by the winter winds. A playground for warblers in the summer, the thicket now housed a flock of black crows that inhabited the area year-round. In a semicircle to the west, the jagged peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park rimmed the town and lake like giants at the edge of a frozen pool. And to the south, a copse of ponderosa pines gave way to the lakeshore.

Staring out over the ice, she listened to the honking of geese. The high-pitched sounds interspersed with squeaks indicated something was wrong.

The ice ran deep at this end of the reservoir. In the distance, a dozen small fishing huts, decorated with flag banners, dotted the lake’s surface. The huts made Angela think of an R.E.I. winter camping display—no doubt John Frakus’s idea in celebration of Elk Park’s First Annual Ice Fishing Jamboree.

My reason for being here, she reminded herself.

She checked her watch again, then turned off the path, heading toward the lake through the Paris Mills Memorial Bird Sanctuary. Frakus, wherever he was, could wait. The birds were more important. The geese would be in open water if they could find some. The only possibilities were where Black Canyon Creek emptied into the reservoir or near the spillway on the other side. Based on the honking, she opted for Black Canyon Creek.

Circling right, she stayed close to the trees. Arriving at the mouth of the creek, she turned left, skirting the west bank of the promontory. Here, pools of dark water met blue layers of ice, swirling in gentle eddies before giving way to the harder expanse of white.

She tramped along the lake’s edge for ten minutes, casting about with a flashlight. She found nothing on the open water, and the honking of the geese had faded. Giving up, she turned back toward the truck.

Wait!
Was that movement she’d seen?

She aimed the flashlight across the frozen expanse. Several yards out, away from the open water, a Canada goose pounded its wings, then collapsed on the ice.

Angela flashed on Barr Lake, on the spent swan, on the mist net.

Her heart pounded.