“What an asshole you are,” I said to Cortland. I didn’t trust him behind me. I didn’t trust him in front of me either—he might be stupid enough to fall backwards—but at least I could see him there. I made him put on my pack and I carried his with the evidence. We climbed the natural steps in the cliff face—Cortland first—crawled around the rocks and up the trail.
When we reached the top he wanted to go down to the trail that circled around the lake, the way he had come, but I motioned him into the woods. It was a shorter route, as Avery had said, my rental car was waiting at the end, and besides I was familiar with the trail; Cortland was not. It gave me an edge.
There is often the sensation when you go to an unfamiliar place that it takes a long time to get in, and no time at all to get back out. But I had the feeling this was going to be a long afternoon. The cedars were dark sentinels in the snow, the path was already white and getting slick. Winter had returned once again and was claiming Freezeout.
Cortland turned just before we entered the woods and made me an offer. “This business is going to be extremely upsetting to my family. Couldn’t we just forget the whole incident? You can’t be making very much as a lawyer in Albuquerque, and I can afford to pay you very well.”
The money lure. To me it had about as much appeal as coyote piss and in-heat urine. “Just keep walking,” I said.
22
AND SO WE began, one foot in front of the other, one tree after another. We happened to be in the north woods at a time of year when night fell in the afternoon. I was already regretting the loss of the flashlight in Avery’s missing backpack. There would be no moonlight to guide me either, and once we reached the Pontiac it was at least a mile to the main road with no guarantee the car would get through the snow. Cortland’s Bean boots cut black hollows in the snow; my hiking boots stepped on them. It was a confused trail that we left, footprint on top of footprint. The sky got darker, the trail whiter, the snow deeper, my mood blacker, but something kept me hiking down the trail to justice with a gun on Cortland’s back—conditioning more than instinct.
Avery’s death was a black hole. You could rationalize it by saying he was an old man who’d lived a full life, fulfilled his potential and died in an action he believed in. You could also say he’d been brutally and senselessly murdered by a scumbag of a poacher. A lot of people might not have thought Cortland was capable of committing murder, but he’d risen to the occasion. His father, no doubt, would be more surprised than anyone at the slime hidden in his son; parents are often the last to know. Cortland had an unblemished preppy veneer, one of those white chocolates you pick out of the box that is smooth on the outside but filled with a disgustingly inedible mess. Weaklings kill, too, maybe more than anyone else, and poaching is a dangerous occupation—not only for the wildlife. Poachers get used to killing, birds at first, maybe, then small mammals, larger ones, moving on up to human beings. There must be some sense of power, a thrill in the killing; they get to like it too much. I supposed whatever sense of power Cortland had had in his life was perverted. Apparently everything had been given to him, including his job, so there was no sense of pride in that. The thrill of deceiving his father by participating in an activity he despised, walking the tightrope of discovery, the excitement of negotiating on the black market, of buying the birds—it must have made him feel like a grown-up.
The prep himself was barely five feet ahead of me dragging his heels, scuffing the snow over his boots. I could have asked him what twisted pleasure he had gotten from his activities. It was the perfect opportunity for a confession, with his eyes straight ahead he wouldn’t have had to see the confessor, but Cortland didn’t volunteer and I didn’t ask. The only words I had for him were “move it” and “faster.”
We trudged along like this for a mile or so, the hunter contemplating the prey. I should have fallen into a hiker’s trance by now aided by the snow dropping relentlessly in front of my eyes and tap-tapping on the trees, by the hypnotic effort of picking up one foot and putting it down again, but the rhythm was broken by Cortland’s efforts to slow down and mine to speed him up. In a hiker’s trance I might not have noticed that the squirrels that had been squawking intermittently as we passed had picked up the beat of their complaint. A branch cracked loudly back in the cedars and cracked again. The squirrels bitched louder. Maybe I should have asked for his confession, because Cortland and I certainly hadn’t made enough noise to scare a bear away. There was a chill in the center of my bones caused by the sensation that I was being watched, if not stalked, that something out there was contemplating me. The fear of a bear’s enormous jaws closing on me, of being half-eaten and left mangled and bleeding to die in the snow, was primitive and irrationally worse than anything I could imagine from my fellow man. Cortland James and I had that in common, we were the same species. If there was a bear out there, we might end up in this together.
The gentleman stopped suddenly and bent over. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“Tying my bootlaces.”
“Fuck your bootlaces. Get up.”
“Just a minute.”
“I said get up, asshole.” Maybe the angry voices would scare anything lurking out there away, maybe not. I had the sudden and distinct sensation that at the shadowy gray periphery of vision, something large and furtive had moved.
Cortland sprawled in the snow. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Making angels?”
“I tripped. Give me a minute to get myself straightened out.”
“No minute. Get up now.”
As I closed in on him with the gun in my hand, he rolled over, scooped up a handful of snow and threw it in my face. The snow stung my skin and landed in my eyes. For an instant I was blinded and lost in a whiteout. In that instant Cortland James jumped up, grabbed my wrist and knocked the gun loose. Taking a lesson from Katharine, I kicked at the direction where I thought his crotch should be. It wasn’t there, but the kick threw me off balance and I slid and fell in the snow, pulling him down with me. We rolled over and over, bringing back flashes of wet mittens, icy hard snowballs and a little girl who didn’t play with tea sets and dolls, who spent her time roughhousing with the big boys, who never learned whatever little girls used to learn about not punching boys out. Although it had been a while since I’d been in this kind of wrestling match, I remembered enough not to let some snot-nosed preppy get the best of me. Rolling with the force of our fall, I managed to end up on top. My vision had cleared up enough so I could see the gun had landed just out of reach. I couldn’t get to it and hold on to Cortland at the same time, so with one hand I pushed down on his neck, with the other I punched. He twisted and squirmed beneath me gasping for breath. I punched his face again and again. It was a lot more satisfying than holding a gun that was too deadly to fire. Something else came back to me from my tomboy days—never take your eyes off an opponent, watch every blow as it lands, every bruise that forms.
Cortland was getting some nice welts, especially around the eyes, when he suddenly stopped squirming. Playing dead? Offering his neck in a submissive gesture of surrender? I held my punch. His pale eyes widened, he gasped, and at the same time I felt a large paw grab my shoulder and shove me aside. I rolled in the direction of the gun and managed to grab it before anything else did.
Against an enraged bear a pistol is supposedly a far worse strategy than playing dead, but that didn’t stop me from picking up the gun and pointing it. It was the natural thing to do. The predator grabbed Cortland by the neck, yanked him up and faced me across the barrel. It was Leo Wolfe.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“I suppose I could ask you the same question,” he replied, keeping a firm grip on Cortland. “You two come all the way out here for a roll in the snow?”
“That person you are holding on to is Cortland James. He killed Avery.”
“If you killed Avery, you’re going to answer for it, friend. He was a fine man. I came across his body on th
e rocks back there and that was something I would hope I’d never lay eyes on in my lifetime. It wasn’t a sight it’ll be easy to forget either. I followed your tracks here one on top of the other, noticing who was stepping on who.”
“She killed him,” Cortland said. “I saw her do it.” It was a futile effort, and Leo gave it all the respect it deserved—he laughed.
“I know this lady and I know she didn’t kill Avery. Now why don’t you tell me what happened?” he said to me. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you give me that gun?”
“What happened, yes, the gun, no. Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing at Freezeout?”
“I came out to get one last look at the gyr before winter settled in and she took off.”
“A look?” As he’d said himself, goodness was a rough trail.
“Just a look.” Leo was wearing a down parka that made him seem even bigger, but he wasn’t carrying a backpack. Whatever he needed to take a look was in his pockets; there was no place to carry the nets or camouflage or guantlets or whatever else was required to trap a falcon. “I’d feel easier if you’d stop pointing that gun at me,” he said.
I looked down at my arm, which had gotten the shakes; the gun was trembling violently and pointing right at Leo. I turned it toward the ground.
“Now I suggest that we get a move on because there’s still a fair piece of trail ahead and it’s getting dark. You can tell me your story while we walk,” he said.
I did, although I didn’t feel much like talking. My voice wavered, my face stung and my arm ached from pounding Cortland. I was cold, deep winter cold, as cold as I ever wanted to get. The trail was downhill from here on out and you couldn’t get going fast enough in the snow to warm up. The cold had worked its way right down into the center of my bones and it looked like it was planning to stay until spring. I wished I had my down vest. I was glad I had the hat that Avery had given me; at least I could keep the brain waves in.
“If you and Avery had come along just a little bit later, he’d have gotten the gyr,” Leo said when I’d finished.
The falcon of legend and kings. “It was a thrill to see her,” I said.
“Isn’t she something?”
Cortland was dawdling again. “Get the lead out,” I told him.
“I can’t see,” he whined, “my eye is swelling shut.”
“Tough shit,” I replied.
We finished up the final leg in silence. Cortland scuffed along sullenly. I was numb.
When we got to the car, Leo agreed to drive. I said I’d keep the gun on Cortland. We put the pack and evidence in the trunk. “It’s all downhill. I think I can get her out of here all right,” Leo said. We made Cortland take off his belt and put his hands behind his back. Leo wrapped the belt tight around his wrists and bound them together. We put Cortland in the backseat; I watched him from the front.
Leo turned on the headlights, put the car in first gear and cranked up the heat. With his foot to the pedal, he rammed the Pontiac through the snow. Like he said, it was all downhill. There was a lot of slipping and sliding on the way out. The snow fell steadily in the track of the lights. It landed on the windshield and a wiper ticked and scraped it away. It settled softly on the road, the tamarack/larches, the red cedar trees. It fell on the squirrels, the hawks, the marmots, and on the rocks where Avery lay.
As if he had read my mind Leo said, “Don’t worry about Avery. Clears up in a day or two they’ll get a helicopter in and haul him out of there.”
“I think after a day or two it might be better to leave him be.” There were a lot of hungry predators out there whose habits had been disrupted by the snow.
“Maybe, but it always makes a family feel better to have a body.”
The James family wasn’t going to be pleased with the body we were delivering. Their fair-haired son squirmed in the backseat and twisted his hands around as if trying to undo them, maybe to brush at the bangs that were falling across his forehead. He was getting the beginnings of a purple shiner under his right eye.
“My eye hurts,” he complained.
“Sue me.”
“Just settle down there,” said Leo. “You got a weapon aimed at you.”
“This belt is unbearably tight. It’s cutting off my circulation.”
“Ain’t that a pity? He’s a whiny little son of a bitch, ain’t he?” Leo said to me.
Cortland didn’t look like anything special curled up in somebody else’s hunting clothes in the backseat of the car, except for the bitter light in his pale eyes. Those eyes were the wild blood in the James family; they gave me the feeling that if he cried hard enough the color would wash out.
“Good thing I came along and rescued you when I did.” Leo could move as lightly and furtively as a wolf when he wanted to, or roar like a lion if he wanted to do that. “Excuse me?”
“ ‘Good thing I came along when I did and rescued you,’ I said.”
“Rescued me? What are you talking about? I had Cortland under control. As a matter of fact, I was just getting warmed up. A few more minutes and I would have punched his brains out.”
“Could be. Could be that’s what I rescued you from,” said Leo.
23
WAYNE BETTS WAS convinced, even though the tapes were never found. A check with Frontier Airlines showed that Cortland James hadn’t flown from Fire Pond to Bullhorn and back again on November 12, but James Audubon had and he’d paid cash. There was no record of Cortland James, Jr., on any incoming flight. The truck he’d rented from Rent A Wreck was found with a badly dented fender in the lower parking lot at Freezeout right beside Leo Wolfe’s pickup, which had a few dings of its own.
The prince’s father had taken a turn for the worse and he went back to Saudi Arabia. There wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute Katharine for sabotaging the Sparhawk and the charges were eventually dropped. Attorney Dwight Stillman had a pressing case in Oklahoma, and one of his associates began representing Heinz Hoffman. Even though I had solved the murder of their operative Sandy Pedersen at no cost to the federal government (my fees being borne entirely by my client), they didn’t ask me to work for them again.
The prince came to see me before he left. He was flying by commercial airline out of Fire Pond to Denver then New York and on to Riyadh. He had dressed the part in a beautifully tailored suit and silky tie—the richest man in Fire Pond and the most elegant.
“So Heinz is still in the Fire Pond jail,” I said.
The prince smiled and lifted his invisible ball. “Unfortunately, getting him out wasn’t as easy as we thought.”
“What will happen to him?”
“Attorney Stillman will do his best.” He shrugged. But now that the prince was leaving the country, Attorney Stillman apparently considered Heinz a second-rate criminal worthy of a second-rate defense. He would have been better off representing one of the falconers. Some of them were prominent citizens, none too happy about having government agents walk in on them with loaded guns and walk out with birds they didn’t know how to care for. More birds died—Leo Wolfe couldn’t handle all of them. The falconers had romance on their side and got a lot of publicity for their cause. It was the kind of public case at which Dwight Stillman excelled, but he’d made a commitment to publicity in Oklahoma. He couldn’t be in two places at once either. Even though his associates might try valiantly to fill his shoes, few had such big feet.
The prince placed the ball on the table and looked at me with his dark Arabian eyes. “Did you see the gyrfalcon?” he asked.
“I did.”
“Tell me about her, please.”
What was there to say? She was beautiful, regal, white with a magnificent stoop as fast and deadly (to some) as a thunderbolt. A swift and powerful flyer, fierce and angry when threatened, probably full of fear but she never let it show. I told him.
“Oh,” he said. “She would have given such joy to my father.” It brought tears to his dark eyes. In Saudi Arabia they still care about pleasing an
d honoring their fathers; I’ll give them credit for that. But if it’s fierce, fast and white females they want, they could just take off the black veils and let their own women cut loose instead of coming over here and stealing ours.
The prince was already looking ahead. “Maybe she’ll be back in the spring, or next fall,” he said wistfully, “if someone else doesn’t get her first.”
The American way: grab it now, because if you don’t someone else will. By next fall there would probably be another poacher out there skilled at taking wildlife for a buck for the prince or anyone else willing to pay. Another year, another poacher hawking his wares, another species in trouble or gone, another large step backward for mankind. The proliferation of species had probably peaked in wild and wonderful abundance around the time that the Old World discovered the New. Now species were being erased from the map one after another and the pace could be expected to escalate until the world got back where it started from—primeval ooze with an oil slick floating on top.
“What time did you say your plane left?” I asked the prince.
He was wearing one of those sleek, astronomically expensive gold watches with a face that only the cognoscenti could read. “Soon.” He sighed. He squeezed the air from his ball, folded it up and put it away. “I must be on my way.” He reached to shake my hand. “It was a pleasure to meet you.”
“El gusto es mio.”
“Excuse me?”
“My pleasure,” I said.
I had dinner with March at a nouveau Wild West saloon in Fire Pond, a place with lots of cut-glass mirrors, a brass foot rail at the bar and ferns everywhere, some fake, some real. The menu offered beef in all its variety: chopped, sliced, grilled, roasted; and potatoes in some of theirs: baked, French fried. There was also a salad bar, but it looked like it hadn’t been changed recently. We both ordered the teriyaki chicken, the only fowl on the menu. March asked for a beer, I got a Cuervo Gold, but before we even got a chance to sip at them, the manager, Ruthie, brought over a bottle of California champagne and gave March a big hug.
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