CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Resting the Trout

A quarter mile down the draw, the Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers clubhouse looked deserted, the two rental cars gone and all but one of the pegs where the members hung their waders unoccupied. Stranahan had looked forward to dropping in, perhaps having dinner, and flicking a CDC emerger into the slicks afterward, for it was a still, overcast day, with an emergence of mayfly duns a promise.

He walked around the side of the porch to get the hidden key off the meter box. He reached above his head, fingered the key from under the glass insulator, found the front door unlocked, and paused with the door half open. Something was ticking at his brain. Following his instincts, he walked back to the side of the porch. The members split firewood here and the floorboards were littered with chips and sawdust. His eyes mentally swept the floor, registering where the heavy chopping block had been pushed several feet to a position underneath the meter, then pushed back to nearly but not quite its original position, scraping the sawdust clear from its path. It had occurred so recently that the pollen from the cottonwood trees, which covered the other surfaces of the porch in a snowy dust, had yet to settle over the drag mark. The only logical reason someone would move the block, Stranahan reasoned, was to use it as a step to reach the key on the meter. Stranahan reached up to replace the key. He was a hair under six-one and it was an easy reach. The members of the club were of average height, but still, none would have needed the block. Only a small man or woman would have to make himself taller to reach the key. Or a child.

A tight smile flickered across Stranahan’s lips. He went inside the clubhouse and glanced around. Nothing appeared to be missing, but if he was correct about the identity of the person who had used the key, he didn’t think there would be any sign of obvious burglary. That the recent intruder was the same person who had taken the flies last week Stranahan had no doubt. He noted a couple fly boxes on the fly-tying table. An unfinished salmon fly was clamped in one of the tying vises. A Jock Scott, Stranahan thought, from the toucan feathers tied to the rear half of the hook. One of Polly Sorenson’s five-hundred-dollar creations. The voice mail button under the telephone was blinking red. Stranahan punched it.

“Kimosabe, if you get this, meet me at the Palisades take-out at five. I couldn’t get you on your cell, figured you might be here. I heard something guaran-fucking-teed to give you a hard-on. Adios.”

Stranahan scratched at his three-day beard. He found a scrap of paper in the kitchen with a grocery list written on it, rustled drawers until he found a pencil stub. He turned the paper over and scrawled. I’ve got an idea who took the flies. I’ll try to work out how best to retrieve them and get in touch. Sean.

He started to slip the note between the jaws of one of the fly-tying vises on the table, then on second thought crumpled it into his pocket. No sense raising heart rates until he was sure. He was turning to leave when the door of one of the bunkrooms opened behind him. It was Polly Sorenson, his hair disheveled.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” Sean said. “I thought the place was empty.”

“I heard the answering machine,” Sorenson said. He took his glasses from his shirt pocket and peered up at Stranahan. “I overdid the fishing this morning. A part of me still thinks I can do whatever I want. Father Time and Dr. Nesbitt assure me otherwise.” He walked to the table and sat before the vise holding the half-tied salmon fly. He folded down his magnifying lenses over his glasses.

“Can I get you anything, Polly? A glass of water, a cup of tea?”

“I’m fine.” He waved a hand. “Be gone with you. You were about to leave and I don’t want to hold you up. I hope it’s to see Martinique. Love is too often wasted on the young. Don’t you make the mistake of taking her for granted.”

Stranahan wanted to ask Sorenson about his relationship with Weldon Crawford without appearing as if he was investigating the congressman. He took a chair at the table and asked if it was okay if he watched.

“Absolutely. I wish I had secrets to reveal, but I use the same tying techniques Kelson and Scruton pioneered in the nineteenth century.” He continued to talk as he married strands of turkey feather and kori bustard for the wing assembly. When he paused to rest his eyes, Sean saw his opening.

“I’ve just been up to Congressman Crawford’s place on the bluff. He said you two had met.”

“That would have been last summer.” Sorenson spoke with eyes closed. “He was out for a walk and I was the only one here that week. A man that rubs you two ways at once. He invited me for dinner and I went, though I was less interested in the prospect of his company than I was in seeing the house. Impressive. The man, too, in his way. What were you doing up there?”

Stranahan told him.

Sorenson grunted. He opened his eyes and inspected the fly in the vise. “I’m afraid we’ve seen the last of them, the Quill Gordon and the Ghost.”

Stranahan sought to bring the conversation back to Crawford. He said, “What did you mean by Crawford rubbing you two ways at once?”

“I mean you like him and you don’t.” Sorenson turned his attention from the fly to Sean. “The man’s a blowhard. And he’s a bully. But his interest in you seems genuine and you find yourself talking to him almost against your will. He noticed me breathing—I walked up to the house with him and even a short hike like that can be taxing some days—and he asked about it. And . . . I told him.” Sorenson glanced down, as if he was ashamed. “I hadn’t told Patrick or any of the other members at that point. They thought I just suffered periodic bouts of bronchitis. After my doctors and my wife, this near stranger was the first person to know I had COPD. He asked me all kinds of questions about it, even told me he could pull some strings to get me seen at the Mayo Clinic. He’d pay the airfare and any medical bills my insurance didn’t cover.”

“Did you take him up on it?”

“I would have if I thought it would help. And it might have, if I hadn’t fallen climbing the bank of the Miramachi River ten years ago. I broke my ribs, punctured my right lung. Now there’s scar tissue where the oxygen leaked out between the lung and chest wall. That puts a lot of strain on my respiratory system, not to mention my heart. You add it to COPD . . .” He shook his head. “I’m afraid the Mayo Clinic can’t do much for me at this point.”

“He probed into my personal life, too,” Stranahan said. Crawford hadn’t and Sean felt guilty for the remark, knowing he’d made it only to gain Sorenson’s empathy. He pressed on. “I found him strange. He wanted to talk to me about an old short story called ‘The Most Dangerous Game.’ It seemed to mean a great deal to him.”

Sean saw recognition come into Sorenson’s eyes.

“Yes, yes,” Sorenson said. “Someone hunting people on an island. Man, the most dangerous game. He tried to get me to read it. I said it didn’t sound like my cup of tea. He said that when his time came, he’d rather be carried out on his shield than die in a hospital. He wanted to lend me his copy of the book, told me he’d had it since he was a child. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. So I took it to be polite. Returned it the next time I saw him. Never did read it.”

“Did he bring it up again this summer?”

“No. He knocked on the door here the day after I picked Patrick up at the airport. Patrick was out fishing, so it was just the two of us. I invited him in for a drink and haven’t seen him since.”

“Did you show him the flies, the ones that were stolen?”

“I might have. I really can’t recall.” For an instant, Sorenson glanced away. “But if what you’re getting at is that he could be a suspect in their disappearance, I would disabuse you of the presumption. Weldon Crawford could buy the best fly collection on terra firma if he wanted; he has no need of ours.” Sorenson folded the magnifying lenses back over his glasses. “I’m sorry, Sean, but I have to get back to this fly if I’m going to finish it. At my age, I can’t work without a lot of natural light.”

It was still two hours before he was supposed to meet Sam. Stranahan stayed in his chair. It was fascinating to watch a master tier like Sorenson. The livered, old-man hands that trembled holding a tin cup of bourbon were absolutely steady before the vise. The final touch was the horns, two matched fibers of blue macaw slightly crossing at the rear of the fly. Sorenson painted the head with lacquer and sat back and removed his glasses.

“My eyes are swimming,” he said.

“You tie a beautiful fly, Polly,” Sean said.

“It could be better. The underwing is about a millimeter off center, and it has to be perfectly vertical before you add the overwing or you’re doomed.” He shut his eyes. “I’m doomed.”

Was he talking about the fly or himself? Maybe it was both. Sean’s heart went out to the man.

Sorenson said, “I’d think twice before putting it up for sale with my name on it. But I won’t have to, because I’m giving it to you.”

“No, I can’t accept that, Polly.”

“You can and you will.” He blinked his eyes. “I’ll apply several more coats of lacquer and it will ready for you the next time you come down. I’d say it was something to remember me by, but that sounds rather ghastly, doesn’t it? Just accept the fly as a gift from an old man to a younger man, wishing him tight lines and loose women. I joke.”

Stranahan saw Sorenson’s mouth tremble slightly and realized how hard it must be to turn a brave face to the world while the hourglass lost sand.

“Thank you,” Sean said. “I’ll treasure it. Do you mind my asking you what your favorite river is? Someday I’d like to paint you into a picture.”

“It’s the one outside this window. But if you ask what river made the deepest impression over the years, that would have to be the river Dee in Scotland. Jock Scott, the man who first dressed this fly, wrote about fishing the Dee. As legend has it, his original pattern included a hair from a Titian beauty. I fished the Dee once and it’s as gorgeous as the day it was made. Unfortunately, I did not catch a salmon.”

“Who knows, Polly. Maybe you’ll return.”

“That’s kind to say, but I don’t need to. I’m one of those lucky men who fish in their dreams. Some people have Paris. They shut their eyes and they have Paris. Others it’s London or Rome. I have the river Dee.”

•   •   •

Twenty minutes saw Sean to the Palisades boat take-out. The sun had worked through the clouds and was heavy on the nape of his neck. He felt a dull pain behind his eyes, the headache of the sleep-deprived. Too many hours on Martinique’s couch trapped between cats. He glanced at his watch. Sam wouldn’t show up for at least half an hour. He got a sleeping pad out of the Land Cruiser and found a shady spot under the riverbank willows. He lay on his side with his head on his old felt hat. A merganser with a late brood of brown fluff balls scooted across the river surface. One of the ducklings was perched on the hen’s rump feathers, hitching a ride. The other three looked to be jerked along by colorless ropes. The sound of moving water was like a drug. Stranahan shut his eyes and fell asleep.

“Fucking A, would you look at that? This is what happens to a river when you let the riffraff on it.”

Stranahan opened one eye. He saw Sam towering over him. A few feet away, parallel shadows ended at the wadered feet of an older man; beside him stood a woman with Medusa hair in gray-blond ringlets. The couple wore matching straw cowboy hats with chin straps.

Sam shook his head. “This sorry sack of bones was a pretty fair fly fisherman once. Crawled down the bottle like a true Montanan. Urine must be running a hunnerd proof. Piss on your campfire and watch the whole forest shoot up in flames.”

Stranahan stood up. He walked to the river and splashed water onto his face. He came back and stuck out his hand. “Sean Stranahan.”

The man and woman each had hearty grips. A John and Lou Anne Callishaw from Solvang, California.

“I know someone from Santa Barbara who had a vineyard near Solvang,” Stranahan said. “His name’s Summersby. He has a home up the valley, across from Slide Inn.”

“That’s who we’re staying with,” Lou Anne said. “Richard and Ann are old friends. Sam told us we’d be meeting you. We’d like to talk about commissioning a painting. We think the work you did for them is just outstanding, especially the watercolor of the Madison in the Bear Trap Canyon. So stark, but . . . beautiful.” She had intense green eyes that vibrated a little.

Stranahan made the appropriate self-deprecating remarks, ingratiating himself in his accustomed manner while inwardly shaking his head at his behavior. Selling yourself was the part he hated most about trying to brush out a living as an artist. The couple exchanged cards with him and made a tentative plan to meet Sean at the Summersby home upriver, a week from Friday. It reminded Sean that he still had to complete his oil of the Copper River in British Columbia.

Sam slapped Stranahan on his back after the couple had driven off, their car already having been shuttled to the take-out. “Thought I might bring you a little business,” he said, “you being such a fuckup as a fishing guide.”

“Well, thanks.” The money would be welcome but Stranahan felt let down. When he’d heard Sam’s message, he’d thought that the big man had learned something that might help solve the riddle of the bodies on Sphinx Mountain. He told Sam as much.

Sam scratched at a new tattoo on his right upper biceps—Sylvester the cat licking his whiskers while eyeing a brown trout in a fishbowl. On Sam’s left biceps was a fly fishing Mickey Mouse hooked up to a leaping rainbow trout. He rolled his waders to his waist—“THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES” was stenciled on his T-shirt. He sat heavily on a cottonwood drift log on the bank.

“You know Peachy Morris,” he began.

Stranahan sat down on the cut bank where Sam’s driftboat was tied off and nodded. Morris was a fellow guide he’d met a couple times on the water.

“Peachy couldn’t catch the clap in Copenhagen, but not for lack of trying if you get my drift. I don’t know what it is about that boy, whether he can lick his eyebrows or just ’cause he’s such good people, but any woman plants her cheeks on the casting chair leaves a snail trail. Hell, half the guys who fish with him are ready to go Brokeback Mountain before the day’s over. You pass by Peachy’s driftboat tied up along the river and no Peachy, no client, you know he’s back in the bushes with his waders rolled down to the ankles. ‘Restin’ the trout,’ he calls its. You drift by, nod to yourself—old Peachy’s resting the trout. I mean you gotta hand it to the boy . . . Hey, you wanna split a beer, I only got one left.”

Stranahan said sure. This was Sam. Sometimes you didn’t know where he was going or what the point was once you got there, but it was never less than an interesting ride.

Sam fished a Silver Bullet from the cooler in his driftboat, popped the tab, and handed it over. “That dude ranch up Willow Creek, the Double D? The one out of Pony, you pass the gate on the way up to the Tobacco Roots? There’s this teachers’ convention there, goes on all this week. The ranch runs a guide service for the guests, Peachy and some other guy. Peachy has a cabin there. These teachers, you figure like ninety percent of them are women trapped in a room with a bunch’a little monsters nine months of the year, putting dinner on the table for the old man who doesn’t appreciate ’em, run ragged by a couple brats of her own, the ranch must be like Vegas—‘What goes on at the Double D stays at the Double D.’ Peachy gets so much action he says he has to eat liver and oysters for a month just so he can build up his stamina.”

Sam took the half beer Stranahan held out and knocked it down in one swallow. He crumpled the can in his fist and tossed it into his boat.

“So yesterday he’s going to float this chick from the convention, like forty years old, a cougar. Harriet with some Kraut last name. She’s like an annual fuck, comes every summer, talks about her family, hauls Peachy’s ashes like she’s shaking his hand—casual about it, a very European lady. So yesterday she’s booked him to float from MacAtee to Varney. Peachy says she’s a good fly fisherman for a chick, casts a candy-cane line. He pulls up to her cabin towing his driftboat and they’re rigging rods when this older guy walks up and asks what they’re biting on. They talk a bit and the man asks if he can go with them. Peachy looks at Harriet; she shrugs. ‘Sure,’ Peachy says. He and the cougar had been resting the trout the night before, so it’s not like Peachy’s upset they’ll have company. He’s tired and figures he can use a few hours on the pins with nothing to do but tie on flies and shoot the breeze.”

Sam used a forefinger to dig into the cowlick of chest hair sprouting from the neck of his T-shirt. “Anyway . . .” He let the word hang while he pulled off the shirt. He peered down at a dime-sized circle of blood over his sternum. “I got a fuckin’ tick,” he said. “Where did you come from, darling?” He pinched off the pendulous bug, bloated with blood, and flicked it away. He dug into the bite. He peered at his chest skeptically. “I look like a gorilla mainlining Rogaine. No wonder Darcy left me.”

“Darcy left you because you’re married to this boat all day and you’re in the bar all night.”

Sam grunted. “God love her,” he said, dismissing the subject.

“So anyway, they’re on the river and this guy starts yanking lips. Peachy says it’s a miracle because he’s a rug beater, slapping the water on his backcasts, throwing wind knots in his leader, he can’t get a free drift to save his soul. But you guide, you know it can happen. Guy can’t find his dick with both hands catches all the trout in the river. Like a gift from God or something. And the cougar’s getting her rod bent, too, it’s just one of those days. Then they pull over for lunch and all of a sudden the dude’s got his head in his hands, crying. And this is when it gets interesting, because when Peachy asks what’s the matter, the guy says he thought he’d be dead now. He says he’d planned on being dead. We’re talking really distraught, so Peachy fetches the medicine kit from the skiff, mixes the guy a dirty martini, olives and all. Mixes one for the cougar. Mixes himself one. Peachy being Peachy, next thing you know they’re passing a joint. The cougar gets in on the act; she puts her arms around the guy and pulls his head down onto her Marilyn Monroes, does everything but offer him a nipple. Turns out she’s a school counselor with a master’s in psych, she knows the buttons to push and they’re sitting there on the bank and the guy comes out with the story. Weird-looking dude, Peachy says he looks like he belongs in a tree, got a face like a chimp . . . Yeah, I know, I digress.

“So the deal was, this guy took a fuckin’ train all the way from Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was a professor at the U there, cultural anthropology, which is sort of apropos considering the mug. Spent a lot of time in Guatemala, some other places they speak español. Surfer dude, go figure. The waves are coming in, the world’s a good place to live. Then one day he’s with the girlfriend and can’t get it up with a cantilever crane. There’s Viagra so it isn’t the end of the world, but other symptoms start popping up: chills, fevers, fuckin’ delirium, man. Turns out he contracted some rare kind of brain malaria during a sabbatical year when he was surfing off the coast of Panama. He’d been taking malaria pills for years, but the side effects were so bad sometimes he’d stop for a while. Guy gets worse, guy gets a little better, guy gets a lot worse, guy gets only a little better. Doctor’s pumping him full of antibiotics, but anybody can see where the arrow’s pointing. This kind of malaria, there’s no silver bullet. Skeeter drills that proboscis into you, you got a couple years losing your mind and wishin’ you were dead, then the wish comes true. Shit, man, I need a smoke.”

Stranahan’s mind raced while Sam fished in a compartment under his rowing seat for cigarettes. This was Gutierrez’s story with the names changed. Two strong men who’d seen a lot of life, deciding to check out on their own terms. Only the state and the symptoms were different.

Sam waded back to the log, a handrolled fag with a dogleg bobbing in the corner of his mouth. He flicked the head of a wooden match on his thumbnail and Stranahan could smell sulfur. Sam exhaled a lungful of smoke.

“I know, I’m killing myself. But I’m down to smoking only on fishing days.” He thought about it. “’Course I fish every day.”

“Finish your story,” Stranahan said.

“I told you this would give your pecker a jolt. Shit, this is just the beginning of the story. So this guy, he’s been in psychotherapy half his life, the kind of guy wakes up after a bad dream and figures he better see his shrink and find out what it was about. Okay, a little more understandable considering the circumstances. His shrink advises him to go to a retreat upstate, the U’s biological station at a place called Burt Lake. This is just a couple months ago, before the summer session students show up—”

Stranahan interrupted. “How do you know all this?”

“I’m getting to it. So he goes to the retreat, it’s a bunch of people like himself who are looking at the void and rehearsing for good Saint Peter, and he meets this guy, a fellow patient. Guess where he’s from.”

“Montana?”

“Bingo.”

“What’s his name?”

“Wade.”

“That’s all?”

“They just go by first names. So the two of them, they take a rowboat out onto the lake to drown some worms, but considering the lateness of the hour, so to speak, they’re not too interested in fishing. They start talking and find they’re on the same page. They got no intention of dying in diapers with a tube up the John Henry and half a dozen brain cells between them. Wade, the Montanan, tells him about this short story he read as a kid, something about a count who hunts down these guys stranded on an island . . .”

“‘The Most Dangerous Game,’” Stranahan said. His skin crawled. The sun had angled under the willows that shaded the bank and he felt a drop of sweat track down his spine.

“That’s it,” Sam said. “How the hell?”

“I have to call the sheriff,” Stranahan said.

“Good luck getting reception. When we get back to Ennis—”

“No, I mean now.”

“Keep your hay in the barn. She already knows. Peachy was going to call her after he talked to me. Shit, it was me who told him to. I tried calling you first, but when you didn’t pick up . . . Are you going to let me finish or not? Yeah? Okay? Listen to Sam. So this guy tells him this story which you seem to already know about, and asks him if he’d like to play it with him, only with the sides being equally armed. Says, ‘Let’s go out like fucking men with rifles in our hands.’ Calls it ‘Death with Honor.’ Anyway, Peachy wasn’t real clear on the details, but the upshot, and I’m cutting the conversation short, is that the two of ’em plan to duel it out up in the mountains.” Sam cocked his finger and pointed east and north across the river, where the striated peak of the Sphinx brooded under scuff marks made by a shoal of cirrus clouds.

“So comes the big day, Sunday being the Lord’s day, or maybe it’s Monday, and now I’m jumping way the fuck ahead ’cause there’s the train ride to work out and this secret correspondence and a bunch of other crap so no one’s to know, and the guy drives to the trailhead and punches in the GPS coordinates where they’re supposed to go High Noon on each other. He starts hiking in, and about halfway up the mountain he’s in a cold sweat with his heart jumping out of his chest and the chimp chickens out. Just fucking turns a puke shade of yellow. He books a room at the dude ranch and holes up in the cabin with his tail between his legs, trying to get straight with the Almighty who up to this time hasn’t been such a big fuckin’ part of his life, but I suppose a death sentence gives you religion. At dawn he still hasn’t slept and then here comes Peachy towing his blue driftboat and he takes it as a sign, Jesus being a fisherman and all . . .”

“Sam, are you bullshitting me? Jesus. Really?”

Sam looked abashed. His chest heaved and he took the cigarette from his mouth and dipped the ash in the river. He slipped the butt under a curl of hair over his right ear and shook his head.

“I don’t know what the fuck gets into me. I start telling it like it is and then all of a sudden I’m making shit up. I been doing it all my life and I’m not even aware of it half the time. I don’t know, man. I just don’t know. I was telling you the truth right up to the Jesus part, I swear. Well, maybe the halfway up the trail part. I really don’t know how far he got or even if he left the fuckin’ car before turning tail.”

“Okay, Sam.”

“Well, for some reason he decides to go fishing, and I’ve already told you he spills the beans to Peachy and the cougar. Well, the thing is the whole time they’re on the water the guy’s super emotional and the cougar, being a counselor and all, tells Peachy that he’s at really high risk for committing suicide and she doesn’t think they can just leave him off at the cabin. She says she thinks she should stay with him, eat dinner with him, and keep him talking. And on account of Peachy knowing the cougar like he does, he can take the hint, he figures it’s only a matter of time before the old guy’s plowing that good German earth. So he says good night and the next thing you know it’s two in the morning and the phone in his cabin rings and it’s the cougar, asking him if he’s got any Viagra. Sure enough, she took the old guy to bed and he can’t get it up. He hasn’t flipped that switch for two years and the end’s in sight whether he snaps a cap or lets God pull the plug, and now he’s naked in her arms crying like a baby. Peachy says you know I don’t need no Viagra. And she says I don’t know who else to call, so Peachy hangs up and calls me.”

“So did you have any Viagra, Sam?”

“Moi? I need Viagra like a carp needs collagen. Well, if you’re talking technically true there was this night I got sort of down in the dumps over the sorry state of my affairs, looking at myself in the mirror and seeing a guy with grooves in his teeth who lives in a fuckin’ tin can, and I’d picked up this swamp angel at the Cottonwood and something didn’t unfold the way it should have, if you savvy, but she had these dreads that looked like a nest of rattlesnakes and anyway it was just the once. Even if I did have some pecker pills, I was an hour’s drive away. So Peachy calls her back and she tells him to start knocking on the doors of the guest cabins to see if he can rustle some up. Peachy draws the line right there, he’s got his reputation to uphold, so the cougar says then you come over to the cabin and babysit while I go looking. So, all right, Peachy goes over and by this time the gentleman has his pants on and he’s sipping a cup of tea with his pinkie out, like he’s at fucking Ascot. The cougar leaves and the guy says would you like some tea. Okay, so they drink their tea and Peachy’s thinking sometimes a day doesn’t end the way you think it will, three in the goddamned morning, and the guy, he’s talking about surfing, no bullshit, like how he’d like to hang on until he can hang ten just one more time. Then the guy gets real serious, tells Peachy that Harriet saved his life and he’ll never forget it, and he’ll never forget Peachy either, it’s restored his faith in humanity, and he wants to hug it out and by this time Harriet’s back so it’s a group hug, the three of them. Turns out about the second door she knocked on this middle-aged guy peeks out. She says, ‘Sir, you wouldn’t happen to have any Viagra, would you? It’s for a good cause.’ The guy says no and he’s shutting the door when there’s this woman’s voice in the background—‘Have a heart, John, give her one of your blue magics. How hard would you be without them?’ So they got the Viagra and Harriet gives Peachy a kiss and whispers in his ear, ‘Don’t you dare go anywhere but your cabin,’ and a couple hours go by and Harriet knocks on his door to tell him pop went the weasel and the dude’s asleep like for the first time in three days.

“‘What do I do now?’ she says. ‘He thinks he’s in love with me.’

“Peachy says, ‘You’re the psychologist,’ and they’re talking, standing outside with the birds starting up and Peachy remembers I told him to call back and he puts me on speaker. Knowing what you told me about the bodies, I tell Peachy to call the sheriff and that’s when I called the club and left you the message.”

“Where are they now?”

“Peachy? He had to float some sports on a half hour’s shut-eye. I got no idea where the cougar’s licking her paws, probably still at the ranch.” While they were talking, Stranahan was helping Sam load the driftboat onto the trailer.

“Did I do good or what, Kimosabe?” Sam said as he wound up the winch and set the chock.

“You did. Thanks. You’ll get your reward in heaven.”

Sam clasped a callused hand on Stranahan’s shoulder, so hard it tingled. “All this touchy-feely stuff’s making me teary.” He was smiling, a silver-capped incisor glinting in the sun. He heaved his bulk into the cab of his truck, the springs creaking as the truck canted under his weight. “Keep me in the loop.” He jerked his thumb up.

Stranahan dug his fingers into his bruised shoulder.