Hunter’s Dance (8 page)

XII

Why so many words and so much perplexity?

McIntire took time for one more stop before heading home. The windows at the front of Mark Guibard's blue-painted house were dark, but the glow of a back porch light spilling across white sand and inky water told him the doctor was at home.

McIntire tapped on the door and went in. He found Guibard, as he'd expected, in the darkened living room seated in a chair drawn up before a window. Outside, a trio of raccoons tussled over a pan of table scraps. They reminded McIntire of overweight rats dressed for winter, but the doctor seemed enthralled by their activities. He waved McIntire to a chair and waited until the creatures toddled off with the last morsel of chicken skin before switching on a lamp and getting to his feet.

“I suppose you want to know every gory detail.”

“Suppose again. Just give me the highlights. What did he die of, some kind of poisoning?”

Guibard walked to the kitchen and returned with a glass. He poured in a carefully measured three fingers from the bottle on his chair-side table and handed it to McIntire. McIntire accepted it with much greater anticipation than he did Grace Maki's coffee. The doctor, as a self-proclaimed reformed teetotaler, compensated for years of abstinence by buying, as he put it, “excellent booze.”

Guibard added a dollop to his own glass, took a sip and sat down. “I can't be positive until I get some test results. But if I was forced at gunpoint to give my opinion, I'd go out on a limb and say that the contents of that boy's stomach showed enough
Lobelia inflata
to knock over a horse.”

“Lobelia what?”

“Inflata. Old Sadie LaPrairie used to take a dose of it for everything that ailed her, smoke it even. I'll never forget the smell. Couldn't stand it. But it isn't all that strong. The smell, I mean. Bambi had to have had a real pile of it to be able to detect the odor. And to make the stomach contents alkaline as they were.”

McIntire nodded. He'd expected as much.

“There wasn't much in his stomach,” the doctor went on, “a few bites of ham, some brandy, microscopic bits of leaf and the definite odor of a variety of lobelia commonly known as Indian tobacco.”

“
Indian
tobacco? This is starting to sound like a bad joke.” Not that McIntire felt much like laughing. “I figured it must be some kind of poison that killed him.”

“Well, it wasn't.”

“Now you lost me.”

“Lobelia takes a long time to act. And it's a powerful emetic. Anybody consuming lethal levels would probably upchuck it before it did much harm. Regardless, Bambi Morlen died before he absorbed enough of it to have an effect.”

“And, of course, he did vomit some of it up,” McIntire remembered.

“Somebody vomited, but it wasn't Bambi.”

McIntire waited. Guibard sipped his drink and returned his glass to the table.

“There was no sign that anything that boy ate went any direction except down. The person that puked on the floor in that loft wasn't Bambi. But whoever it was might also have partaken of the poison.” He paused. “Possibly.”

“Then what did kill him?”

“He bled to death.”

Now McIntire put down his glass. “How'd you figure that? I didn't see a drop of blood except on his head, and you said he was already dead when that happened.”

“The bleeding was internal.”

“His brain?”

“John! No, not his brain. He was stabbed. A small wound in his back, only a bit of a poke. It closed up right away, but the weapon nicked the pulmonary artery. He bled to death internally. Seeped to death is more like it. It might have taken quite a while. He could have been up walking around in the meantime. For sure, he put his coat on after he was stabbed. It didn't have a hole in it. He maybe lived as much as an hour, possibly more, depending on how active he was. Might not even have realized he was injured until he started getting woozy.”

“Not realize it? Wouldn't the fact he'd just been stabbed in the back give him a clue?”

“There's not a lot of sensation for pain there. He'd have probably felt the whack, but not necessarily know it was anything more than a blow. ”

“So it might not have happened in the woodshed?”

“No. It could very well have happened somewhere else. If he was active, say walking, or involved in a struggle with his attackers, he would have bled quicker. But if he was just sitting in a car, driving…who knows? Like I said, the rest of it—the binding and gagging, the mutilation—all that was done some time after he died. There was no bruising or scrapes from the cords and no sign that he'd put up any fight against them. Anyhow, the way they were tied a two-year-old could have gotten free.”

McIntire figured he was, after all, as thick as Guibard took him to be. All was not being made clear. After a short hesitation McIntire asked, “You said something about a hole in his skull?”

“Not quite a hole, but it was like I figured. Someone tried to drill right through the bone using a bit brace. The human skull is pretty tough though. Whoever did it may not have put a lot of effort into it. At any rate he didn't make much headway, so to speak.”

“Your unfailing sense of humor is a marvel.” McIntire didn't want to think about that hole, inflicted after death or no. “Did you find anything else of importance, a few stray bullet wounds, maybe evidence of strangulation?”

Guibard laughed outright. “Well. He did have a bit of abrasion on his neck, but I doubt it contributed to his death. Unless the young lady responsible was one of those women scorned.”

McIntire felt another twinge of guilt. Karen Sorenson again.

“So,” the doctor continued, “all you and your fellow Keepers of the Peace have to do is find out who poisoned Bambi, who stabbed him, and who tied him up and tried to drill his head like a coconut. Maybe you'll get lucky and they'll be one and the same.”

“When you put it that way, it sounds like a mob attack.” Bambi probably hadn't been out of the woods often enough to make an awful lot of enemies, or friends either for that matter. Had he met Karen Sorenson before Saturday night? Was she the object of a long-standing rivalry between Bambi and Ross Maki? “But the drilling,” he asked, “can you think of any reasonable explanation for that hole?”

“Shit, no. I can't even think of an unreasonable one.” Guibard drained his glass. “Aren't you going to ask me the time of death?”

“Could you get an idea of the time of death?” McIntire was obedient.

“Hard to say. It would have been down close to freezing in that shed when he died, but it heated up good during the day with the sun on the roof. Body was cold. Rigor had mostly passed off. I can say that he died some time in the night. At least an hour after he was last seen, but two or three hours before sunrise.”

“I'm more interested in the weapon, the
stabbing
weapon, that is.”

“I can't tell you that either. It was small. The wound was a little less than three inches deep and narrow—a simple puncture, some pretty heavy bruising around the edges. Something with a thin blade and a very sharp point, used with a considerable amount of force. Not a knife.”

“An ice pick?”

“You've been listening to
The Shadow
again, I take it. Why is it always an ice pick? I don't think I've ever even seen an ice pick. I'm not even sure what one is. Well, I suspect this
was
some kind of household implement, but I can't think what.”

“Not something you'd bring along on purpose if you were planning to commit murder?”

“I'd say not.”

“But poison…poison sounds premeditated.”

“That it does.”

McIntire sipped the last drop of the brandy. When an offer of a refill wasn't forthcoming, he got to his feet.

“Thanks for the information, Mark.”

Guibard didn't escort him to the door. “Don't mention it. And, by the way, Pete's been griping about his back again. I expect he'll be finding you very handy to have around for the next few weeks.”

XIII

Do you think that you have to lie stiff and stark with a coffin lid nailed down over you to be dead?

Four cups of coffee might be overdoing it, but McIntire felt the need for externally imposed courage, and it was a bit early in the day to break into his meager store of liquor. He pushed back his plate and stood to get the pot from the stove. Keeping his back to his wife he spoke in as casual a voice as he could muster. “Has she said anything about how long she intends to stay?”

His query fell into a chasm of silence, and he turned to find Leonie staring at him over her pan of chokecherries with the anticipated wide eyes and dropped jaw.

“John, she's your family! You've hardly spoken a word to her since she arrived. I've never known you to be quite like this. What's going on? Are you only getting crotchety and more anti-social than ever, or is there something about Siobhan herself that you don't like? You haven't seen enough of her that she could have done anything to offend you, and now you're wondering when she's leaving. You might at least spend an hour or two with your aunt before chucking her out!”

“Murder kind of eats into my time.”

“That murder can get along without you. It's not your lookout.”

Leonie's response was unlike her, and unfair, in McIntire's opinion. Well, maybe it was unfair of him to saddle her with the total responsibility for the entertainment of his aunt. He sat down. “I'll try to be more hospitable, but after all, Leonie, I hardly know the woman. Matter of fact, I
don't
know her. The Siobhan I knew was a child, and not a very pleasant one at that. Always sneaking around. Snooping. You never quite knew what she was up to. I still don't.”

Leonie didn't comment, only tilted her pan to let a small river of fruit tumble into an aluminum colander, picking out the odd bug and dried leaf as she went.

“And she might not have
offended
me—well, that perfume she wears is pretty obnoxious—but you have to admit it's getting damn annoying the way she's taking over the place. Stockings in the bathroom, half cups of cold coffee all over the house, and….” He picked up the ashtray piled with lipstick-coated cigarette butts and dumped it in the trash.

“A shabby habit or two doesn't necessarily mean she's up to something” Leonie looked pointedly at the mountain of books and papers McIntire had shuffled into a pile and stacked on a kitchen chair. “Maybe,” she said, “there was something lacking in her upbringing.” Her smile faded, and she looked into her husband's eyes. “Or perhaps it's simply that she reminds you of your father.”

McIntire choked and narrowly avoided demonstrating further his hereditary slovenliness by spraying a mouthful of coffee over the oilcloth-covered table. “No, my dear Freudetta, she's nothing at all like Pa. She doesn't look like him and doesn't act like him. If she was like Pa, she'd be right here, telling you that you don't know what the hell you're doing and making that jelly herself!”

“She did leave me with a few basic instructions last night.”

McIntire laughed. “Well, rest assured that she doesn't remind me a bit of my father. The fact is she's the very image of his mother, and I was crazy about my Granny McIntire, so there goes your theory.”

“Well, I can't quite work that out. It's true, the Irish do all sort of look alike, but why should she particularly resemble…” Leonie's forehead crinkled, “her father's first wife?”

It hadn't struck McIntire before that perhaps some of his antipathy toward Siobhan might have its roots in her connection to the grandmother he'd loved so dearly and lost when he was so young. He found there was still some soreness in the memory. “Siobhan's mother was my grandmother's sister,” he said. “When Grandma was dying, she made Grandpa promise to take her body home to be buried in Ireland. He didn't do it, but he did go back to visit her relatives. When he came home a few months later, he had a new wife, Grandma's baby sister, Bridget. And shortly after that—real shortly, if you get my drift—Siobhan was born, the most spoiled kid on the planet.”

Leonie held a dish towel to the edge of her pail and waited while a fat black beetle climbed onto it. “John,” she said, “I never dreamed you had such an interesting family. It's like a radio soap opera.” She carried the towel to the door and flicked the beetle into the bushes. “I don't have to be Mrs. Freud to see your difficulties. Grief, betrayal, and a big helping of jealousy as well.”

McIntire had no chance to respond; the phone on the wall jangled and he jumped for it. “Mac, Koski here. The plot is thickening, as they say. I just got a call from Baxter, the caretaker, pardon me, the
steward
, at the Club. Morlens' got,” McIntire waited while Koski chose words to send out over the six-party phone lines, “something they'd like us to see. I figured maybe you could go pick it up and bring it in. I'd send Cecil, but I think you'd handle it better. And you're a damn sight closer.”

McIntire noticed Leonie's curious stare and tried to look exasperated. “Sure, okay, I can go. Did you get anything out of the other kid?”

A faint click sounded on the line, followed by a hollow hum. Koski responded, “Nothing much, I'll let you know when you come in. Make it as quick as you can. I've got a date to play strip cribbage with the mayor's wife this afternoon.” He was rewarded by a muffled squeak and a louder click.

Leonie carried her strainer of cherries to the sink. “You're going to that Club?” she asked and looked up as the floorboards creaked in the bathroom overhead.

McIntire nodded.

“I wish I'd known. I could have baked something.”

“It's all right. The autopsy's done. I imagine the Morlens'll be taking off before the day's out.”

She nodded, then said, “I'm sorry, John.”

“Sorry about what?”

“Ah,” she smiled. “A man with poor eyesight,
and
a short memory. I am truly blessed!”

She turned on the tap. A feeble stream trickled out over her berries. A humming in the pipes signified the filling bathtub. McIntire couldn't be sure, but he thought he detected a tiny sigh of irritation. He bent to kiss his wife's forehead. “Have a pleasant day,” he told her.

***

Only when he was traveling along the road that separated the Club's pastures from its potato fields, did he begin to speculate on the nature of the article he would be collecting. If it was something found in the Morlen cottage, did that mean it pointed to a member of the Club, even to a member of their own household?

A vehicle came toward him out of the light fog, careening around a bend in the road. McIntire swung the wheel and swerved toward the ditch. The paneled truck he'd seen at Greg Carlson's camp screeched past with the prospector himself at the wheel. Carlson waved apologetically but didn't stop or slow down. Paying a condolence call? Turned back at the gate? Fleeing an irate Daddy? McIntire's stomach clenched at the image of Bonnie Morlen wrapped in her anguish before that stifling fire, waiting alone.

Death was supposed to be followed by a flood of obligations major and menial, calculated over the centuries to keep a bereaved family temporarily numb to its loss. The Morlens sat here in Northwoods limbo. No parade of neighbors with spice cakes and tuna hotdish to feed a horde of shirttail relatives; no funeral; not even their son's body to grieve over. Well, they should be getting that soon, and then, no doubt, as he'd told Leonie, they'd go straight back to Connecticut. Then what? How would an investigation proceed with the main players fifteen hundred miles away?

The news vultures had moved on. Only the geriatric guard leaned against the gatepost, his pipe dangling from his teeth. He swung the gate open and, with a nod and a scowl, allowed McIntire to pass through.

A ruddy-faced woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Baxter—“My husband is steward here.”—answered his knock at the cottage door, and took him through to the front room.

Bonnie Morlen was an afghan-swaddled silhouette before the gray rectangles of windows. Her first words confirmed his speculations.

“Wendell has gone with my father to see the sheriff and arrange for taking my son home. We'll be leaving as soon as we can. May I offer you some coffee?” Her voice was flat and her manner detached, as if she'd reached the limit of what she could feel and had shifted onto some other plane.

McIntire declined more coffee. She moved to the sofa and switched on a lamp at its side.

“It came in the mail this morning.” She didn't touch the letter that lay on the coffee table, only sat down stiffly, her eyes locked on the scrap of paper as if it was some disgusting tarantula poised to attack.

McIntire pushed his glasses up onto his nose and leaned over the single sheet. The note was composed from printed material, single letters, entire words, and phrases cut from newspapers, magazines, and typewritten copy. A few letters stood out. Larger than the rest, brilliant yellow on a black background, they'd been snipped from the familiar wrapping of a bar of Palmolive soap. The note informed the Morlens that if they ever hoped to see their son alive, they should leave $17,525.00 behind the old lighthouse at St. Adele on Wednesday. Wendell Morlen should come alone at midnight. If there was any “funny business” Bambi would die. It was signed
Seeker of Justice
. Such a cliché should have been nothing more than a joke.

The paper was cheap, the kind that came in a large pad with an Indian in a headdress on the cover and sold for five cents at the dime store. Paper mainly used by children. McIntire slid the sheet away and straightened up. “Do you have the envelope?”

Bonnie Morlen turned to the hovering Mrs. Baxter, who hustled to a spindly drop-front desk and returned holding a white envelope by its corner.

“People usually come to my husband's office to pick up their mail, but as soon as I saw this, I brought it straight over. I thought it looked funny.” She dropped it onto the table next to the letter. “I tried to be careful, because of the fingerprints. Can you get fingerprints off paper?”

“Sometimes,” McIntire said. He didn't really know for sure, but he doubted that whoever had gone through all that cutting and pasting would have been so careless as to leave fingerprints behind. The envelope was addressed in the same manner as the letter had been pieced together.
Mr. and Mrs. Wendell Morlen
was cut from typewritten copy.
Shawanok
Club
and
Michigan
came from newsprint.

So it looked like Ross Maki might have been right. Bambi had been killed for his money.

“Have you heard anything yet?” Mrs. Morlen asked. “Anything about how…about the results of the autopsy?”

McIntire might be a lackey for the sheriff, but he wasn't going to be the one to impart autopsy information to a bereaved mother. “It was done yesterday,” he hedged. “Mr. Koski will give the details to your husband. He most likely wouldn't want to do it over the phone.”

“We don't have a telephone. The Club doesn't allow them. Baxter went in to Thunder Bay to call the sheriff about this.” Her hand fluttered toward the letter. “Mr. Koski didn't tell him anything about the autopsy, but he said that they found Bambi's car last night. It was off the road, back in trees, several miles from the town hall where he was found. They think he was convinced, or forced, to drive there and….” She shook her head as if to clear away the fuzz. “But why would kidnappers have killed him, and so soon? It doesn't make sense. We'd have paid. We'd have paid anything.”

McIntire had to agree. It didn't sound reasonable. But then kidnappers might be somewhat less than honorable or reasonable. They could have bargained that the ransom would be paid even if they offered no proof that Bambi Morlen was still alive. The cords that bound him weren't well knotted and Bambi hadn't struggled against them, so Guibard thought he hadn't been tied up until after he died. The stabbing was only a poke, according to the doctor. Something to scare him into compliance, without intent to do major harm? But what if, after that poke, and by the time they got him into that loft, Bambi was already too weak from loss of blood to put up a fight? And had then died on them? They might still have taken a shot at collecting the money. The fatal wound was deep and delivered with considerable force, but, unless the killer was extremely knowledgeable about human anatomy, it was largely chance that Bambi had died from it. Likely it hadn't been an act planned in advance. On the other hand, there was no way the poisoning could be construed in that light, although if Guibard was correct, Indian tobacco was also unlikely to cause death.

Bonnie hugged a crocheted cushion to her breast. “He must have been so terrified. I've been thinking maybe he was so scared he couldn't live with it; maybe he simply died of fright.” There was an eeriness in the monotone voice and dullness in her eyes that were so at odds with her words and the emotion that must have inspired them.

In two world wars McIntire had seen fear do a great many things to men. But, while there were times that it might have been a mercy, he'd never known anyone to die from it. Maybe he should tell her the truth. Let her know about the stabbing and get it over with. Mrs. Baxter was here. They had that doctor.

“Bambi was a pretty tough young man, Mrs. Morlen,” he said. “It took more than a scare to kill him.”

The pillow dropped to her lap and a transient spark of life leapt into her eyes. “You knew my son?”

It was a bit late to deny it now. McIntire tried to sound offhand. “I spoke to him during the dance. Only for a few minutes.”

Mrs. Morlen wasn't to be put off. “In the line of duty?”

There was no point in equivocating. “Your son was involved in a fight,” he told her. “There's usually a mix-up or two at these dances. No one takes it too seriously.”