The Bangtail Ghost Read online

  “I got a feeling it isn’t going to be pretty,” Sam said under his breath.

  It wasn’t. Although the remains of the woman’s body were partially shrouded by a blue terry-cloth bathrobe and lay under a covering of snow, muting the carnage, it was still difficult to look at. On the crest of the ridge a spray pattern of blood showed where an artery had been torn and the woman had taken her last breaths. From there the body had been dragged twenty yards to the place where it was eaten. Martha’s eyes were drawn to a boot. The rabbit-fur collar was bloodstained and it took a moment for her to realize that a foot was still inside the boot. Somehow this bothered her more than the mangling of the body. She bent down and scraped away some of the snow covering the bathrobe, revealing a pattern of calico kittens playing with yarn balls.

  She stood up and put her hands on her hips. All around the body were delicate feather patterns where the eagles had touched their wings to the snow. They had been busy with their beaks for quite some time, Martha thought, for several of the impressions were drifted in, where others were freshly made. Still, she doubted they had consumed more than a few pounds of flesh. She saw something red that wasn’t blood and fished a headlamp with a bright forehead strap from the snow. She slipped the end of a stick through the band and picked it up. The switch was in the “on” position, but the batteries had died. Headlamps no longer faded as they lost juice, but flickered rapidly and abruptly went out. She looked at Sean. “This was that star you saw.”

  Sean recalled the lights and realized that he had been witness, if at some remove, to this woman’s last moments on Earth. He became aware of Martha speaking.

  “We get back to the trailhead, I’ll call Fish, Wildlife and Parks. They have a special response team to investigate this kind of thing. I’ll get a houndsman on the horn, too.”

  Sean shook his head. “I haven’t gone back up where the lion confronted me, but I’m pretty sure it had an old kill there. I could smell it. Now why would it leave a fresh kill to visit an older kill on the other side of the canyon?”

  “Maybe what you were smelling was the cat,” Martha said.

  Sam was shaking his head. “I’ve chased lion. The hounds can smell them but you can’t. They don’t give off much odor, compared to, say, a bear or a wolf.”

  Martha grunted. “Maybe that scream you heard wasn’t a cat at all.”

  “What else could it have been?”

  “I don’t know. The wind. The windmills of your mind.”

  “You think I made it up?”

  “No.” She pulled at her lip. “But I think when we start trying to second-guess each other, it’s time to make the calls to people who might have answers.”

  Sean nodded. He unknotted the red silk scarf he was wearing and tied it to a tree limb, a hunter’s trick to keep scavengers at bay.

  “You want,” Sam said, “I could piss on the perimeter. Haven’t lost an ounce of venison to a bear or coyote yet.”

  “You want to pee in the snow, you go right ahead,” Martha said. “Just don’t let it touch the body.”

  “Okay. But you’ll have to turn your back. I wouldn’t want you to swoon or go all girlie on me.”

  “I’m guessing that’s not going to happen,” Martha said. She managed a smile in spite of herself. It was the first attempt by any of them at levity in two hours, though Sam would be true to his word.

  When Sean and Martha started back down the ridge and were out of sight, he said, softly so that only the departed soul of the woman might hear, “You’re with the eagles now, my darling.” He kissed two fingers of his right hand and blew her a kiss. Then he unbuttoned the fly of his wool army-surplus trousers and burned his name in a loopy yellow script into the snow.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Rocket Girl

  The house was a fish out of water for the setting, a split-level mid-century modern with a backward-slanting roof and casement windows offering a spectacular view of the Madison Range, if only a sliver of the river itself. It was a lot of concrete and steel in a development dominated by cabins built tongue-and-groove, but the house, Sean thought, had been constructed before the onslaught of second homes choked the valley, back when the concept of covenants still made most people think of church. He parked and climbed out of his Land Cruiser.

  Finding the residence had been surprisingly easy, thanks to Sam’s eyes. After descending the ridge, Sean and Sam had explored the grounds around the trailer while Martha called for troops on the radio. It was a search they’d had neither time nor light to do on the way in, and Sean had hoped they might find cat tracks and settle the identity of the killer once and for all. But the snow had been falling off and on all night and was deep enough to keep its secrets, and he was pondering his next step when he’d heard Sam’s “aha” grunt. He’d found him behind the trailer, sporting a smile that revealed the V-shaped notches in his front teeth.

  “See how the snow’s been shoveled out to make a clear lane all the way around the trailer? It was piled into this bank. He hit it when he backed his truck around to drive out. See?”

  The indented letters of the license plate were clearly visible where the plate had pressed into the packed snow: MAESTRO 5.

  “You figure it’s the hunter you winched out? His rig?”

  “Good chance.”

  Martha had walked over while they were examining the snowbank. “The number,” she said. “Is that a five or a six?”

  “I can’t do all your job for you,” Sam said. “I have to leave you with some shred of dignity.”

  But he’d done enough of it, and Martha had the name and address of the truck’s owner plus the model and registration within the hour. By then the techs were searching the trailer and three men from the Wildlife Human Attack Response Team, called by the acronym WHART, had arrived to investigate the scene of the kill and remove the human remains. Martha was still waiting on the houndsmen when Sean left to visit the address that the license plate had led them to.

  He pressed the buzzer beside the door, waited a minute, then knocked.

  Down the hill on the lawn, two children were taking turns ramming a snowman with a Flexible Flyer sled. They eyeballed Sean incuriously, as they might glance for a few moments at a deer that wandered into the yard. Sean had driven in over two sets of tire tracks, one coming in, the mud and snow it disturbed stiff, one going back out sometime later, the snow softer. The only vehicle was a late-model RAV4 in electric blue with a cracked headlight and a dent on the left front panel. The training bra of trucks was nowhere to be seen. Sean went back to his rig and listened to the engine tick down as a girl with a mess of curls detached herself from the snowman demolition zone to walk up the hill.

  “Did you come to tune the piano?” she asked.

  “Do I look like a piano tuner?”

  “Sort of,” the girl said. She looked to be eight or so. “I don’t know. Are you? When it’s winter, the humidity is too low and the keys go flat. The ideal is forty-two percent, but it’s like twenty-two now. But Daddy says we can’t afford one.”

  “What can’t you afford?”

  “A humidifier.” Her tone said he should know this, whether he was the piano tuner or not. “That’s what I want for Christmas. Or before, if we get some money.”

  “Then you play?” Sean asked. Another silly question.

  “Of course.”

  “How about him?” He gestured down the hill toward the boy.

  She nodded. “Jimmy’s okay, but not as good as me. I’d have a chance at being a career pianist if my fingers were longer. Daddy says it’s his fault. He has short fingers. It’s like a family curse.”

  “What do you play?”

  “I can play ‘Piano Man.’”

  “Then you like Billy Joel.”

  “Oh, yes. Billy Joel and Elton John are my favorites.”

  “What do you play of Elton Joh
n?”

  “Sir Elton to you.”

  “But you just called him Elton.”

  “That’s because that’s what he told me to call him.”

  “You met Elton John?”

  “Yes, when he played in Missoula. I got to go backstage because I won the six-and-under division of the Treasure State Music Competition for popular song.”

  “What did you play?”

  “‘Rocket Man.’ Elton gave me a pair of sunglasses. Mommy had them framed. They have blue sequins. They’re on the mantel. Would you like to see them?”

  “I would, but the reason I came here was to talk to your father. His name is Leonard Johnson, right?” That was the name on the registration for the license plate.

  “Lenny. Or Lenny Two J. ’Cause our last name’s Johnson and his middle name is James.”

  “So that means you’re . . . ?” Sean paused, waiting for her to fill in the blank.

  “I’m Lorca Johnson,” she said. “Like orca but with an L in front.”

  “Is your father home, Lorca?”

  “No, he took the truck into town to get a haircut.”

  “Is your mother home?”

  “No. She went with him to get groceries.”

  “Why didn’t she take the blue car?”

  “Because Daddy drove in with the headlights out and ran into it by accident. It bent the radiator.”

  “You mean last night?”

  “This morning, when he came back from hunting. He said he didn’t put the lights on so not to wake us up, ’cause it was early, and that’s why he hit the car. Mommy’s mad at him. She called him an imbecile. I looked it up. It’s a kind of insult. She’s always mad at him for something.”

  “What’s your father do?”

  “He conducts the orchestra.”

  “In Ennis.”

  “No, there’s no orchestra in Ennis. In Bridger.”

  He remembered the letters on the vanity license plate. MAESTRO 5.

  “He lost his job,” the girl said.

  “Oh? Why was that?”

  “We’re not allowed to talk about it, but he sleeps in the music room now. You can hear him playing the violin. ‘In that way lies madness.’ That’s what G-Ma says.”

  Beyond her, Sean saw the brother trudging up the hill, towing the sled. Behind him, the snowman lay in ruins.

  “Who’s looking after you?” Sean asked. “Nobody answered when I rang the bell.”

  “G-Ma is. But the buzzer doesn’t work. She wouldn’t hear it, anyway. When we go outside she sits in the window, but she always falls asleep. She says it doesn’t matter because we’re all in the bubble and her aura is looking out for us.”

  The brother had arrived. Winded, he set his hands on his hips. Same curls as his sister. Coonskin hat, minus the tail. “You’re not supposed to talk to strangers,” he said.

  “He’s not a stranger,” the girl said. And to Sean, “You’re not, are you?”

  “No, but I don’t want you to get into trouble. Do you think you could do me a favor? Could you give your father my card?”

  Sean fumbled a card from the glove compartment of the Land Cruiser. He had two cards. One read BLUE RIBBON WATERCOLORS, the lettering embossed above a pastel landscape with a river. The other read USUAL SUSPECT INVESTIGATIONS and featured an Atlantic salmon fly pattern of the same name. It included Sean’s investigator’s license number and contact information. Martha had once told him that the fly, however good the illustration, was an amateurish touch. It made him seem less of a serious person. Sean had replied that that was the point. He really wasn’t looking for work.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he picked out one of his artist cards and drew a circle around the street address of his second-floor studio in the Bridger Mountain Cultural Center.

  “Tell your dad I’d like to ask him how his hunting went up Johnny Gulch.”

  “He didn’t get one,” the boy said.

  “Still, I’d like to talk to him. Tell him he’ll want to see me.” He handed the card to the girl, who bent her face over it.

  “Did you paint that?”

  “I did.”

  “It’s pretty.”

  “Let me see,” the boy said, and when he grabbed for the card, she held it out of reach over her head.

  “I’ll tell Mommy you were talking to a stranger,” he said.

  “I’ll say you were first.”

  “But you’re older. You’ll be the one gets in trouble.”

  This seemed to register and she handed him the card. “You won’t be able to read it, anyway.”

  And to Sean, “I hope the tuner comes today.”

  He left them standing in the bubble under G-Ma’s aura, the boy’s brow furrowing as he mouthed the words on the card, the girl ruing the tragedy of an out-of-tune piano, hoping for humidity.

  * * *

  • • •

  AFTER LEAVING THE HOUSE, Sean drove south on the river road to a pullout by a field with a fox den. The foxes drew photographers from across the country in the summer. Now the mounds of the den were covered in white, the fence posts snowcapped, magpies perched on the skeletal branches of a cottonwood snag. The trails of foxes wound geometric patterns in the snow. It was the kind of two-toned landscape people walked through with their heads in their collars, but Sean loved it. It reminded him of the Andrew Wyeth exhibit that he had gone to in Seattle. The American master’s famous dry-brush technique would have found a perfect subject here.

  From the pullout, Sean could see the upper level of the house and a part of the drive, and decided to wait awhile and see if the truck came back. He drew out his sketchbook and sharpened a 3B pencil with his pocketknife. He put the pencil lead to the paper without knowing what he was going to sketch, but such was his way in many endeavors, and his pencil had not yet found a subject when his cellphone vibrated.

  It was Martha. “You go first,” she said.

  “The girl says the air is too dry.” Sean filled her in on his visit to the mid-century modern.

  “You think that was wise, giving the kid your card? If Johnson has something to hide, he’ll hide it.”

  “Or go back to find it. People panic when they think someone’s on to them.”

  “Does that mean you’re going back to the trailer?”

  “Unless you object. Like you said, somebody dropped her off, so presumably somebody was coming back. Could be this Johnson. Could be someone else. But I won’t go if that’s crossing some kind of official line.”

  “Before you go down that rabbit hole, I ought to tell you that the WHART guys found partial tracks that we missed, pugmarks as they’re called, also places where a lion dragged its tail in the snow and hairs scraped off where it rubbed up against trees. So we’re dealing with a cat, no question. But the reason I called is the Dusan brothers sicced their Walker hounds on the trail, and the lion turned and killed one, knocked it off a cliff. They called in on the sat phone about an hour ago.”

  Sean let that sink in. “Does this mean you don’t want my help anymore?”

  “Well, I’m not sure where the crime is—human crime. I don’t know if I can justify loosening the county’s drawstrings to meet your per diem.”

  “This is shit-hits-the-fan news, Martha. You’re going to devote more manpower dealing with the public fallout than you will catching the lion. You need all the help you can get, starting with IDing the body.”

  “And you think this guy Lenny what’s-his-name—”

  “Lenny Two J.”

  “You think he can provide the answer.”

  “I know he’s getting a haircut this morning.”

  “A haircut?”

  “That’s what his daughter says. Here’s a guy who told Sam he’d got lost and walked all night long. You’d think after an ordeal like that, the natur
al response would be to collapse. But only a few hours later he’s driving into town for a haircut.”

  “He’s changing his appearance.”

  “That’s my thinking. As far as he knows, Sam’s the only one who can put him in the proximity of the trailer. He doesn’t know about his license plate hitting the snowbank and giving him away. It was dark. They were working with flashlights to get the truck unstuck. All Sam remembers is a guy who’s medium height. He can’t even remember the color of the truck. What we’re left with is longish hair and a nondescript beard. Trim and a shave and who do you have? No one Sam could remember, that’s who.”

  There was a hesitation on the other end of line. Sean could imagine Martha considering, scratching at her chin.

  “Do you have a plan? I mean, besides going back to the trailer?”

  “I set a trap for him.”

  “The business card?”

  Sean nodded, then realized she couldn’t see him and said yes. “If I don’t catch him returning to the trailer, I’ll catch him knocking on my door. He’ll want to know what I know. He won’t be able to stay away.”

  “You sound sure about that.”

  “Always certain, often right.”

  He heard Martha chuckle softly.

  When she spoke, her voice was slow, measured, her coming-to-a-decision tone. “Consider yourself on the county dime until we get an ID. Keep me in the loop. And be careful.”

  “You always say that.”

  “If you think I say it too often now, wait until you’re my husband.”

  Sean admired the comeback, said good-bye, and got out of the Land Cruiser to stretch. There was a splash of color as a fox came into view from a screen of willows. It was a cross fox with a russet-colored body and a sooty tail tipped white. The fox caught sight of Sean and stopped, its ears cocked forward. It halved the distance between them and again stopped. It was close enough that Sean could see the cunning in its eyes.