The Royal Wulff Murders (26 page)

“A couple hundred bucks buys a lot of paint brushes,” Sam said.

Stranahan reconsidered. “I’d like to, but it depends what I find out from the sheriff. Can you wait till later this afternoon before giving your client to someone else?”

Sam nodded.

“Do you think we could float through the stretch where you found the body?”

Sam nodded again. “But I got to warn you, this time of year you have to get an early start. If my client’s up for it, we’ll be on the water by five-thirty.”

Stranahan said thanks for the coffee and Sam saw him to his rig, Killer loping ahead of them.

“That shirt you’re wearing belongs in a trash can,” Stranahan said, gunning the engine to life.

Sam looked down. He shrugged. “I’m not a man to give up on a garment just ’cause it’s got a little age,” he said.

When Stranahan glanced into the rearview mirror, Sam was using his good arm to flip him the bird.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“H
ave a chair, Sean.”

Martha Ettinger sat with her forearms on her desk, her hands folded, her khakis pressed, her badge polished.

“Thanks, Eric. You can go now.”

The deputy who had escorted Stranahan through the Law and Justice Center shut the door.

Ettinger studied the man across from her, stretching the silence.

“Did you see Vareda Beaudreux?” she asked.

“I did.”

“All petered out then, huh?”

Stranahan looked at her.

“That was a low blow. I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just mad at myself. I had no business involving you in this.”

“I’m involved with or without you.”

“So you are. Okay, you go first.”

Stranahan gave her the short version of his conversation with Sam about whirling disease.

Ettinger frowned.

“It’s interesting,” she said at length.

“It’s not just interesting. It’s illegal. At least dumping the fish is.”

“But it’s not murder.”

“But it’s motive.”

Ettinger sat back and clasped her hands behind her head.

“Convince me.”

“Start with what we know,” Sean said. “Our victim, Jerry Beaudreux, gets a summer job at a Montana hatchery. The work is basically janitorial; he cleans fish raceways, tanks, stuff like that. Dispenses pellet foods. Takes the truck into Great Falls to pick up supplies. He’s a bright boy and a hard worker but he’s young, and, according to his sister, he comes across as naive.

“Someone connected to the hatchery is trucking trout to the state’s best trout streams. That’s illegal whether they are diseased or not, by the way. Beaudreux becomes suspicious when he notices people loading fish into a truck after hours. When he asks his boss what’s up, he’s lied to. His imagination kicks in. He decides to play detective. The next week he follows the truck to Ennis, where the driver stops at a bar. He phones his sister to bring her up to date. That’s the last anyone hears from him. A day later, Sam finds his body twisting in the Madison, forty miles upriver from Ennis.”

Stranahan leaned forward and put his fists down on Ettinger’s desk. “I think the tail was made. I think the truck driver confronted him, drowned him in that pond you’ve been looking for, and then, to deflect attention, dumped him into the river and parked Beaudreux’s car at the campground at Quake Lake. Whatever this young man found out, it cost him his life.”

“You have a suspect?”

Stranahan thought about the dog he’d seen on the Big Blackfoot River, the thin thread that tied it to a half-remembered name. He’d passed up one opportunity to tell her about it and again decided to keep the information to himself.

“No,” he said at length. “And I’m not changing the subject, but did you ever get ballistics on the bullet that killed the antelope?”

“You can forget that angle. The tech says the bullet from the critter doesn’t match the one taken out of Meslik. One’s a Nosler Partition, the other’s a Speer Spitzer.”

Stranahan interrupted. “That doesn’t mean they can’t have been fired from the same rifle.”

“You want to let me finish? The rifling marks on the bullets don’t match. They’re both .243 Winchester, but from different rifles. Gus Gentry may have had a beef with your buddy, but he didn’t shoot him. At least he didn’t with the rifle used on the antelope.”

Ettinger continued. “But let’s get back to your little adventure the other night. We ran the plate number you gave me. It’s registered to the hatchery. Beaudreux allegedly told his sister it was a vehicle he’d never seen before, but there you are. I’m sure there could be an explanation—it was kept in a garage, parked in Great Falls, lent to someone. But we can’t tie it to an individual.”

“On the other hand it implicates the hatchery.”

“That it does,” Ettinger agreed. “But we’re talking about a murder, Sean. As in somebody making somebody dead. And I’m supposed to believe this is over diseased fish? Could a hatchery make enough money on the deal to justify drowning a man?” It wasn’t a question so much as thinking out loud. “Tell you what we’ll do. I’ll call in a favor and have someone make a discreet inquiry into that hatchery, see who runs it, who it contracts for, any connection it might have to whirling disease study. I don’t want to raise an alarm and have them destroy evidence that could help us down the road.”

“Thanks,” Stranahan said.

“For what?”

“I don’t know. Taking me seriously.”

“Yes, well, your guess is almost as good as mine. What do you say we get a coffee and kick this around some more. I think better behind the wheel.”

“Y
ou sure? You look like you need the caffeine.”

Ettinger had pulled the Jeep up to the window of the coffee kiosk on the outskirts of town. She told the bikini barista she’d arrest her if
she dropped her top another inch, ordered a grande half-caf latte with a double shot and a small regular coffee for Stranahan, over his objection. She took a sip and wiped her lip.

“I hate to say I’m addicted to these things,” she said. She reached for the cell that was vibrating on her hip.

“Ettinger… uh-huh, slow down, Walt… you’re calling from a pay phone you say…. What campground?… I’ll be damned…. Give me the number…. Hell yes, secure it. I’m on my way. And Walt, stand by a minute, okay?”

She pulled ahead a few yards and asked Stranahan to hand her the notebook in the glove compartment.

She snapped it from his hand, flipped pages, and punched numbers. Waiting, she impatiently bobbed her head.

“Ms. Janice, this is Sheriff Ettinger. Your brother said he’d be at your place…. Great, could I speak with him? It’s important…. Okay, I’ll wait.”

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel.

“You really are bad luck, Sean. There’s been a murder. It—”

“Harold?… Yeah, your lucky day…. Remember that fellow with the voice, the camp host over at Quake Lake? Well, he’s on the floor of his trailer with a hole in his heart, body’s in rigor… No, not a gunshot, a blade…. The knife’s gone…. No, we don’t know for sure it was a knife. Walt’s holding down the fort until the ME gets there. You’re up in Pony, I’m just outside Bridger. I could pick you up in Norris in twenty minutes. The School House Café, it’s out of business… that’s the one… um-hmm….‌I’ll have him sit in his truck so he doesn’t muck up the tracks… whatever you say. Thanks, Harold.”

She jammed her forefinger at the phone, started bobbing her head, and rolled her eyes when the connection went through. She spoke to Deputy Hess and then shifted her attention to Stranahan.

“You want to hitch a ride with the law, see how it’s done on our side of the tracks?” she said with a mirthless smile.

“I don’t know. Are you going to deputize me?”

“Like in a posse? Come on.” She made a shooing gesture, flicking the backs of her hands at him. “Seriously,” she said.

“If I’d known, I would have had you order me a twelve-ounce,” Stranahan said. “Let’s go.”

S
tranahan had not expected an Indian. Black hair in a braid, worn jeans, flannel shirt with the arms cut off. Tattooed elk tracks circled the upper biceps of his right arm; weasel tracks hunted around the left. Harold Little Feather had a knife on his belt, wore cowboy boots showing more mud than leather. He climbed into the Jeep smelling of horse flesh and sweat.

“No kit?” Martha said.

“It’s a no-doubt murder; thought you’d book a crime scene investigator. Not much call for fingerprint dust breaking ponies.”

“But you’re still certified?”

“Yep.”

“I got the kit,” she said. “Closest CSI is Helena and he’s got a tube up his pecker as we speak.”

“What for?”

“Kidney stones.”

“Better than a knife in the heart,” Harold said.

W
alter Hess had strung orange crime-scene tape tree trunk to tree trunk to cordon off the trailer. Down the camp loop road a young couple stood beside a girl straddling a bicycle; it was the little hoofer who’d been dancing on the picnic table in the abandoned site on Ettinger’s first visit to the campground. The tyke was turning the bike in tight circles, her shoes scuffing the ground.

Walt lifted his chin toward the family.

“Daughter found the body. She knocked on the door wanting to
play with the cat. No answer, peered through the window, saw feet poking out. Curious thing she was, she walked right in on him. Then ran around the loop screaming to high heaven. Campers were climbing trees. Figured she’d seen a grizzly bear; they had a sow with two cubs mosey through last week.”

“When’s Doc Hanson going to show?”

“Left town an hour ago.”

Walt acknowledged the tracker. “I got the relay—the girl’s pop used the pay phone over to Loop B—I was checking out that kitchen fire up at West Fork Cabins. I walked straight along the dirt lane yonder, staying on the grass so’s not to disturb any tracks”—Walt pointed at the approach to the trailer—“opened the door with a handkerchief, two fingers to the carotid to make sure I was dealing with a body, neck in rigor, no other contact. Backed out, called in. Don’t think anybody else been up here since the girl.”

“You’re not leaving me any excuses,” Harold said.

“Seen too many crime scenes compromised in Chicago.” He shook his head. “Those uniforms in the Third, they couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if you wrote instructions on the sole.”

“You did good, Walt,” Ettinger said. “I could kiss you but I’m not going to.”

Little Feather squatted down. To Walt: “Let me see the bottom of your boot… now the other. Make a clear track here where it’s damp. You got a pronounced pronation on the right side, you know that? It’s okay, I won’t tell anybody. Which side of the drive did you go up?” Walt pointed. “Okay, best thing now, just stay right here.”

He turned his back to them and walked off toward the dirt ruts that led to the trailer.

Ettinger turned to her deputy. “Go talk to the family. I’ll stay here until Harold clears the path.”

To Stranahan: “Keep everyone clear of the scene.”

He nodded, but something had irritated his mind, something he’d heard or seen—what was it? A mosquito stung his neck and he slapped it away.

“Sean?”

“Sure, okay.”

He watched Walt walk toward the family, the girl casting her eyes down as the badge advanced, kicking at the kickstand of her bike.

That was it.

“Sheriff?”

Ettinger didn’t respond. She had the crime scene bag and was standing at the roadside, watching the Indian.

“Stay here,” she said absently to Stranahan. She walked off toward Little Feather, who gestured her to stay on his side of the path.

A half hour later, the ME’s station wagon pulled up alongside the county rigs. Doc Hanson climbed out, gave Stranahan a perfunctory nod, and walked to the trailer. Walt came by a minute later, tapped two fingers to his hat in acknowledgment, and also went to the trailer. He hooked the door open with a forefinger and entered. Stranahan could hear Martha Ettinger’s voice inside.

“S
heriff would like to see you.” It was Walt, walking up the path. He jerked a hand toward the trailer.

The ME passed him on his way out. No nod this time.

The camp host’s neck was outstretched like a baby bird’s, his body contorted on the floor. A blood bubble blown out of his mouth had partly collapsed, so that it spread a red film over the side of his face. It was close inside the trailer and smelled like BO with a tang of cat urine.

Stranahan breathed through his mouth, his eyes roving. Ettinger told him, Don’t be shy, have a good look.

He took a couple steps toward the body. The host’s tabby cat, which had been watching the proceedings with wild eyes from the top of a
microwave set on the kitchen counter, jumped down and crouched on top of the man’s stomach. When Stranahan bent down, it retreated under the Formica table that stood on a removable pedestal so that the benches could expand into a bed. The cat opened its mouth from the darkened recess in a silent hiss. Bending over had been a mistake. Stranahan felt the bile rising in his gorge.

“You ever seen him before?” It was Ettinger, standing behind him inside the door.

Stranahan swallowed the acrid taste. “No.”

“Then you can go back to the vehicle. Skeeter repellent’s in the glove compartment. They’re thick out there.”

T
wo hours later, after the body had been stretchered out to the ME’s Suburban, Stranahan, Ettinger, and Hess convened at the Jeep. Little Feather remained in the trailer, bagging fiber samples from the camp host’s clothes closet and area rugs to compare against foreign threads that might show up on the body.

“Did you get anything back there?” Stranahan said in a low voice.

“Lots, sure, but I don’t know if it counts for anything,” Ettinger said.

“Tracks?”

Hess spoke up. “Harold plays it close to the chest. He’ll tell us on Indian time.”

Hess opened the door of his Cherokee and brought out a can of soda. He took a swig.

“It’s warm, but it cuts the taste of that trailer. You want?”

Ettinger and Stranahan both took a swallow.

“You breathe in,” the deputy was saying, “you swallow the bad air, it makes a gas in your stomach. You’ll fart an hour later and smell it. You take a crap in the morning, déjà vu. That means same thing all over again.”