Hunter’s Dance (23 page)

XXXIV

The stone remained because it had already lain there so many years.

McIntire didn't get home soon. And when he did it was a bit late for even Leonie to make humanitarian visits, especially to someone who might well slam the door in her face.

Koski had demanded that they head straight to Greg Carlson's camp to confront him with Ross' suggestion that Bambi had returned there for his coat.

McIntire wasn't convinced that the trip was worthwhile. “Why would Carlson lie about Bambi coming back?”

“Only one reason that I can think of,” the sheriff said. “But Carlson didn't say that Bambi didn't come back. He said that he didn't
see
him come back. Maybe what he was lying about was being there himself.”

“He wouldn't have much reason to lie about that either. Anyway the tracks of the Morgan were
over
the tracks of Carlson's truck when we were there on the day after the murder. Bambi was the last person to drive in. So whenever he got there, Greg was around, unless he'd left on foot.”

“Or went off with somebody else,” Koski said. “So figure it this way, Bambi came back. They got in some kind of fight, and Carlson stabbed him.”

“With Karen Sorenson's scissors?” McIntire asked. “Where would he get it?”

“We don't know that it was Karen's scissors. She's not the only one with manicure scissors.”

“So Bambi interrupted Greg Carlson trimming his toenails, and Carlson stabbed him.”

“Well, maybe Bambi pulled the scissors first, and Carlson wrested it away from him.”

A showdown with three-inch scissors. It was as good a theory as any, better than some. But McIntire wasn't ready to relent. “Guibard says that Bambi might have hung on as much as an hour after he was injured, but he thinks he'd have been petering out pretty fast. And that if he'd moved around much after he was stabbed, he'd have bled more and died faster. If he was stabbed at the camp, I don't think he'd have had the stamina to drive back to the blacksmith shop and still walk across to the woodshed. Going by what Guibard says, he must have been attacked after he left the car, or in or around the car before he left it.”

“Well, let's go see what Professor Prospector's got to say.”

It was not to be. The spot where Greg Carlson habitually left his panel truck was empty.

“You don't suppose he's gone back to…where ever the hell it is he came from?” McIntire asked.

“I told him not to leave without telling me. Doesn't mean he wouldn't. I can't quite figure why he's still here. He's taking a pretty big chance.” McIntire had wondered about that, too. Heavy snow could happen any day. Carlson could end up buried until April.

Koski rolled the window down a crack and peered out. “Why don't you run on up and see if his stuff is still there?”

McIntire didn't trust himself to make a verbal reply, but his expression was apparently sufficient. The sheriff cranked up the window and leaned back. “He probably just went to town. I'll get Cecil on his tail.” He mumbled something more—words that included “Billy Corbin” and “way the hell out in the boondocks”—and was soon snoring in harmony with his canine sidekick. He came to as they entered the outskirts of Chandler, but had nothing more to say until McIntire drove around to the back of the jail and pulled up before the entrance to his living quarters.

“Hang on a minute, Mac. Maybe you can run on over and lock up that blacksmith shop 'til I get a chance to take a look at it. No telling when that'll be. It's been really tough without—”

“Sure, okay.” McIntire didn't need to hear the rest of Koski's lament. Locking up the blacksmith's garage, and taking a peek inside in the bargain, was one request McIntire was glad to oblige. “You still got those concert programs?” he asked. “The ones from the Morgan?”

The sheriff looked mystified, either at the request or the temerity McIntire showed in making it. “Yup,” he replied.

“Could you check where and when they're from and see if the name Pavil turns up on them?” Koski shrugged and went inside. He was back in less than five minutes with a sturdy padlock and the information that both programs were for concerts given in 1949 by the Sacramento Symphony Orchestra, and Anatole Pavil was listed under
first violin
and
concert master
, whatever the hell that was.

So Pavil had wound up in California, and evidence of that had wound up in Bambi's car. Bambi had plotted his own abduction to raise money with the intent of going to California. It was a bit too much to be coincidence. Had he been in touch with Pavil? Or was he just planning to knock on the musician's door and introduce himself? Well, it would explain why Bambi didn't simply prevail upon Mum and Gramps to fund a trip out west. It didn't explain how he had learned the truth about his parentage.
Pavil
. There might be another revelation here.

“Pete,” McIntire asked. “What about the ransom note? You still got that?”

“Hell, no. The state police grabbed it and ain't letting go. Why?”

McIntire tried to picture that note. Among the jumble of print, the canary yellow capitals had stood out from the rest. McIntire couldn't remember exactly what the letters were. Only that he'd recognized that they were cut from the wrapper of a bar of Palmolive soap.
Pavil
. It would fit. And would mean that it wasn't only Wendell who had received a coded message in that ransom note. Had Bonnie Morlen recognized that taunt, if that was the intent? Or had she been too distraught to notice? The real question was, if she had seen Pavil's name embedded in that letter, who did she think was responsible?

Koski asked again, “What you want the note for?”

McIntire told the sheriff, “Never mind,” bid him goodnight, and reclaimed the Lincoln. As he backed out into the street, his affection for the modest Studebaker was beginning to wane.

***

Bambi's photographs should be back from developing by now. He might as well pick them up. With any luck, the kid had snapped a shot of a scissors-wielding maniac, and McIntire could go home to a good night's sleep, too.

As he left the drugstore, McIntire saw Greg Carlson's truck rattle to a stop in front of the Northwoods Inn across the street. He crossed over and followed the flannel-garbed professor inside. Pete Koski might prefer to have the first shot at the guy himself, but, if the sheriff was picky, he could damn well get himself another chauffeur.
Run on up and check.
Shit. McIntire wondered, as he frequently did, what kind of aspect he must present that led people to assume they could order him around like a feeble-minded apprentice…and what was the sheriff hoping to accomplish with all those not so subtle hints about the dear departed Billy and needing a deputy out in this godforsaken neck of the woods? It would be a cold day in hell when McIntire made himself Pete Koski's full-time lackey.

His quarry was seated at the bar, ordering a beer, when McIntire plunked himself down beside him. “—and whatever my friend here is having,” Carlson finished. McIntire nodded and requested Scotch and water. “And better make it quick,” he added, “while I'm still a friend.” He turned to Carlson. “I stopped to ask you a few more questions.”

Carlson didn't seem surprised but did appear inordinately eager to please. “Oh? You bet. Just step into my office.” He slid off the stool and walked to an empty booth.

For someone who'd gone from academia to five months in the woods, losing one of his partners to murder, and ostensibly searching for something he hadn't found, he looked good, well fed and hearty. No trace of disillusionment showed in the turquoise eyes. And no trace of the nausea he'd been suffering on the last occasion they'd met.

“You ever drink any of Bambi Morlen's liquor?” McIntire asked.

“I never saw Bambi with any liquor.”

McIntire let it go and went on, “When Bambi was found—dead—he was wearing a heavy coat.”

“And that strikes you as strange? If he hadn't been, he probably woulda froze to death and saved somebody the trouble of killing him. Unless the coat was mine, what's it got to do with me?”

“According to Ross Maki, when they left the dance, Bambi didn't have the jacket. He says Bambi was peeved because he'd forgotten it at the camp. It looks like he went back to get it.”

“What time?'

“After one o'clock…maybe closer to two,” McIntire told him. If Carlson had been there the entire evening, why the concern about the time? “Can you explain how he could have come into the cabin without you seeing him?”

“It was dark.” Carlson gave an exasperated sigh. “He didn't come in. I'd of heard him. The coat was probably in my car.”

“In your car?”

“When the kids were out fooling around, they left a lot of their junk in my car. It saved them a trip up the trail to the cabin.”

It made sense. McIntire could check it out with Ross. If true, it also meant that Carlson, or his vehicle, was indeed at home that night, at least after the time Bambi retrieved his jacket. They'd already concluded that Bambi's Morgan was the last car to drive into that spot.

McIntire sipped his drink. The whisky could not compare with Esko Thomson's brand. “Why haven't you let anybody know that your profession is anthropology?”

“Nobody's asked.”

The classic answer. The classic evasion. “You've led people to believe that you're here to find uranium. Why?” McIntire persisted. “What is it you're really looking for?”

“I'm not looking for anything specific. I'm researching the primitive people of this area.”

“So why keep it a secret?”

Carlson didn't answer immediately, only signaled for another round. Then he leaned forward as if eager to impart the secret. The academic shone through the dingy flannel.

“Copper.” He looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “Copper was the first metal to be used by humans, beginning about ten thousand years ago, toward the end of the last ice age. Copper was used all over the globe, but this is the only place it was found in quantity just lying around at or near the earth's surface, waiting to be picked up. Here and on Isle Royale. Artifacts made from Michigan copper have been found all over the western hemisphere, and,” he paused and spoke in a barely audible voice, “I believe, the eastern hemisphere, too.”

McIntire assumed some response was expected. He raised his eyebrows.

“By three thousand BC, copper was in great demand in Europe,” the professor went on. “Evidence is that the techniques used to mine copper here at that time were exactly the same as those used in the old world.”

He ceased whispering, leaned back, and sipped his beer. “The copper here and at Isle Royale has been mined for centuries, but no one really knows who those early miners were. I'm convinced people crossed the Atlantic to acquire copper here thousands of years ago. They have to have left evidence, and I'm going to find it. But not everybody wants that kind of evidence found, not on their private land.”

McIntire remembered that mystery rock on Shawanok Mountain. “Like the Shawanok Club?” he asked. “That's why you cultivated Bambi's acquaintance, to get onto Club land?”

“Not exactly. I ran into Bambi when I was on Club property. He was out taking pictures. I had my Geiger counter. He was interested in learning to use it, and I needed some help with surveying. But it didn't hurt that he could get me into the Club, more or less legitimately.”

“Did Bambi know what you were really up to?”

“Up to? You make it sound like I was plotting a Communist invasion. But no, he thought it was uranium, same as everybody else.”

He pulled out his wallet. “Take a gander.” Like a proud father, he produced a couple of snapshots. “This,” he said, extending the first photograph, “was taken in Wales.” It showed a large, flat rock precariously balanced on three smaller ones, a sort of miniature Stonehenge.

“And this one,” he slapped down the second, “this one was taken at the Club.”

There it was. Perched on a slab of exposed bedrock. The notorious monolith. McIntire stared. Comparison to the thermos bottle resting beside it showed that the rock was slightly bigger than the average bed pillow and sat about six inches off the ground on three rounded softball-sized stones.

“That's it? That's what all the fuss is about?”

“It's a dolmen. They're found on hilltops all over the world. It might not look like much, but somebody built this structure. I plan to find out who.”

“Structure?” McIntire said. “That is
not
a structure. That is a pile of rocks, and not even an especially appealing pile of rocks.”

“But somebody put it there.”

“I guess maybe somebody, or something, did. And it could have been anybody, at any time. A couple of bored loggers or reasonably strong Clubbers. It didn't take any great feat of either engineering or strength to set this up. Maybe it's a cairn of some kind, or an improvised picnic table, or just something dropped by a passing glacier.”

“That could be. That's why I'm going to find corroborating evidence.”

“But nobody here knows what you're looking for?”

“No.” Carlson cleared his throat. “Nobody who would.… No.” He swigged down the last of his Grain Belt. “Anything else?”

“I expect Koski will be looking for you. He thinks you might have taken a powder. How much longer do you plan to sit out there in the bush? Kind of tempting fate, aren't you?”

“Well, yeah, I gotta get outa there pretty soon. But you know how it is. We never really believe in snow until we're up to our ass in it. I might hang around for a while though, get a room here in town. I'm on a year sabbatical.”

“And you want to spend it here? In winter?”

“You're here, are you not?”