Buffalo Jump Blues (27 page)

She shifted her focus from the mantel to Stranahan. “Are you an Indian?”

“No ma'am, I'm not.”

“
Ma'am?
Why, you're a gentleman? I'm not sure I've ever met a gentleman.”

“Would you like me to freshen your drink, Melissa?”

“Please. Why couldn't my sons have grown up like you?”

Sean got her whisky, and she made a point of touching his hand when she took it. Her fingers were ice cold.

“How did your son react when you showed him the arrow?” Martha asked.

“Oh, he said something about winning it playing pool. He made it into a story, how he was in a reservation bar and he thought he was going to have to fight his way out of there, and then the guy handed him the arrow and they broke the point off and clasped hands around it, like it was some totem and they were brothers. Everything he says, he has to decorate. He learned that from Brady.

“I said, ‘Then you wouldn't mind if I turned it over to the police so they can check the DNA.'
That
got his attention.”

“What did he do?”

“Flew into a rage. Hit me in the face, knocked me down onto the floor. Back there, by the kitchen. Here, I'll show you.” She struck another match and lit the other two candles on the antler candelabra. She brought the piece up to illuminate her face, which was blotched and red. Then she reached her hand behind her head and pulled on her hair. “He dragged me by this, like it was a mop head, and then he just glowered over me like some jungle cat, like he was waiting for me to move and when I did, he'd swat me with his paw. I've never seen eyes like that before. But then that passed and he was petting me and looking around like he didn't know how I got on the floor. He wasn't
contrite, he didn't apologize or anything. It was like he wasn't aware what had happened. He helped me up and I said I needed to go use the bathroom. Told him to make us a drink and I'd be right back.

“That twenty feet to the door, that was the longest walk of my life. Any second I thought he might just, I don't know, pounce. But I went into the bathroom and he was still standing there, so I shut the door and turned the water on. And then I opened the other door that goes into the bedroom and found the pistol Auggie keeps between the mattresses. I put a pillow over it because I didn't know if cocking it would make a noise. I could hear him talking to himself in the kitchen. ‘We were just going to have a little fun. It's not our fault he got his guts ripped out.' And I starting thinking about the other times they had fun, like the girl being raped and holding her head under the water. So much
fun.
So I walked back into the room and he had this smile on his face. I'd tucked the gun down the back of my pants and I could feel my skin sweating under the barrel. I asked him what happened to the boy on the cliff. He said he'd got caught on a piton and they were telling him to cut it off, cut it off, like daring him to cut off his intestine, and then he said the boy was going to die anyway, so they took turns shooting at him with the arrows until Brady hit him and he fell.

“They were just having a little fun, you see.”

She turned her gaze to Sean. “I brought the gun out and he lifted his shoulders, like,
Really, you'd do that to me?
I just shot him.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sean saw Martha's hand move to her holster.

“You don't have to do that. Like I told you, I'm not dangerous.”

“Where's the gun, Melissa?” Sean said.

“It's down in the crack of the seat. Right here.” She started to reach down with her right hand.

“I'll get it, if that's okay, ma'am,” Sean said.

He placed his hand over her forearm and reached down with his other hand and felt the steel. He pulled out a thin, long-barreled
pistol. He pressed the magazine catch and detached the magazine and checked to make sure there wasn't a bullet in the chamber.

“It's just a twenty-two,” she said. “That's why nobody came around afterwards, because it didn't make much noise. And there was hardly any blood. I cleaned it up, but it was only a few teaspoons.”

“Where is your son?” Martha said.

“He's in his cabin the last time I looked. I shot him in the arm once and in the stomach. Twice, I think. That's all the bullets that were in the gun. When he walked outside, he was holding his stomach. I followed him and he had a hard time getting the door open and he went in and sat down on the couch. He asked me to get him a glass of water, so I got it for him. He told me to call 911. I got out my cell phone and acted like I did. Gave the address and everything, quite the little actress I was. I told him the ambulance would be here in twenty minutes. I said I'd go outside and wait for it. He was making sounds, strange sounds. I kissed him on the head, I don't know why I did that. Maybe it's because despite everything, he's still my son. Then I walked outside and called you, but I was having a hard time getting my breath, so I hung up.”

Martha and Sean were moving toward the door.

“You have to understand.” Her voice had a quaver in it. “I couldn't let it go on any longer. It had to stop.
He
had to stop.
They
had to stop.”

He had stopped all right. He had got off the couch and was lying facedown dead on the living room floor.

“H
e got a warrant to search Harold's sister's place,” Martha said.

“Drake?”

“The devil himself.”

“So that's where the little buffalo's been.”

She leaned back in her office chair. “I assume that's where Harold's been hiding him. I have deniability.”

Sean saw brightness at the corners of her eyes—her posture, fingers linked behind her head, her voice, professional, only thinly masking her emotion.

“Don't beat yourself up. You did all you could,” Sean said.

“Did I? Why don't I feel like I did?” She made a helpless gesture. “Nowhere to roam. Nobody willing to share just a little piece of earth with him.”

“Change takes time. Like that man they call Tatanka told me, ‘We just have to outlive the bastards.'”

“That doesn't do him any good.” She shook her head. “I let him into my heart. You'd think I would have learned my lesson with men.”

Sean reached across her desk and took her hand. “You did what you could.”

“Sure.”

They moved on to other subjects before getting around to Levi Karlson, or rather his mother, Melissa, who had changed her story twice since being arrested. She'd amended her initial statement to claim that her son had asked to be shot, had sung about it to Gail
Stocker like a meadowlark in May, the
Star
's story running under the headline “Solace Seeker Sought Death.”

Two days later, presumably with the prodding of her attorney, she'd remembered that Levi had advanced upon her in a threatening manner after she'd emerged from the bedroom with the gun, strengthening a claim of self-defense that started with the bruising on her face.

“As far as I care, she can walk out of jail tomorrow,” Martha said. “She'll do the taxpayers a favor by saving us a trial.”

“Do you think he would have been convicted?”

“Levi? You mean if his mother had turned over the arrow? Hard to say. If the shaft could be matched to the arrowhead found in Gary Hixon's body and the fingerprints in the blood on the arrow could be matched to Levi, I think Rosco would have gone to bat with it. Especially if he had the mother's testimony to back it up. But I don't care how many cases he's won wearing a
Jaws
T-shirt, he'd have gone up against a damned good attorney who could make a case that Levi was helping to pull out an arrow that Hixon had accidentally impaled himself with. It wouldn't have looked good, leaving him there to die, but it wouldn't be murder. Something interesting, though, we found boots in the boys' cabin that matched a print Harold found above the cliffs. It had a missing cleat. That would have put him at the scene, put one of them there, anyway.”

She lifted her hands from her desk. “Tell you what, let's not talk about anybody named Karlson for the next five minutes.”

“Okay, what do you want to talk about?”

“David drove in last night. There was more rain up at the dig, so they're on another break.”

“Did he bring his girlfriend?”

“Yes, and she didn't come last week like I thought she would, so I just met her.”

“And . . ?”

“Tall and tan. Young and lovely. One of those California blondes
who pulls her legs up under her when she sits down. Except she's from New Mexico. David says all the girls sit that way when they're sorting dirt for dinosaur bones.”

“What do you think of her?”

“I don't know yet. She's polite, but not shy. Her hands are rougher even than mine. Walked in and took over the kitchen and made spaghetti. We all had some wine and they went to bed in what used to be David's old room, the one in the loft.”

“Modern Martha.”

“Wishful thinking Martha. I'd buy her some little bit of nothing to wear if I thought it would get me a grandchild. I turned on the noise machine so I wouldn't hear them at their rituals.”

“Where are they this morning?”

“They took my johnboat to float the Madison.”

“I'm headed up the valley myself. Sam asked me to trailer the Adirondack guide boat to Wade Lake. He says he has a new method of finding fish, but he won't tell me what it is. He says I'll want to see for myself.”

“You ever fix the bullet holes under that gunwale?”

“Not yet.”

“Nostalgia, huh? The good ol' days.”

“Not if you were the one getting shot at.”

“You have a point. So what's on your mind, or did you just drop by to interrupt a busy woman for no good reason?”

“I figure if l skulk around the vicinity of a stairwell long enough, sooner or later you'll drag me into it again.”

“Keep dreaming.”

He leaned across the desk, put his palms on either side of her face, and kissed her on the mouth. “I'll do that.”

She flushed, then struggled to muster her composure. “Go on, get out of here,” she said. She didn't let her game face fall until he'd shut the door behind him.

T
he Queen of the Waters surfaced, her hair waving like turtle grass. She stood on her tail and kicked around until she saw the boat.

“Over here,” she shouted.

Sean saw the bobbing of her head and pulled at the long, thin-bladed oars.

“How deep?” Sam asked.

“About twenty-five feet. There's about a dozen suspended over the bottom.”

Sam marked the spot on his GPS.

“You want me to find another school?”

“One more, Molly,” Sam said.

“Okay.” She dove down and they watched her tail undulate as she swam away.

It was the fifth location Sam had marked inside an hour. The next time Molly found fish, after collecting her, they'd go back and fish the hot spots in rotation, starting with the first she'd found, just off the point of the bay, giving the trout plenty of time to settle down after the intrusion. Though, as Molly had pointed out, they really didn't shy away. In fact, sometimes two or three trout would break away from a school and swim over to check her out. Sean didn't blame them. She was quite a sight, Molly Linklatter, wearing nothing but water drops and her emerald tail, her bare breasts buoyed up each time she surfaced.

“I got some more,” they heard her call.

“Are you sure this isn't illegal?” Sean said.

Sam laughed. “If it isn't, it should be. Anything this fun you figure FWP would get a stick up their butt about.”

They marked the spot and Molly swam into shallow water where they could jump out and hold the boat steady for her to climb aboard. Sam unzipped her and she peeled out of the tail, revealing her bikini bottom. She began to towel off with a flannel shirt.

“That's right,” she said, catching Sean's appraising glance. “Get a good look at them. This body isn't going to look like this for very much longer.”

“What do you mean?”

“What she means is Sam's salmon know how to swim.” Sam smiled, revealing the grooves in his teeth.

“There was a malfunction,” Molly said. “They got past the dam, so to speak.”

“You're pregnant?”

She pulled the shirt around her. “It's a boy,” she said. “And I'm just thrilled. I've never been so happy in my life.”

“Well, this is great news. Congratulations are in order.” The words were easier to get out than he thought they'd be. He really was happy for them, but already he felt a sense of loss, not that he'd lose Sam, but that his essential loneliness had just become that much more pronounced.

“We're going to have the wedding in the grove of cottonwoods behind the shop,” Sam was saying. “August tenth. Guess who's best man?” He cocked a finger at Sean.

“Hey.” He shrugged, the slabs of heavy muscle shifting across his shoulders. “It was time. I have name recognition now. They call me the Jerry Garcia of fly fishing on the forums. Guys want to fish with me. They want to buy gear from me. They want to be
insulted
by me. So with the mail order and some off-season guiding in the Keys and Cuba, if that gig in Las Salinas comes through, I can provide. And even I couldn't go around being a screwup forever.”

“He's going to be a great dad,” Molly said.

“You will,” Sean said. “I know you will.”

“I just have to stop swearing for a while. I can't have the first words out of his mouth be, ‘Where the fuck is my Tonka truck?'”

The trout cooperated, deep fishing with chironomid pupae, not Sean's kind of fishing but fishing nonetheless. Then they didn't cooperate, perhaps sensing the barometer drop. All morning, anvil-shaped thunderheads had been grumbling with each other, and now they let loose with a torrent. Sean rowed to shore, where they flipped the boat over on a gravel bar and propped it up so they could shelter underneath to eat their lunch.

“Is this the life or what?” Sam said.

It really was and Sean started to feel better about it. This part of it, the fishing, the camaraderie, a life lived largely outside walls, it wouldn't change. It couldn't change, could it? But then he looked at Sam, who was holding Molly's hand and whispering something, the two of them forming their own world and soon to be three, and he knew it had changed already.

By the time they rowed back to the dock it was evening, the clouds scattered and lilac-tinged, swallows dipping for mayflies as they crisscrossed over the water. Sean offered to buy them dinner at the Trout Tails Bar and Grill to celebrate.

“Thanks,” Sam said, “but they serve beer and I'm trying to be a team player. If Molly has to stop, I'm going to do my damnedest to support her. We'll just have a quiet night at home.” He held out his hand for Sean to give him his keys and hiked up the hill to get the rig.

“They're going to be shorthanded for mermaids,” Molly said. She picked up a stone to skip it across the lake. “I turned in my notice and Ida isn't coming back, at least not this summer. It's a job with a lot of turnover.” She smiled at him. “That's what you call a mermaid joke,” she said. Already, he noticed, she was radiant.

“But can it still be a mermaid bar if you don't have mermaids?”

“Well, there's the Parmachene Belle, and I'm sure someone else will fill the tails.”

“No one can fill your tail, Molly.”

She laughed. “I've been told that before, but it's nice of you to say so. But I don't know. Maybe I'm getting out just under the wire. They finally hired a piano player and she's got a get-away face. All the men give her the look. When you're a mermaid and the stool warmers swivel to drool over a woman in a dress, that's the writing on the wall.”

“Yeah,” said Sean, “but can she find fish?”