Buffalo Jump Blues (19 page)

T
he chance to talk to Ettinger came sooner than Stranahan expected. It was a few minutes before nine when Sean and Wilkerson drove into view of the game range cabin and spotted Martha's Jeep. They found her in Thackery's office with the wall maps, clattering away at the old Remington manual. She worked the carriage return and placed the piece of paper she'd been typing beside another sheet on the desk blotter.

“Is this what I think it is?” Sean said.

She nodded. “That's his note. I was comparing to make sure it came from this typewriter. The way the H strikes is distinctive because the stem doesn't register, not that there was a question. You don't see these old dinosaurs very often.”

Sean felt somewhat crestfallen. That Thackery hadn't been murdered didn't mean the Karlson boys were off the hook for Gary Hixon's demise, or, for that matter, that John Running Boy was cleared of involvement, but it blunted the excitement he'd felt talking with Willoughby, the sense that he was closing in on the truth.

“Where was the note, Martha?”

“You don't sound too happy that I found it. Remember when I played the intro to ‘Piano Man'? The D minor seventh chord sounded tinny. It's easier to show you.”

They went into the living room, where Martha played the jazzy intro. Then again, more deliberately. “See where my left thumb is? That's C.” She pressed it.

“Hear that? It's a clear note. But yesterday it was fuzzy. So was the
natural next to it, the D. It's an old piano. I didn't think anything of it at the time. But last night I couldn't sleep, and it came to me that if you placed a piece of paper on the hammers, it would vibrate and make that sound. Remember all the framed photographs on the lid? I pulled down the one of Thackery with his wife? I could smell glass cleaner, but the lid of the piano was dusty. It struck me as odd, like Thackery had taken the photos from somewhere else, cleaned them, and placed them on the piano without buffing the piano top first. Don't ask me why I thought of this, because I don't know, and why he would hide the note rather than leave it where we could see it, I don't know that, either. But like I said, I couldn't sleep. So here I am.”

“What's the note say?”

“You can read it for yourself.”

They returned to the office, where Sean read aloud with Wilkerson peering over his shoulder.

My Jeremy and my Catherine, whom I love, know that what I do now does not reflect on you in any way.

It has been my mission in life to work toward a future balance of nature, that one day the land that rises from our state's great rivers would be home to the bison that grazed here by the millions once, and that could again if extended the opportunity, for the ancient trails are ingrained in their bloodstreams and they know the way.

It has been my conviction that man's future, his very survival, depends upon his tolerance for other forms of life. To the degree that we work toward the preservation of our environment and its animal denizens, we show the humanity and resource that can save our planet. To the degree that we harden our hearts and meet the struggles of our wild brothers with bullets and barbed wire, we diminish our humanity, show that we are with neither mercy nor understanding, and draw the circle of our wagons until the world outside
the walls can no longer be seen as breathing and in need of our succor. In such direction lies the end of our tenure on earth. For if we cannot make the small, reasonable sacrifices to save those who share our planet, how can we possibly make the larger, more difficult ones to save ourselves?

Is it any surprise that such unpopular opinions have banished me to these hinterlands, where my voice is only heard by those who have no votes in their futures?

Some may find it incongruous, even mad, that I chose a course of violence in driving a herd of bison to their deaths last week. In my defense, I would say that these bison would have been summarily executed by the state, probably the next day and with as little fanfare as possible, and that by taking the matter into my own hands, and in turn placing it in the hands of a few of the like-minded, I could give the bison a voice that would have otherwise been suppressed, and to some extent direct the discussion that followed their demise.

In this effort, which was from the heart and well intended, I failed. I failed because in driving bison over the cliffs a man fell with them. Although a relapse of malaria made me return to my bed before seeing the drive to its conclusion, I have no reason to disbelieve the accounts of those who were there, that the man fell on an arrow that had been intended for buffalo. Nor is it my place to point a finger by revealing the identities of the brothers who carried out the drive. As the pishkun was initially my idea, I alone accept the full responsibility for the accident and the death that it caused.

The question I face today is not if life is worth living, but am I worth living life? My wife, your blessed mother, rests in the arms of Jesus, and though I speak to her every day, it is growing harder to bring back the sound of her voice. It's no secret that my remaining time on the earth is limited by my health, and that while I am still hale and sound of mind the
choice to end my life on my terms, and not to become a burden on you, is an easy one.

My only regret is that my last breath will be drawn on a landscape that should tremble under the hooves of bison and ring with the songs of wolves, and instead carries only the whisper of wind. It is my last wish that someday those who pass this way will not know such silence, but with senses filled place ear to ground, and hear there the rumble of the coming of the herd.

Your loving father,

Thack

Martha exhaled a breath. “I've read suicide notes as simple as ‘farewell,' but they never fail to move me.”

Wilkerson shook her head. “I don't get it. You leave a note so somebody finds it, you don't hide it. And what's he mean by brothers? Is he talking about the Karlsons?”

“Maybe it's generic,” Sean said, “like brothers in arms, or brothers of the buffalo.”

“Maybe,” Martha said. “But I'm not sure it was hidden as much as placed somewhere it would take a bit of digging to find. I mean, we'd find it eventually, or someone would. He makes a point about taking responsibility, not revealing the names of the others, about the Indian boy dying as an accident—it sounds to me like he was trying to convince himself. I mean, falling on an arrow? It can happen, but it had to have crossed Thackery's mind that something wasn't kosher. We really don't know how well he knew Brady and Levi Karlson, or how he got together with them in the first place. But common sense tells me that somewhere between the plan being hatched and the night in question, Thackery would have figured out that these guys were hinky. Sean, you were with them only a few hours and had doubts right off the bat.”

“That's a lot of surmising, Martha, from someone who hasn't met them.”

Martha took the pencil from behind her right ear and twirled it in her fingers. “I'm not surmising. I'm thinking out loud. If you were Thackery and somebody reported back to you about someone falling on an arrow, wouldn't you be skeptical? He was a smart guy. He would have known he was a loose end.”

She scratched the underside of her chin with the eraser tip. “I think it's time we have a sit-down with the parties in question.”

“We, as in me, too?”

She nodded, her lips tight together. “You have the advantage of having met them and heard John Running Boy's account of the jump. Gigi, you don't really need us here this morning, do you?”

“No. It's a clusterfuck when you have to keep telling people what not to touch.”

“Gee, you'd think I might have done this once or twice.”

Martha excused herself to use Thackery's bathroom and Wilkerson fluttered her eyes. “That woman never has liked me.” She affected a man's voice. “‘For someone who hasn't met them.' That was pretty slick. I was wondering how you were going to bring up Willoughby's suggestion. Looks like now you don't have to.”

“There's smart, and then there's smart like that fox we saw on the river,” Sean said. But he couldn't shake the thought that he'd missed something, that it was there in front of him yet out of sight, like the note under the lid of the piano.

M
elissa Castilanos, the former Melissa Karlson, smoked the way sirens smoked on the silver screen, making theater of it, her head thrown back, the cigarette between her first and second fingers. Her face was bone china under a silver Stetson with a rattlesnake band that was as faded as the gray of her eyes. She exhaled and the smoke drifted down the valley.

“Two a day,” she said. “One before riding, one when I step off the horse. Three if I have a brandy after dinner.”

Stranahan, under his smile, took her as one who seldom missed that brandy after dinner. They stood on the porch of one of the two cabins the manager of the ranch had directed them to as being registered under the name Castilanos. Melissa had told them the ‘boys' weren't around—she had pointed to the adjacent cabin, and without further prompting added her husband to the missing. He'd flown to Tacoma on business and would be gone several days.

“Tell me again why you want to speak with my sons,” she said.

Stranahan knew she was buying time, and he watched her face as she bought it and Martha rephrased her question.

“We think they might have known one or several of the people involved in the buffalo jump last week. We'd like to ask them about these people. Do you know where they are so that I might ask them a few questions?”

“‘These people' being who, exactly? I heard about the Indian boy, that was a sad business, but I didn't know anything about others.”

“I can't tell you anyone specifically until we have more information. That's why we want to talk to Brady and Levi.”

“I can assure you they had nothing to do with that . . . affair. They loved buffalo. They even volunteered for that American Bison Crusade, took their whole spring break in the mud and the snow when they could have gone to Cabo with us. Wait, that's why you're asking, isn't it? It has something to do with them.”

“We don't know that.”

“I told them not to have anything to do with that bunch. It's just ne'er-do-wells and unwashed hippies. But if you tell them that they can't, that's like withholding catnip, isn't it? Being a mother who hasn't learned anything in twenty years, I told them they couldn't, and guess what they did anyway?”

“Mrs. Karlson, do you know when they might come back?”

“My name is Castilanos now.” She dragged at her cigarette. She was a handsome woman on her way to not being one. The smoking showed in her face the way a low sun shows on a parched riverbed, mercilessly emphasizing the cracks.

“You're about a day late,” she said. “They went on a fishing trip up to the Blackfeet Reservation, some lake or other.”

“Do you know what lake?”

“Like a glove maybe.”

“Mitten?” Sean asked. He'd never fished the reservation, but Sam had mentioned several of the better-known lakes.

“That's it. That was one of them. There was another with an animal name.” She shrugged. “Small something. I can't think of it.”

“What kind of car did they drive?”

She looked thoughtfully at the cigarette, then stubbed it out against the porch rail.

“You're not accusing them of anything, but you want to know where they went and what car they drove. You can't wait until they come back. You know what I think? I think the next time you want to talk to my sons you can talk to my lawyer.”

Her eyes meant it, and Sean could feel them burning into his back as he and Martha walked to the Jeep. When he looked back, she had lit another cigarette.

“She's going to exceed her quota,” he said.

Martha shook her head. “I handled that like a greenhorn. Now I won't get a thing out of those kids.” She took a card from her wallet, her personal number, and tucked it under the windshield wiper of the dove-colored BMW parked in front of the cabin. “You never know,” she said. “They don't want to talk to you, and then they grow a conscience.”

“I think you were damned if you didn't and damned if you did,” Sean said, “if it makes you feel any better.”

“It doesn't.” She shook her head. “She strikes me as somebody who has a snifter of blood and steps out of the coffin every night. Men like that kind of woman. I don't see the attraction.”

They climbed into the Cherokee and Martha asked Sean to call Walt back in Bridger, his cell phone, not the office. He got through and pressed the speaker button as they drove out the ranch road.

“Walt, I'd like you to have somebody do a Crime Information Center check for Brady and Levi Karlson. Tell them I'll be back in the office in an hour and expect to be pleased.”

“I can put Hunt on the NCIC. You want him to turn over tombstones?”

“And smaller rocks. Even if it's just complaints of loud music.”

Sean folded the phone and she fingered her chin. “I'd like to have somebody see if the rig they drove is actually at that lake,” she said. “What about your buddy, Raises the Sun, whatever you call him?”

“Joseph Brings the Sun.”

“Was there a vehicle parked by the cabin the day you took them fishing?” She twirled her pencil.

“A Highlander. Montana plates and a grille plastered with blue-winged olives. I can't remember the color. Maybe black?”

“You recall what kind of mayflies are smashed on the hood, but the car is
maybe
black?”

She shook her head, but it didn't really matter. The manager of the ranch should have the color and plate number and did. He handed Martha the registration copy with his lower lip clamped on the hairs of his mustache. Guests like Augustine Castilanos kept the place in horses, and he'd prefer this didn't get back to him. Martha told him it wouldn't and passed the sheet to Stranahan with an arched eyebrow. The license plate was a vanity—
TSR TROUT
.

“TSR?”

“Trouser Trout,” Sean said. “It's Internet shorthand.”

“Everybody's a comedian,” the manager said.

—

Sean hadn't been to Ettinger's office at Law and Justice since the calendar page on her wall had twice flipped, the leopard on the acacia branch replaced by baboons replaced by a gaboon viper patterned like autumn leaves. He leaned over her shoulder and stared at the computer screen showing a map of Blackfeet country, searching in vain for Mitten Lake.

“This is useless,” Martha said after a minute, and called down to the main office for someone to rustle up a travel plan map of the county. She'd take a large-scale paper map over a digital one anytime; screens were just too small to cram in the details.

They waited for the map in silence, Martha with her hands laced behind her head, Sean running his eyes around the room before settling on the snake.

“Gaboon vipers have the longest fangs of any snake in the world,” he commented.

“Really?” Martha said. “I thought that title would go to one of your old girlfriends.”

There was a knock at the door and a young woman entered,
carrying the map. Martha said thank you and told her to send up Huntsinger in fifteen minutes. She unrolled the rubber bands and spread the map on a light table, pinning the corners with chunks of petrified wood. She tapped a forefinger, naming the lakes as she found them on the map.

“Mitten, Dog Gun, that's an animal, Mission, Duck . . . Here we go, Minnie White Horse Lake.”

“They could be at any of a couple dozen lakes,” Sean said. “Fishermen don't stay put.”

“If that's what they're doing, fishing, then maybe there's nothing to worry about.” She shook her head. “Still, I think it's worth a try if your buddy's game.” She indicated her phone and Sean put through a call to the landline at Joseph's house. He picked up and Sean explained the situation. He waited for Joseph to get a piece of paper to write on and repeated the lake names and the letters of the vanity plate.

“Now repeat what else I just told you,” Sean said.

“I see if it's at the lake. I leave. I go to the next lake. I leave. I don't get out of the car unless I got to take a whiz.”

“This is serious, Joseph.” He hesitated. “Would the Karlson brothers know your car?”

“Yeah, they seen it. Everybody knows the Pinto. But you gotta four-wheel into those lakes. I been under the hood of Jerry's truck a bunch of times. He owes me. I could borrow it.”

“Then take his truck. I don't think it's a good idea to drive anything they'd recognize.”

“I got you covered. I'll get up there this afternoon.”

“Call me either way and fill up the tank for Jerry. I'll see that you get reimbursed for your time, too.”

“Now I'm like your sidekick, huh?”

“Joseph, this isn't—”

“I'm just messing with you.”

Sean replaced the phone on the cradle, shrugged. “Worth a shot, I guess.”

There was the expected knock and Martha told the pink-shaven Deputy Huntsinger to take a seat and tell her about the Karlson brothers and make it good.

“Oh, it's good,” he said.