by Nevada Barr
"We'll get McCaskil," Ruick said. "His car is still here and we've got an APB out on him. He'll turn up. If you run across him, don't mess with him. He's got a history of minor violence. More than that, he's been convicted twice on felony charges. If he's the one who took a shot at you, he's facing his third strike. That'll be a hell of a lot of years. McCaskil's probably long gone and good riddance. Until my rangers get back from the fires, I don't have the manpower to keep this up. I'm not blowing off the attack on you, Anna. I'm not. I'll get a couple of my backcountry rangers over there tomorrow. But you and I both know what they'll find."
"What I found," Anna agreed, "less half a peanut."
"We're not giving up," Harry said, mostly to save face. "The investigation is ongoing. We've just got to figure whoever killed Mrs. Van Slyke has left the park. Until we find something more to go on, I can't see any point in committing my people to this at the height of the season. They're needed elsewhere."
Anna didn't like it. Intuition told her there were connections, somehow, somewhere, between the seemingly unconnected events, that if she could find the right vantage point she would be able to see how a Florida con man, a promiscuous Seattle divorce lawyer and a mysterious young man with a chain-link belt and a beautiful smile, were related to punctured water bottles, army cutworm moths, glacier lilies and murder.
Because she could not find her way to that vantage point, she said, "What do you want me to do?"
Ruick brought his gaze in from the parking lot and let it rest on her. Harry Ruick was as uncomfortable as she was with backing off the investigation. Unlike her, he was responsible for the safety of the entire park. National Park Service law enforcement was designed to keep tourists from damaging the resource and each other. It was not set up to conduct long-term in-depth investigations. Parks were federal lands. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was the department used to that end. But, on occasion, the FBI had bigger fish to fry—or fishes closer to home—and the investigation was left to the park where the incident had occurred.
This was one of those times.
Carolyn Van Slyke's murder was very probably going to slip through the cracks, along with a staggering number of other homicides that would never be solved.
"What I'd like you to do," Harry said, "is keep at it for a while. Joan will be up there for another five days. I can't see any point in you turning around and going right back unless you just want to for the DNA study. She's got Buck with her to fetch and carry, and that's more than she's used to. Why don't you make use of Joan's office and her computer? See if you can't dig up something, anything that might tie some of this together. If you don't come up with anything, you can consider yourself off my duty roster and go back to work for Joan."
"Sure," Anna said. She'd start in the morning. In the bookcase under Joan's television she'd seen a video collection including such classics as Die Hard, End of Days, and Aliens. Tonight she was going to enjoy a little vicarious kicking of ass.
20
The following morning Anna took possession of Joan's office. On her way in she'd been greeted with a few friendly hellos and had the coffee machine pointed out to her, but there'd been no questions about the murder or anything related to it. Researchers were wonderful in their dedication. If it wasn't about bears, virtually no one in the great rambling building gave two hoots about it.
With Ruick's blessing, she had taken copies of every report generated, every piece of evidence gathered and any and all lab reports returned. Joan's office was devoid of clean flat surfaces. Every inch of space was covered in folders, papers, pamphlets, books and pieces of bears gathered over the years. Knowing this well-feathered nest was as Joan wished it to be, the sprawling form dictated by her professional needs, Anna chose to disturb nothing. The relics of her investigation she placed carefully on top of Joan's piles. She sat in the midst of them and opened her mind to let plans and patterns form if they might.
Carolyn Van Slyke's autopsy report was to the right of the computer on a half-consumed bag of gummi bears. Anna reread it, looking for any connection to McCaskil. Other than the coat, there was nothing. As a matter of course the body had been checked for sexual assault. None. If Carolyn had been involved with McCaskil, the sex had been consensual and a condom had been used.
Anna had only Lester Van Slyke's word that Carolyn had been adulterous. Though she believed him, there was a remote possibility he'd been inspired by the army jacket, seen the accusation as a way of casting suspicion on McCaskil, not realizing in doing so he was giving himself yet another motive for killing his own wife. Since Anna had no positive leads, she took the negative.
Having found Carolyn Van Slyke's work number and address in Seattle, Anna called her place of business. Francine Cuckor, Carolyn's assistant, was happy to answer questions. Whether divorce attorneys were more open than most about adultery or whether Francine just liked to talk, Anna would never know, but according to Ms. Cuckor's bawdy tales, a few of which sounded apocryphal and bordered on admiration, Carolyn not only had sex with a large number of men but was open about it. Francine did say that Carolyn was an ethical practitioner of the law. Her exact words were: "She'd never fuck a client or a client's husband until the case was settled." From the way Ms. Cuckor said it, Anna guessed she pretty much thought Carolyn a candidate for the Lawyer's Hall of Fame on grounds of self-control.
Francine went so far as to offer Anna the names and phone numbers of others who could confirm her stories. Anna declined. She was merely fact-checking, not gathering material for letters to Penthouse.
She hung up and filched a gummi bear to cleanse her palate. She was not a prude. She'd enjoyed her share of fornication. Still, she was old-fashioned enough to feel adultery should be done on the sly, in great secrecy, and that it behooved the adulterers to feel ashamed and guilty. The libertine sentiments of Ms. Cuckor and the late Mrs. Van Slyke left her with a sense of sleaze that was unsettling. Anna had never cheated on Zach. A cynic had once told her it was because he died before their marriage reached the philandering years. Anna chose to believe otherwise. If she married again she would bring to the new union that same Pollyanna belief in fidelity.
If she married again. Thinking that startled her. Several years earlier she'd finally extinguished the torch she carried for her first husband. It had never crossed her mind that she might marry again.
She ate another gummi bear and picked up the reports generated by a computer search on one William Adkins McCaskil, a.k.a. Bill McLellan, Bill Fetterman, and Will Skillman. It was a point in the man's favor that he had registered for a backcountry permit under his own name. That he'd registered for a permit at all suggested that either his pursuits were innocent or, given he was well versed in the ways of crime and law enforcement, he knew in obeying the minor rules one was far more apt to get away with the major infractions. A significant number of felons were rotting in the federal penitentiaries because they got pulled over for failing to signal on a right turn and then one thing led to another.
McCaskil had been born in Sarasota, Florida, on December 27, 1949, to Gerald and Suzanne McCaskil. At sixteen, he'd gotten his driver's license suspended in Tampa, Florida. At twenty-nine, he'd been convicted of mail fraud, selling low-cost life insurance policies through the mail to elderly people. He'd served six months. At forty-eight, he'd been convicted of real estate fraud, selling one-acre lots over the internet that belonged to the Florida fish and wildlife service. For that, he'd served eighteen months and gotten five years' probation. Because of the light sentences, Anna guessed large sums of money had not been involved. That or McCaskil had connections.
Connections. Anna stared at the report without really seeing it. There was something there that was jiggling a lever in her mind trying to turn a light on. Again she read the first paragraph: a.k.a. Bill McLellan, a.k.a. Bill Fetterman, a.k.a. Will Skillman. McLellan and Skillman were of a piece. People often chose the initials of, or a play on, their given names when choosing an alias. Fetterman s
eemed out of place. Fetterman rang some distant bell.
Anna started with NCIC, the National Crime Information Center. Two Fettermans had wants or warrants, one was a twenty-two-year-old black male out of Philadelphia wanted on a burglary charge, the other was a thirty-one-year-old white male from Los Banos, California, wanted for grand theft auto. No tie-in that Anna could see with her a.k.a.
The obvious route petering out, she began a people search starting with the Fettermans of Sarasota, Florida. Fortunately, Fetterman was not a common name. Only three turned up: Dr. Peter Fetterman, A. Fetterman, and Fetterman Marine supplies.
A. Fetterman was Amanda Fetterman, the spinster daughter of the owner of Fetterman Marine. Anna told her she was from the Florida State Alumni Association trying to track down a William or Bill Fetterman for the class of '74's upcoming reunion.
Amanda knew no Bill or William. Anna tried McCaskil and McClellan out on her and struck out both times. Finally, too many questions made Amanda suspicious and she began asking questions of her own. Making a hasty retreat fueled with "thank yous," Anna disconnected. She called the marine supply store next and spoke with Papa Fetterman. Same story told in less time: he knew no Bill Fetterman, McCaskil or McClellan, no Skillman either and what the hell was this all about anyway?
Peter Fetterman was a doctor of marine biology. The number Anna'd gotten off the internet was apparently his home. Being an efficient man, his answering machine informed callers of a work number where he could be reached. Just because he sounded so sensible, when Anna reached him, she told him that she was doing background checks for three men who'd applied for law enforcement positions. The doctor knew no men by those names. The only Fetterman he knew of was a man in Tampa. Their paths had crossed over an incident regarding a shark poached illegally from a study area. He wouldn't tell Anna where, other than to say "off the coast." He seemed to suffer from the delusion that few people could resist the lure of frequenting shark-infested waters.
Tampa was where young Bill McCaskil had his first recorded brush with the law. Anna moved on. To have phoned three people and gotten hold of them on, if not the first, then the second try was a phenomenal bit of luck. It seemed the more electronic paraphernalia people purchased to remain in touch with an ever-scattering herd served only to separate them further. In the course of various investigations Anna had spent days of her life on pointless rounds from answering machines to pagers to voice mail, never once speaking to a real live human being.
Consequently it was no surprise that Lady Luck dumped her in Tampa. No Fetterman was listed, either as an individual or as a business. Anna taxed the phone company's much-touted, new-and-improved information system that promised to find numbers to places with forgotten names. Nowhere in or around Tampa was a place of business with the name Fetterman in the title. The telephone operator Anna had hooked up with was probably as close to a saint as the phone company had on its rosters. She was willing to keep on trying when Anna decided to throw in the towel.
"We could try recently disconnected numbers," the operator suggested.
"You can do that?" Anna was amazed not at the technology but at the operator's access to those files, and her willingness to take the time.
"It'll take a second."
Anna couldn't think what good a disconnected number could do, but she felt an obligation to wait. After all, the woman had worked so hard it seemed ungrateful somehow. The strange quiet of telephone lines, not pushed full of Muzak, trickled into Anna's ear; faint hushing as of a distant sea, barely audible clicks and hums; the intercourse of the world kept at bay by a thin wall of rubber.
"Well," the operator came back on the line. "We've got something."
"Let's have it," Anna said. To prove she was paying attention, she sat up straight and held a pen at the ready over a sheet of scrap paper she'd nearly obliterated with doodles.
"Fetterman's Adventure Trails on Highway Forty-One."
Anna repeated it back to her. A name had been found, the operator seemed to feel at last her job was done and she could leave Anna in good conscience.
Rubbing the ear she'd compressed into the phone receiver for so long, Anna looked at the words angled in amongst the rococo permutations of bear tracks inked on the page. The name Fetterman had rung a bell. Fetterman's Adventure Trails set half a dozen clanging. Leaving the office in its state of productive disarray, she jogged the half-mile back to the headquarters building.
Harry was out to lunch. Maryanne was eating at her desk, delicately holding a sandwich in one hand away from the keyboard while she hunt-and-pecked corrections with the other. Anna hoped Harry knew how lucky he was.
The sandwich and the typing were set aside while Anna was settled in Harry's chair and copies of the past three weeks' 10-343s and 10-344s case and criminal incident reports were lifted from the files and placed before her.
On a case incident report submitted ten days earlier by the district ranger on the northwest side of the park, Anna found what she was looking for. No crime had been committed; it was the report of the truck and trailer abandoned off-road within park boundaries. The truck was registered to a Carl G. Micou out of Tampa, Florida. Anna rechecked the report on the abandoned truck. The only phone number on the vehicle registration turned out to belong to a business phone that had been disconnected, the phone number of Fetterman's Adventure Trails on Highway 41.
Anna had what she wanted but she didn't know what she had. For the next hour she read reports from the time the truck and trailer were found to the present but there was nothing else pertinent. A call to the Polebridge ranger station and another to dispatch let her know that no one had come forward to claim the vehicles. Anna photocopied the 10-343, thanked Maryanne and walked back to the resource management office.
The secretary's sandwich reminded Anna it was lunchtime but she was too preoccupied to take time hunting and gathering. Back in Joan's office she made do with candy. She was going to owe the researcher a bag of gummi bears before the day was through.
To impose order where none naturally suggested itself, Anna rearranged her papers atop those left by Joan Rand: Carolyn Van Slyke's autopsy report; the list of items found on the body, including the coat with McCaskil's topographical map in the pocket; then what information they had on Bill McCaskil a.k.a. Bill Fetterman; Anna's much-doodled-on notes tracing Fetterman to Fetterman's Adventure Trails; and, last in this papered line of thought, the 10-343 connecting a truck and horse trailer abandoned near the northwest corner of Glacier to the defunct business on Highway 41 outside Tampa, Florida.
Too much for coincidence, not enough for sense. Could the truck and horse trailer belong to McCaskil or have been borrowed or stolen by McCaskil? Sure. But then why was his own legally registered vehicle parked in a frontcountry parking lot? Who was Carl Micou? Did McCaskil have a confederate and, if so, a confederate in what?
None of this brought Anna any closer to a connection between McCaskil and the murder victim; still, she was pleased with herself. The morning had not been wasted.
Back on the phone, she reconnected with Francine Cuckor. Ms. Cuckor had her own brand of professional ethics. She'd been only too happy to share in gory detail the fact that her boss had had sex with all creatures great and small. When asked to say yea or nay to names of clients, she got cagey. Eventually Anna was bumped upstairs to Claude Winger, a junior partner in the firm.
It was not advisable to spin tales for a past master at the art of professional dissimulation, so Anna told him, as her father would have said, "the whole truth, nothing but the truth and damn little of that."
"I'm Officer Anna Pigeon investigating the death of Carolyn Van Slyke. Could you answer a few questions for me?"
A pause, then a careful voice as devoid of regional inflections as that of a radio announcer said, "Ask your questions." Anna noted the lack of commitment to answering them.
"We have a couple leads, both weak at this point. We're trying to establish any prior connection between Mrs. Van S
lyke and our possible suspects," Anna said, using frankness like bread upon the waters.
It was not returned tenfold. "And you want me to ...," the voice came back.
"Answer a few questions, if you would."
"Ask your questions."
There would be no softening up or slithering around Claude. Anna cut to it. "Has or was Carolyn Van Slyke working on any case involving a Bill McCaskil, Will Skillman, Bill McClellan or Bill Fetterman?"
"We can't divulge any client information."
"The fact that a person has engaged the services of an attorney does not fall under attorney-client privilege," Anna said. So often the attorney, doctor, priest and whoever-else client privilege was claimed for wasn't for the protection of clients. It was claimed, legally or not, because people were either too lazy to bother giving information to help out the police, or harbored vague worries that to cooperate would open up their own activities to scrutiny. Anna suspected Claude claimed it as a matter of course to avoid involvement and work. She thought of threatening to subpoena his files but knew it was an empty threat. The rank-and-file investigated and reported. It wasn't for the likes of her to go throwing around legal ultimatums. Claude Winger would know that.
She waited through a clearly audible sigh breathed out in an office in Seattle. "I'll put you through to the secretary. Give her the names. She will tell you if any of them have engaged the professional services of Carolyn Van Slyke in the past year. She won't go back further than that and she will not tell you anything else."
"Thank you," Anna said but he'd already put her on hold. Minutes later, when she was beginning to think she'd been put on hold to grow old and die, Francine came on the line. Winger had evidently spoken to her firmly. She was businesslike to the point of rudeness. Anna read off her list of names, adding Carl Micou as an afterthought. She was answered by the huffy snicking sound of fingernails on a keyboard.
