by Robin Lamont
“Oh, are you into politics, Mr. Dunne?” she asked, feigning curiosity.
“I’d like it if you called me Foster, and yes, I read a lot of history. But I’m a psychology professor.”
“Where do you teach?”
“At the university in Saint Claire. We’re on break now, though.”
Saving Jude from further conversation, a stout woman with a no-nonsense expression marched into the hallway. Dunne introduced her to Mary Holt and asked Mary to show “Miz Harris and her handsome companion Finn” to the third floor. The housekeeper, or so Jude assumed, opened the door to a simple room with a queen bed covered in a thick, red and blue comforter. There was an old-fashioned braided rug on the floor and a crescent window that looked out over a pine-dotted ridge not too far from the back of the house.
“This is beautiful,” exclaimed Jude, taking in the view.
“Yep.”
“Can you hike up there?”
“There’s a trail map on the front hall table.”
“I appreciate the last minute accommodation and letting me bring my dog.”
Mary shrugged. “We only have two other guests right now, a coupl’a hunters from Ohio.” The way she said ‘Ohio’ made it sound like an undesirable foreign country. “Breakfast is from seven to nine. You need earlier, let me know. Front door’s open til midnight. If you think you’ll be out later than that, take a key from the table with the maps. But please return it.”
“Thank you,” said Jude.
“By the by,” said Mary at the door. “I heard Mr. Dunne tell you he’s a psychology professor? He tells that to everybody. I mean, he used to be, but he doesn’t teach any more. Sometimes he forgets.”
“I’m sorry. Is it … Alzheimer’s? He doesn’t look that old.”
“No, he had a snowmobile accident a while back. Left him with some brain damage. His memory comes and goes, and sometimes things just fly out his mouth – can’t tell if it’s real or imagined. But on good days, he’s sharp as a tack.” She gave a last look around the room. “There’s extra blankets in the cupboard. And if you do go up in the hills, take a GPS with you. It’s real easy to get lost.”
Given the terse welcome she’d gotten from Mary, Jude wasn’t sure if her parting statement was a warning or a wish.
Chapter 5
Jude set out after loading her backpack with a few essentials like water, dry socks, and phone. She was looking forward to some exercise and escaping Judy Harris before having to dive into the role full time. That was the most difficult part of working undercover – having to play the character every moment, even when she thought she was alone. Because she never really knew who might be watching and listening. Of course there was no reason anyone should anticipate her appearance in Stanton, but all it took was one slip, and she knew from hard experience that people didn’t like finding out they’d been scammed. Some of them took it very personally.
The morning had begun bright, but now accumulating clouds dimmed the sun and left the air damp with a sense of impending snow. Finn’s nails clicked on the hardwood floor as he paced with anticipation. She spread out the map and saw there was a trail that ascended the hill outside her window then wound around the Saint Claire Lake. The total mileage was not noted, but it was marked “easy to moderate.”
Two miles later, Jude was glad she hadn’t chosen a “difficult” one. She thought she was fit; she ran some with Finn and went to a gym at home. But by the time she got to the southernmost tip of the lake, she had to stop and catch her breath. She removed her nylon windbreaker, balled it up, and exchanged it for the thermos of water in her backpack. She took off her hat for good measure, shook her hair free, and drank deeply.
Jude drew in a deep breath, able to taste the sweet, pure air. Far beyond the blanket of pines on the other side of the lake, a mountain ridge jutted into the sky. Below the path, the icy cold lake sparkled and seemed to dance to a tune that a warbler was singing nearby. Although every so often she heard the drone of a small airplane in the distance, she hadn’t encountered a soul. For the first time in days, she felt a sense of peace.
For Jude, peace was hard to come by. She was a fighter and animals were at the center, always had been. The spark had been ignited in her second foster home, where she’d been a serious and guarded ten-year-old whose gangly legs hadn’t yet found their gait. She chewed her nails and gnawed on her chapped lips incessantly. Her foster parents had a dog named Buster, a stocky white and brown pit bull mix with a damaged eye. Jude adored him, and he adored her. He’d wait patiently for her to return from school when she fed him what was left of her bologna sandwich. At night, he’d climb on her bed, giving her short, raspy licks of love.
One day in a funk – she couldn’t remember now why – her vigilance abandoned her and she mouthed off to her foster dad. At the time it only felt like the equivalent of baring her teeth at him the way Buster sometimes did. But he slapped the ten-year-old across the face. Buster came to her rescue, digging his teeth into her attacker’s leg just above the knee. Enraged, the man hauled the dog outside and tied him to the fence. The next morning he was gone, and Jude knew better than to ask why. She scoured the streets looking for him, she visited the local shelters and left food out in the alleyway behind the house. But Buster never returned, leaving an empty place in her heart that she still felt.
She was self-aware enough to know his loss had left a mark and that she probably identified with him and the other animals abandoned on the street or whipped into submission. But she had little desire to psychoanalyze the feelings away. Maybe someday. For now she drew strength from the anger and defiance that burned inside. Who would fight for the animals if she let the fire die out?
Jude hoisted her backpack and continued. Finn bounded ahead, ignoring his slight limp, and every so often he darted back to make sure she was near. Another half mile and the trail veered away from the lake. Finn galloped down to a rocky stream littered with downed timber. He wagged his tail happily when he saw her, then leapt across and up the other bank, daring her to follow.
Something had captured his attention. Jude raced after him, finding him on the top of the next hill at the tree line. He was standing rigid, his nostrils quivering with a new scent. Ahead of them lay a snow covered meadow, and from out of a dense thatch of trees on the other side trotted a wolf. She reached down to hold Finn by his collar and quietly warned him to stay. He twitched with an urge to give chase.
The wolf’s small size suggested a female. Her heavy winter coat was a light brown with darker shading, easy to see against the white open space. She appeared to be tracking something along the ground. The sound of the plane didn’t reach Jude’s consciousness until she saw it come over the trees and scoop low over the field as if it intended to land.
The wolf had heard it, though. She darted to her right, sprinting toward the trees. The plane swung around, its engine sputtering, and cut her off. The wolf wheeled and dashed in the opposite direction. A man in a safety harness opened the passenger door of the plane and leaned out with a rifle in his hand. He fired. The pop, pop, pop sounded hollow in the damp air. Panic stricken, the wolf ran one way then the other as the plane gave chase.
The aircraft banked once more and this time, when the man fired he hit his target and the wolf dropped. The engine coughed as if in protest and the pilot pulled up the nose and flew off, disappearing over another ridge. Jude’s eyes stayed glued to the wolf, who was trying to get up and run. She’d gain some traction with her front paws, but then her hind legs would collapse under her. A moment later, she fell over and lay still.
Jude’s feet seemed to carry her of their own accord as she raced down the slope, stumbling over buried branches and roots. Finn ran ahead of her, a mewling sound coming from his throat that she had never heard. Or was it coming from her own throat? The wolf was still alive, but barely. She lay on her side, her flank shuddering, her lip
s pulled back from her teeth. Blood oozed into the foam at her mouth and more poured from a gaping hole in her haunches. Jude could do nothing but stand with her hands clamped against her head and watch helplessly as the wolf took her last breaths. Her amber eyes stayed fixed on the human, first alight with terror, then darkening in glassy surrender. Jude dropped to her knees and reached out to the wolf’s neck where a thick black radio collar had been affixed. She stroked the blood-flecked fur of the wolf’s flank, her palm feeling the life drain beneath her fingers.
The drone of the plane broke the silence. “Let’s go, Finn,” she said. They ran back to the ridge and crouched in the shadows of the trees as the single engine plane came into sight. It circled once and then landed in the field, skis sending up sprays of snow. Two men got out: the pilot, still wearing his headsets, and the man with the rifle. He walked over to where the wolf lay and poked her with his gun to make sure she was dead. Satisfied, he grinned at the pilot and they high-fived each other in congratulations.
They retrieved a hank of rope, then dragged the wolf by her legs to the plane, threw her body over one of the wing struts, and tied her there. The pilot cranked up the engine and the front propeller began to whir. His partner went back to the site where he felled the wolf. He examined the ground for a moment, then looked up in Jude’s direction. She held her breath. After a moment, he kicked some snow over the mass of blood, then jumped into the passenger seat, and the plane took off.
Jude watched it climb into the sky, the wolf hanging precariously on the wing strut. She watched until the plane disappeared and Finn came up to lick the tears from her face.
Chapter 6
CJ was doing an internet search while Jude fired questions at him. “Slow down,” he said. “First, it sounds like the number is an FAA registration ID that has to be visible on the plane itself, like a license plate on a car. I’ll see if I can find out who it belongs to.”
During the long walk back to the guesthouse, Jude’s sadness was replaced by fury at the men who had killed a collared wolf in such a cold-blooded way. She resolved to find out who they were.
“Second, it’s not legal,” said CJ. “I’m on the Idaho Fish and Game site now, and according to them, it’s unlawful to hunt or even locate game from an airplane. Sounds like the men did both. Unfortunately, shooting a collared wolf is legal. It says here that hunters are only ‘discouraged from harvesting’ wolves wearing radio-collars, but they’re supposed to report it and return the collar.”
“Harvesting, CJ? Harvesting is what you do to corn. What I saw was chasing down a defenseless animal with a plane and slaughtering her with a high-powered rifle. Someone put a radio collar on this wolf in order to learn about her.”
“I hear you.”
The more Jude thought about it, the more irate she became. “It was horrible. I can’t get the image of that poor wolf out of my head. What did she ever do to deserve that? She was part of a pack … a family. Maybe she was trying to find food for her pups. Do you know that a wolf pack has incredibly strong emotional and physical bonds? Their whole lives are about being part of a pack. What will they do now? They didn’t just kill a wolf today – they broke up an entire family.”
Her friend and coworker remained silent at the other end of the line, allowing Jude to talk. “And after she was shot she kept trying to get up and run, but she didn’t have a chance. How could she? There’s no way to escape that kind of brutality.”
“What do you want me to do?” CJ asked gently.
“Find out who owns the plane. If they’re supposed to report killing a collared wolf to the state agency, I’m going to follow up and see that they do. If not, I’ll get them arrested or fined. It’s the least I can do.”
“Go get ’em, girl.”
“The bastards who shot her? They high-fived each other like they’d won some kind of video game. But they killed an animal … a beautiful, intelligent wolf, minding her own business.” Jude clenched her teeth. “I don’t understand people, CJ, sometimes I just don’t understand.”
* * *
The main street of Stanton acted like a tunnel through which the sharp wind whistled. It whipped her scarf against her face and made her squint to keep grit from blowing into her eyes. So it was with more than a little relief that Jude finally stepped into the Tripp Creek Café. Some would have called it a family restaurant with its plain wood tables and ruffled valance curtains. All in all quite folksy, except for the overwhelming wall décor, every inch covered with hunting photos, beer decals, pictures of high school football teams, and posters romanticizing the Old West. Jude tried to put a name to the haphazard design so she could describe it to CJ, finally settling on “Saddle Blanket Revivalism.”
She took a small table by the front window and shrugged off her jacket, welcoming the warmth. Soon, a waitress wearing support hose and thick, brown shoes sashayed over.
“Evenin’. You waiting for someone or you want to see a menu?” she asked cheerfully.
“Just me tonight,” replied Jude.
As if to underline this unfortunate state, the waitress gathered up the second, unnecessary paper placemat and silverware. Jude hated to eat out by herself. It wasn’t so much the consumption of food – she spent many a dinner in the quiet of her apartment with a book propped open. But when she sat alone in a crowded restaurant it always felt like there was a spotlight illuminating her aloneness and inviting silent speculation about the flaw in her character that had left her bereft of a dinner companion.
The waitress rattled off a few specials, all of which included meat. That was problematic. Jude was a vegan, but in most undercover situations she could hardly advertise it. There were things you had to do to fit in, and even questioning whether a vegetarian dish was made with eggs or cheese could send up a red flag.
Sensing her hesitation, the waitress said, “I’ll come back in a minute after you’ve had a chance to look at the menu. By the way, my name’s Abby if you need anything.”
Jude examined the menu, finally settling for the pasta marinara and a large green salad – a meal that could easily pass as “normal.” She put the menu aside and glanced around the busy café. A few tables were occupied by families, but most were taken up by workmen wearing flannel and heavy leather boots. In the middle of the room Jude caught the eye of one who looked to be in his early thirties. Not unattractive, he’d been laughing at something his tablemate had said. When he locked eyes with Jude, his grin remained unchanged and he dipped his chin in a gesture that reminded her of a cowboy tipping his hat.
Damn! She quickly averted her eyes, hoping he hadn’t seen the shock that she felt. He was the one who had shot the wolf, and he was sitting with the pilot. She was sure of it. Anger coursed through her and she bit down hard to keep it from escaping.
She managed to order and wait for her food without making eye contact again, but she snuck a peek once in awhile as the two men ate with gusto. Over her own dinner, Jude put her head down and pretended to study her paper placemat, which was printed with a map of Stanton and an abbreviated history of the town. It had once been called Tripp Creek, but it had been changed to Stanton in 1928 after William Bois Stanton and the Union Pacific Railroad decided to lay tracks through the town. The railway no longer operated here, but on the map, highlighted by a red star, was a place called the Tripp Sheep Ranch, a few miles outside of the town center. She’d seen the name before on lawn signs and bumper stickers left over from November promoting John Tripp for Idaho State Senator. Jude glanced up to find the wolf shooter looking in her direction. The history of Stanton on her placemat became her refuge.
“How was that?” asked Abby, returning to collect Jude’s empty plates. She was a sturdy woman with a broad smile, and from the way she chatted with the other diners, it was clear that she’d been working here a while.
“Hit the spot, thanks. The folks over at the Aspen Guesthouse recommended you.�
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Abby balanced the plates on one arm. “Bless ole Foster’s heart. You here to hunt?”
“No, I work for a company that’s putting together hiking and hunting tours, so I’m in the neighborhood checking it out.”
Abby’s face brightened at the prospect of more customers. “For sure,” she gushed. “There’s lots of visitors come through here. We’re not far from Yellowstone and Sun Valley, but not nearly so touristy. If your people want something more authentic, this is the place to be.”
Jude forced a smile. “So far I’m liking Stanton.”
“Can I get you anything else? Coffee? Dessert?”
“No, thank you. Just the check.”
A male voice came from behind Abby’s shoulder. “No one leaves here without tasting the fruit cobbler. It’s the best in the county.” The wolf killer ambled over, presumptuously pulling out the chair across from Jude and taking a seat.
Abby used a free hand to swat him on the shoulder. “What is that? Some kind of pick-up line, Cash?” she scoffed. “You can’t come up with better ’n that?”
“I’m just telling the truth,” he said innocently. Up close, he had the look of someone who spent his life outdoors; his light blue eyes stood out against sunburned skin, weathered beyond his true age. He flashed an exuberant grin, revealing white teeth behind his thick, brown mustache.
“This lady … I don’t know your name,” said Abby.
“Judy Harris.”
“She works for a travel agent, putting together huntin’ tours,” Abby continued. She tilted her head to an older, heavier man who had remained standing – the pilot. “This here is Roland Pike. He’s an airplane pilot. Why don’t you take her up, Pike? Show her around.”
He tried to smile, but his fleshy jowls dragged down the corners of his mouth, turning his expression into one of discomfort. “It’s not my plane,” he said.