by Neil Mcmahon
"I'll go check out that gunpowder," I said.
"You mentioned bringing this up to the sheriff-would you still do that?"
I hesitated, but nodded.
"I should be able to break free from here in a couple of hours," she said. "If you're going to be around."
"I'll be around."
I made my way through the crowd to the exit, pointedly keeping several people between me and Senator Ulrich's glassy smile and glad hand. My concern about Renee was getting both deeper and broader. Now it was starting to seem like she was seeing tigers lurking behind every tree.
And yet I paused inside the door and watched Travis Paulson for a minute. The interaction here had strengthened my impression that he had a severe case of self-importance. He'd bustle around job sites waving blueprints and talking imperiously to the supers, who tolerated him only because they had to. I'd seen him driving with that same aggressive impatience, cell phone pressed to his ear, in a Seth Fraker-style pickup truck, a big new rig that had never hauled a scrap of anything.
He did seem to fit the model that Renee had described. His gaze was still flicking furtively toward her, like a nervous tic he couldn't control. He'd "just happened" to drive by her house and notice the trash pile. He'd pressed an invitation for further contact with her.
On the other hand, Helena was a small enough town that you easily could just happen by someplace, and it would be normal for a friend to take an interested look. I couldn't fault him for wanting more of her company. And above all, I just couldn't take him that seriously. Behind his swagger, he seemed too ineffectual to have committed such a harsh, resolute crime.
I hung around for a minute longer, watching the other men in the room. I didn't see any more signs of furtive fascination with the earring, and by and large, they were a distinguished-looking group.
But I was no judge of what might lie beneath the surface. Many of them had known the Callisters for years back into the past, and I could have been looking at a long-buried dispute or obsession that had driven one of those distinguished fingers to pull a trigger.
15
I still had the key that Renee had given me to her carriage house. Stepping into the cold, torn-up building was a familiar sensation, never uplifting and with nothing here to improve on it. I changed back into my work clothes, got a trouble light, and hunkered down where we'd found the cache.
The top of the masonry foundation wall, about a foot wide, had become a rat highway; with the caked dung and debris, the surface was hard to see, and we hadn't examined it closely yesterday. But as I moved the light beam, I spotted the pile of wood chips in a corner where rim and floor joists met, under the wall plate and studs-all dry old wood with plenty of updraft, a perfect place for a fire to start.
Shavings like that got scattered around during construction, although there was no apparent reason for this buildup. But a heavy sprinkling of a dark substance was mixed in, mostly congealed now but still finely granular in a few spots. I touched a fingertip to one of those and sniffed. It gave off the unmistakable acrid smell of gunpowder.
I made an effort to believe that this was just happenstance with a touch of freak coincidence, and that imagining anything else was buying into a folie a deux with Renee. But she was right. The powder hadn't just sifted down through the floorboards; there was too much of it, and no gaps directly above the spot.
Before the rats had turned the volatile black powder sodden, a single spark could have set it flaring. Flames and firefighters' hoses would have obliterated the setup; if any traces were found, there'd have seemed nothing strange about its presence in an area where a man had reloaded shotgun shells.
But the enamel jewelry box would have stayed more or less intact, with the fire mainly above it-the contents maybe heat-damaged, but still recognizable.
And investigators would swiftly have reached the conclusion that Professor Callister had hidden it there.
So had he? Or was Renee right again-that the real killer had established this slick ruse to divert suspicion from himself? The fire-resistant jewelry box seemed a notch fortuitous. Maybe he had provided it himself to fit his scheme, figuring that people would assume it had belonged to Astrid. Had he just stumbled across the photos somehow, maybe ransacking her cabin after the crime? Or had he known about them, and planned in advance to use them this way?
I poked around the study for a few more minutes without accomplishing anything, then admitted that I was mainly just stalling my visit to Sheriff Gary Varna.
As I walked across the yard to my truck, my gaze was caught by a vehicle a couple hundred yards uphill, in the woods behind the Callisters' house. That seemed like an odd place to stop. There were no houses or anything else nearby. It wasn't even a turnout; you'd have to pull off of Montana Avenue and drive a ways through the trees to get there.
The vehicle started to move immediately, pulling away and disappearing. All I could tell was that it was a mid-sized SUV, dark blue, several years old. They were a dime a dozen around here.
No doubt there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for its presence. That spot being an excellent vantage point overlooking this property, hidden from passing traffic and most other eyes, and the driver taking off as soon as I came into view, was all just coincidence.
Neil McMahon – Dead Silver
THE LEWIS AND CLARK COUNTY courthouse was a somber gray stone building that had seen its fifteen minutes of fame when the just-caught Unabomber was photographed on the steps outside. Besides housing the Sheriff's Department, it was also the old jail, and you couldn't fail to feel the gravity of that.
I'd been nervous about my offer to talk to Gary Varna ever since I'd made it to Renee. It was true that Gary was a longtime acquaintance of mine, and I could even call him a friend. And I thought he'd probably agree to an off-the-record look at what we'd found-not as a favor to me, but because he wanted to know what was lying under every rock, and he hated loose ends.
What worried me was that he suspected, correctly, my involvement in the disappearance of two men a while back. That had been the occasion for my last visit to the courthouse, handcuffed and flanked by deputies.
Now my relationship with him was a lot like Captain Hook's with the crocodile. Gary patiently kept an eye on me, following the tick of my inner alarm clock, confident that one of these days, the little raft of phony alibis that I'd patched together would hit a reef. I was equally sure that he was right.
There was some comfort in knowing that if he really wanted to push it, he long since could have. In fact, I had reason to believe that he had even run interference for me during that investigation. But I couldn't help suspecting that was because I was a morsel he was saving for later.
Meantime, we got along fine, although if I happened to glimpse him unexpectedly-and at six foot five, Gary stood out in a crowd-my blood pressure arced.
He was in his office, a cubicle as spartan as a Marine barracks, wearing his usual unofficial uniform: blue jeans pressed with a razor-sharp crease and a button-down oxford cloth shirt. He looked the part for his job-tall, lean, light brown hair just starting to gray. He was friendly as always, but as always, the gaze of his slate blue eyes started my mouth going dry. We chatted for a minute, until he paused expectantly.
"It's about John Callister," I said.
"John Callister," he said musingly. "There's a name that brings up memories. I was sorry to miss his funeral, but I couldn't get away."
"His daughter Renee's in town. She was cleaning up his study and she found some photos and a piece of jewelry. She thinks they're related to those murders, and I'm starting to think maybe she's right."
He didn't move or speak, but his eyes focused a click.
I told him the story, adding that Renee hoped to keep this confidential. And while I cringed at snitching, I felt compelled to confess that she'd handled the items-and that she deliberately had the earring on display.
His displeasure was clear. "That kind of thing don't wash, Hugh.
I seem to recall you and me having a talk about it once before."
"What was I supposed to do-physically restrain her? Come on, Gary. She's being naive, sure, but she's been carrying that weight all these years, and now this new jolt. It's got to be killing her."
He still didn't like it, but he nodded curtly. "Put that stuff someplace safe, and for Christ's sake, don't mess with it any more."
"Yes, sir."
He leaned back in his chair, head tilted to the side.
"Well, I guess I'd agree to keep it quiet, at least to start with," he said. "I got my own reasons for that. Most of the people who were involved would piss blood about reopening it. Makes them look bad, and real bad if they're proved wrong. And there's technicalities I don't want to deal with, like the city police ought to be called in. But if something serious turns up, Miss Callister's just going to have to take what comes."
"I'm sure that'll be fine with her," I said.
"She don't have any choice," Gary said patiently. "You better explain that to her."
His big-knuckled fingers started drumming the desktop. I interpreted that as sort of like a cat's tail twitching-something was brewing.
"That case sticks in my craw about as bad as any I ever came across," he said. "I pretty much had to watch from the sidelines. Didn't have any jurisdiction up there in Phosphor County, and those fellas weren't overly cooperative. I don't like to break bad on my esteemed colleagues, but a fact's a fact." His face and voice stayed bland, but if there was anything that pissed Gary off, it was being kept out of the loop.
"How so?"
"Oh, it was one of those situations where there was a bunch of factors involved and they snowballed into a hell of a mess. Dave Rucker was the sheriff back then, getting on toward retiring, and he figured this was his last chance for the limelight. So he tried to handle it himself, and he botched it right from the get-go, and then he stonewalled to cover. Some dirty politics going on, too."
That reminded me that Astrid had been embroiled in some antagonism over the Dead Silver Mine. And Tom Dierdorff had mentioned it at the funeral, and also implied a hidden backstory.
"Can you tell me your opinion, just between us?" I said. "About the Professor?"
Gary grimaced like he was in pain, and I knew it was real. He was ironclad in many ways, entirely willing to manipulate people and even ignore the letter of the law. But he still cared deeply about its spirit, and when he couldn't enforce that, it ripped him up.
"I've never been convinced he was guilty," Gary said.
Coming from him, that was pretty strong. I'd expected a more noncommittal response. But before I could phrase another question, he glanced at his watch.
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to move you along-I got another appointment," he said. "I'll stop by the Callisters' as soon as I can. Not today, I'm swamped-I'll try for tomorrow."
I thanked him and rose to leave.
"Hugh?" he said, as I got to the door. "Is Renee staying in that house alone?" Now he was leaning forward with his forearms on the desk and his gaze intent.
"She has been, yeah."
"I'm not sure that's a good idea," he said. "Why don't you pass that on to her, too."
I walked to my truck feeling newly unsettled.
Renee was out there trolling for trouble, and Gary took seriously the possibility that it might exist.
16
I drove straight to the Gold Baron Inn, but the funeral reception had broken up and no one on the staff knew where Renee had gone. I swung by her house; she wasn't there, either. Probably she was with her relatives. I knew she had a cell phone, but I hadn't thought to get the number.
I'd cooled down by then, anyway. Gary was talking about a commonsense precaution, not an emergency.
Although it was still unsettling.
I realized that Renee might not be back for some time, and I didn't feel like just hanging around. I decided to follow up on what my lawyer pal Tom Dierdorff had mentioned at the funeral.
Tom wasn't in his office, but his secretary patched me through to his cell phone and he picked up right away.
"I wondered if you might have a minute to chat anytime soon," I said.
"I think maybe this is in the stars, Hugh. Talking to you this morning got my ass in gear to do something I've been putting off. A guy's proposing a development up around Gates of the Mountains. There's opposition; it's going to court. I need to look the site over, and I'd be glad for a pro to bounce my thoughts off."
"You better get a real pro if you want an opinion that's worth anything. But sure, I'd be interested to see it."
He gave me directions, and I headed north on Interstate 15. The terrain rose in a series of long, deceptively steep hills, through rolling open ranch land that gave way to forested mountains. The Missouri lay a few miles to the east, then converged with the highway near Wolf Creek and they ran together toward Great Falls. It was a fine stretch of country, and so far, it was largely unchanged.
I found the gravel road that Tom had described, and after a couple more miles, I spotted his parked pickup truck. There was nothing shiny about this one; it was caked with mud, dinged up and scraped, the bed strewn with fencing tools, rolled barbed wire, and feed. I caught the sweet musty perfume of hay as I walked past.
He was standing on top of a rise fifty yards away, wearing the kind of quilted jacket that a lot of stockmen preferred. This time of year, the wind off the snowfields still carried a pretty good bite. You'd never dream that he was a big-shot attorney; he looked like he was scanning for lost cattle. I hiked on up there to join him.
The hilltop overlooked a meadow that was surrounded by forest and skirted to the north by a creek just starting to shed its skin of ice. A couple of big dozers and a backhoe were parked on the site, with their ridged tracks leading to spur roads they'd cut into the trees. But nothing was moving except the neon orange plastic ribbons on engineers' stakes, fluttering in the afternoon wind.
"Did somebody shut them down?" I said. This weather wasn't anywhere near bad enough to do that.
"An environmental coalition. For openers, the developer started work without all the right permits. When he got that straightened out, they claimed the septic system's inadequate, it'll pollute the water table and filter down to the river."
Which, adjacent to this spot, happened to be one of the finest, most popular trout fishing stretches in the world.
"He's fighting back, of course, and his money's talking loud," Tom said.
"What's the setup?"
"Eighty houses to start with. Medium-high end, average around three hundred K-couple-acre parcels, set apart in the trees. But there's already a bigger operation on the table, a mile back toward the freeway. Apparently our man started feeling guilty about outpricing the average working stiff, so he wants to put in a couple hundred cheaper units, complete with a bar-casino. And plenty of room to expand."
That hit another raw nerve-the prospect of sprawl like I'd seen during my dozen years in California. I'd drive a stretch of highway flanked by fields, and when I drove it again a few months later, shopping centers and housing tracts had appeared. Cities that had been miles apart became one long strip. But the hard-line stance of trying to keep out development altogether was untenable. The population kept growing and people needed homes and jobs.
"I can't tell you anything about the building quality without seeing some foundations or framing," I said. "But the things you mentioned aren't good signs."
The odds were slim that the developer had made an honest mistake in starting work without permits. More often that was an aggressive tactic that worked on a "possession is nine tenths" mentality. He knew that once ground was broken, that created a momentum which was hard to turn around. Regulatory agencies tended to bluster but then back off, at worst imposing slap-on-the-wrist fines which might or might not ever get paid.
But beyond the legalities, it raised a red flag with more tangible consequences. Those kinds of outfits were prone to cutting other c
orners, such as by using substandard materials and practices. The inadequate septic system was a prime example.
"That's what I figured," Tom said. "Glad to hear you agree."
"I suppose it's going to go through anyway?"
"I don't think there's any question. Just whether sooner or later."
"What's your stake in it?"
He smiled wryly. "That's what I'm mulling over-I've had offers from both sides. Part of me wants to dig in and make it tough for him. Another part says that's pissing in the wind, and smart money is to join his team and try to see that at least it gets done right. Then again, I'm sorely tempted just to stay the hell out of it. A cop-out, I know, but it's going to be loaded with the kind of heartache us old homeboys already got plenty of."
I didn't have any advice, and I knew he wasn't really looking for any. Maybe it helped him to have a sounding board.
"Well, that's my own little tempest in a teapot," he said. "I guess we could go sit in my truck and get the heater on. No point in standing here freezing."
We turned our backs to the chilly wind and walked down the rise.
"I heard a while ago that the sheriffs were real interested in you," he said.
"I came within an ace of calling you. Turned out I didn't have to."
"So this is a different situation?"
"I'm afraid it is, Tom," I said. "And it's starting to take on weight."
17
Tom's connection with the dead Silver Mine had come about by way of a radical environmentalist group, a few of whom had snuck onto the site and were caught damaging equipment. But before they could be tried, Astrid's murder took place, making the Dodd Mining Company leery of more bad publicity-this time, really ugly. They backed off taking all the defendants to court and instead chose a scapegoat, a young man with no money or clout, figuring they could railroad him to a long prison term. Tom knew his family and offered to represent him pro bono. He used the company's reluctance as leverage, threatening not just a trial, but a very noisy one. In the end, he was able to plead the sentence down to three years; the kid actually served less than half that.
