Except for the stale taste of smoke in Stranahan’s mouth, the night might have been dreamed. By long habit, he was up in the predawn, frying bacon, flipping an egg in the grease, having his first cup of cowboy coffee sitting before a star fire. He kicked at the unburned ends of the sticks, pushing the burned ends together to encourage the flames. He had a second cup as the heavens paled. The witches’ hat in the distance slumbered on.
An hour later, Stranahan saw movement in the camp. He watched Deni walk to the outhouse, her blanket dragging on the ground. Fen stepped with his back to Stranahan to the high bank, brought his hands to the front of him. His urine flow steamed. Deni walked back, her head down in the blanket. No fire, no breakfast. The motorcycle engine caught and sputtered. It fired and settled to its basso rhythm. As it passed Stranahan’s camp, Fen gave him a thumbs-up. Deni had her arms wrapped tightly about him and did not look over. It did not surprise Stranahan that she had not been left behind in camp, where he might pay her a visit. Fen’s moment of munificence had passed.
Stranahan waited until the sound of the engine died away before walking to the tent and untying the flap. Sleeping bags, wadded up clothes zipped in pillow covers, flashlights. A teen vampire novel on her side, a pocketbook Kama Sutra on his, opened to the Splitting Bamboo. A bottle of Astroglide shaped like a wave. Very little else, but then it was a motorcycle camp. He backed out of the tent and scribbled a note on a paper plate.
Great time last night. Good luck finding a place. I have to go back to Bridger. Sean.
He slipped a card from his wallet, the one that identified him only as a painter, and wrote his cell number on it. He pinned the card and the paper plate to the picnic table with four bottles of Moose Drool, then packed up his own meager camp, intending to drive into West to verify that the motorcycle was parked at the wildlife center. On his way, he stopped at a bear-proof garbage can and tossed in a bag of trash. Something was sparking at the back of his mind, an association like last night’s stars, just out of reach. He let out the clutch and slowly motored toward town, passing on his left the entrance road to the county dump. That was it!
—
Bob Jacklin was at the vise in his fly shop, turning out a Platte River Special. He looked up from under his magnifying glasses.
“Bob, do you know what day they collect trash at the wildlife center?”
“I’d assume Tuesday. Same as here.”
“Thanks.” He hadn’t asked why, and Stranahan was grateful. He wouldn’t have known what to answer.
Martha picked up on the first ring.
“If I was to tell you there’s evidence of murder or kidnapping in the Dumpsters outside the Paws of Yellowstone Wildlife Center, how soon do you think you could get a search warrant from Judge Conner?”
“You better back up,” she said.
Stranahan listened to the silence on the line after he finished.
“Mm-hmm.” More silence. “It’s certainly an interesting theory.”
“It’s more than a theory. This guy tears out Nicki’s hair. He mixes it into the venison at the Center, feeds it to the wolves and collects the scat, then plants the scat at the Palisades as evidence that she was killed by wolves. Her body is presumed eaten, people stop looking for her.”
“So do you think she’s alive?”
“I want to think she’s alive. I think there’s a good chance that she is, that he convinced her to run away with him and she consented to him pulling out her hair. But I can’t dismiss the possibility that he killed her and buried the body. Either way, the hair in the scat closes the case. It’s a perfect crime.” “
“Why do you think we’ll find more hair in the Dumpster?”
“A half a dozen wolves produce a lot of scat in the course of a couple days. It makes sense he’d just collect the scat that had visual evidence of hair wound into it. The rest would be tossed into the garbage. Amorak told me he cleaned up after the wolves, and when I stopped at the garbage can at the campground and then saw the sign to the dump a couple minutes later it clicked. The next collection is tomorrow morning, though. We’d have to get the warrant today.” Stranahan paused. “Another thing. My guess is if you talk to the scat analyst, he’ll tell you that he told Amorak about the signpost. The guy was camping right across the river from the Palisades. It’s natural they would have bumped into each other. The signpost is what gave Amorak the idea of planting the scat. He knew where to plant it so it would not only be found, but also be found by the one person who knew what he was looking at.”
“Uh-huh.” Stranahan could visualize Martha kneading her chin. “I’ll talk to our scatman later this morning. We’ll see what he says.”
Stranahan could read the doubt in her voice.
“Amorak had the means, Martha. He had the opportunity, he had a motive.”
“What’s his motive again?”
“Nicki haunted him. He was crazy about her. And she had rejected him. Last night he told me he wouldn’t take her back unless she passed a test. He was speaking hypothetically, but she’s who he was talking about. If she passed the test, maybe she’s alive. If she didn’t, she’s dead.”
“What about the other girls? Does he kill them, too?”
“I don’t know, but it’s a pattern either way. He picks up a stray, he feeds her this wolf bullshit, and when she doesn’t live up to his ideals, when she doesn’t graduate to the red contact lenses, he casts her aside and finds the next. I think he could have pushed the girl into the hot pot, I don’t know what he did with the rest. These are the girls in the missing posters that nobody misses.”
“Humpff.”
“It’s your county, Martha.”
“Meaning what? I should care more? I’m not like a tin star on FX. I have to follow rules.”
“Do you think Crazy Conner will okay the warrant?”
“Learn your law. I don’t need a warrant to go through the center’s garbage. I just need them to sign off. Why refuse? It would look like they were hiding something.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. But if you ask and the information is passed to Amorak, he might run.”
“Leave that part to me. He won’t know, I promise.”
“What should I do?”
“Just keep your phone on. And stay in cell range for once, damnit.”
—
“You gotta be kidding.” Julie McGregor blew back an errant bang of hair. She looked from Stranahan to Martha Ettinger. “You aren’t kidding.”
“The two big sacks are mostly bear shit,” Stranahan said, “maybe with a little wolf mixed in. It’s really just the one bag.”
McGregor hefted it. “Well, I’m not doing this alone.”
“You won’t be,” Ettinger said, “Wilkerson’s on her way and Stranahan’s volunteering. This kind of work’s right up his alley.”
“Can you stay?”
“I’m the sheriff. I don’t do wolf doo-doo.”
When Ettinger had gone, McGregor said, “I take it this was your idea.”
She heard him out and said, “Give me a real wolf any day.” She told Stranahan to take a chair at the steel examining table, undid the tie on the bag, made a face and they bent to work. Wilkerson joined them straight from her shift, still wearing her lab coat.
“Better double glove,” McGregor told her.
For an hour they dissected scat, the steel probes separating hair wrapped around bone chips. Most of it long, coarse and banded with tan tips—elk hair.
“Where does the center get its carcasses?” Wilkerson asked Stranahan.
“Hunters and game processors. It’s all donations.”
“And this guy put the girl’s hair inside chunks of meat and fed it to the pack.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“How ingenious.”
“Hey.” Wilkerson had picked out a reddish hair from the curlicued end segment of a wolf scat. Her big eyes were swimming. “Would you look what we have here?”
By the time they had worked through the bag of wolf scat, they had isolated fourteen samples of human hair ranging from a half inch to eight inches long, most wound so intricately with the elk hair that they were not apparent until the dissection of the scats. The color was the same as the hair taken from the scat at the signpost at the Palisades, and at least six of the samples contained intact follicles.
“I better call Martha,” Stranahan said.
“What do you think she’ll do?” Wilkerson said.
“This tips the scales, whether you can get DNA from this hair and compare it to the samples we took from the Palisades or not. Amorak’s working at a place where they’re dumping wolf scat with human hair in it. You put that together with the two of them having a prior relationship, him camping across the river from where the scat was planted, what he said to me last night—it’s strong circumstantial. Martha will haul him in for questioning.”
“Don’t forget the girl in the hot pot,” Wilkerson said. “The roommate you interviewed can ID this bastard.”
“Yeah.” Stranahan’s voice was doubtful. “But we have nothing to tie him to the scene. I think the best chance for arrest is to build a case for murdering Nicki Martinelli. But as Martha reminds me, I don’t know the law.”
“The more sticks you stack, the stronger your house, but what do I know? I’m just a lowly CSI.”
“No, you’re Ouija Board Gigi,” Stranahan said. “Someday you’re going to have to tell me how you got that name.”
“Can you sing?” McGregor said. “We’re going to play Beatles: Rock Band at my house tonight. You should come. He should come, shouldn’t he, Gigi?”
—
Stranahan didn’t end up playing Beatles: Rock Band. Instead, he stood alongside Harold Little Feather, watching through a one-way window as Undersheriff Hess conducted the interview. Hess would not have been Stranahan’s first choice and he said so.
“I’d do it, but he’ll recognize me and turn hostile,” Harold said.
“You’re an Indian. You all look alike.”
Harold smiled. “Don’t worry about Walt. He knows what he’s doing.”
Hess introduced himself and finished the preliminaries. He asked the man’s name.
“Fenrir Amorak.”
“Like the wolf in Norse mythology.”
“Fenrir is a wolf of Norse mythology. Amorak’s an Inuit legend.”
“Another wolf?”
“That’s right.”
“What’s the name you were born with?”
“It no longer suits me. That person no longer exists.”
“Isn’t it James Todd McCready? We know . . .” Walt reiterated what Stranahan already knew from talking with Mrs. Oddstatter and later with Ettinger.
Sean felt his phone vibrate. He walked away a few feet and opened it. It was Ettinger. He listened a minute and shut the phone.
“Like I said,” Amorak said when Walt had finished, “it says nothing about who I am now.” He sounded bored.
“That person who no longer exists,” Walt said. He looked down at the sheet of paper on the table. One by one he ticked off McCready’s laundry list of misdemeanors, his sexual assault and the parole violation.
Amorak shrugged.
From behind the glass, Stranahan could see Walt lean forward and place his hands around either end of the table.
“Do you know why you’re here?” he said. “I find it odd that you haven’t even asked.”
Most detainees brought their head back when the interrogator leaned forward. McCready only smiled. “Did someone plant weed in my panniers? That’s what I figured the deputy was looking for when he date-raped my bike.”
“This isn’t about marijuana.”
The silence was prolonged. “Whatever, it was an illegal search.”
“It’s because we found human hair in the Dumpster where you work. It was in wolf scat.”
Again, a long pause. “Really,” Amorak said. He leaned forward and spread his hands so that they were inches from Walt’s, mocking him. “I wouldn’t know anything about that. A lot of people work there . . . Walter.”
“The hair, we believe, is from a young woman of your acquaintance, Nanika Martinelli. We’ll have DNA confirmation soon.”
A line of concentration drew Amorak’s eyebrows into a single line. “I don’t think I know that name.”
“We can produce a witness who said you were looking for Miss Martinelli this spring.”
“I don’t think so.”
From behind the glass, Harold glanced at Stranahan. “Fly shop owner on the Kootenai,” Sean whispered. Harold nodded.
Amorak had pulled back into his chair. He’d given up trying to stare down Walt.
“Nan-ee-ka.” Thinking about it. “Oh, you must mean Nicki. I haven’t seen her in forever.”
“How long is forever?”
Amorak shrugged. “Two, three years.”
“Two or three?”
“Maybe two.”
“Why were you looking for her?”
He flashed up his palms. “In the area. Just wanted to say hello.”
“What area would that be . . . Todd?”
Now the look of worry was hard to misinterpret. Stranahan wondered how many places Amorak had searched for Nicki besides Libby. The harder he’d looked for her, the harder it would be to dismiss as just wanting to say hello.
“Up at her dad’s old place on the Kootenai. I’d heard he’d passed. Wanted to see how she was holding up.”
“Just neighborly concern?”
“That’s right.”
Walt glanced at his notes. “You want coffee. I’m going to get a cup.”
“Don’t touch the stuff,” Amorak said. As Walt stood, he leaned forward to tower over Amorak, establishing his authority.
“You got back problems, Walter? You look like you could use some stretching exercises.”
Back behind the glass, Walt shook his head. “Tough nut. Martha get back to you?”
“She just called from the road,” Stranahan said. “The scat analyst admitted he talked to Amorak about the signpost. He said he didn’t lead him to the rock personally, but there is only one draw up through the cliffs and it wouldn’t be hard to find from the description. Martha believes his story. She doesn’t think he’s involved with Amorak. He’s just a talkative sort and bumped into Amorak at the campground, like we figured.”
“Okay.” Walt dug a finger into the corner of his eye. “Right now he thinks we’re putting together bits and pieces, that we don’t have anything solid linking him to Martinelli’s disappearance. I mention the scat analyst, he’s going to feel the noose tighten. He’s familiar with the system; he’ll clam up before he denies something we can prove. I’m surprised he’s given us as much as he has.”
“He’s arrogant,” Harold said. “That’s his Achilles.”
Hess nodded. “In Chicago I had all kinds in the box—drug dealers, I’m talking big time, mobbed up politicians, gang bangers, two professional button men. There’s no formula, but I look in this guy’s eyes, he’s telling me he did it and he’s telling me to go fuck myself at the same time.”
“How long can we hold him?”
“His twenty-four hours are up tomorrow afternoon. But I’m guessing he’ll be cut loose first thing in the morning.”
“No chance of charging him?”
Hess shook his head. “Not unless he trips up.”
He didn’t. But he didn’t shut up, either. When pressed by Walt, he agreed that he knew Jake Thorn, had met him at the campground and, yes, they might have talked about wolf signposts. Wolves were his brothers. He was fascinated by wolves. Why wouldn’t he quiz Thorn about them?
“Did you see Nanika Martinelli on the fourteenth of September, the day she disappeared in Papoose Basin?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“On any day since that night?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“On any day before that date over the past two years?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Were you aware she worked at the Culpepper Ranch as a naturalist and fly-fishing guide?”
“No.”
“Were you aware that prior to her employment at the ranch, she had worked for Sam Meslik’s outfitting business on the Madison River?”
“I’ve never heard of Sam Meslik.”
“Why did you have this copy of the Bridger Mountain Star in the panniers of your motorcycle?” Walt slid a yellowed newspaper from under his clipboard.
“There’s always a few newspapers floating around in my panniers. I pick them up to start campfires with. I don’t read them.”
Stranahan looked at Harold. Harold flexed his cheek muscles. This was news to both of them.
“Can you read this headline? It’s from July eighteenth.”
“It says,” Amorak peered at the paper, “‘Poor Whitebark Pine Nut Season Spells Strife for Grizzly Bears.’”
“Not that one.”
“‘Fly Fishing Venus Catches Clients for Madison River Outfitter: Trout a Bonus.’”
“You see the photograph of her?” Walt jabbed at the paper with his forefinger. “Be hard for you to miss, your brotherly concern for her and all. The story mentions Meslik in the first paragraph.”
Amorak shrugged. “Like I said, I just pick them up.”
“But this paper is more than two months old. It should be ashes by now.”
“Must have got lost in the shuffle. Pannier’s like a belly button. Collects all kinds of shit.”
Walt stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“Going to let you think if you want to change your mind about seeing this paper.”
“Enlarged prostate, huh? You gotta pee again? Getting old must be hell.”
Walt came around to the back of the glass and caught Stranahan’s attention. “The deputy who pulled him in searched the panniers for wolf poop, not weed. But you said he possessed drugs and that was prior to the search, so either way we’re on firm ground here. The search ought to stand up. I think we have enough to go to the DA, but it’s not that simple. We have to present a case to him. That’s not going to happen tonight. In the meantime we can’t hold him. In my opinion he’s a flight risk, but the law’s the law.”
“You think, huh?” It was Harold.
“I wouldn’t be sure,” Stranahan said. “You said it yourself, Harold. He’s arrogant. Unless he thinks we’re sitting on a card, like we have a witness who saw him with Martinelli in the time frame, he’ll figure he can ride it out.”
“And he’ll probably be right.” Walt worked his Adam’s apple. “We’ll let him sleep on it.”
The door snicked open behind them. It was Ettinger. She walked to the glass, drummed her fingers on the butt of her Ruger.
“Give me the good news, boys.”