Antler Dust (The Allison Coil Mystery Series Book 1)

by Mark Stevens

  “Now do you want the lecture?” Applegate smiled; Sandstrom didn’t.

  “It’s heart and mind in this case,” said Applegate. “And the protest for me was that. His death, Mr. Stern’s, made me think. But almost like there was no need for thought. It felt like I was living in the wrong camp—and perhaps I was. Never had that feeling? That gun of yours, it’s a symbol of what’s gone—”

  “Please,” said Sandstrom. “Really. How long will you be in Glenwood if we need anything else?”

  “I don’t know,” said Applegate. “I think that’s up to FATE.”

  ****

  They seemed to be hovering. The frosty Flat Tops stood motionless below. The same headwind that was pushing the airplane back to Eagle was blowing giant puffs of white fizz off the ridge on the west edge of Ripplecreek Canyon. Grumley trimmed the nose down a notch as the Mooney bored into the teeth of a snarling, high-pressure howl at twelve thousand feet. The plane was grinding. Above, the sky was crackling blue.

  Grumley dropped down with the sinking elevation, all the while asking lame questions about Dabney Yount’s supposed exploits in other corners of the world. Yount paid cash up front and carried four customized Weatherbys. He oozed wealth. He hadn’t made any amateur comments yet, hadn’t shown an ounce of concern about the airplane’s slow progress and didn’t seem worried about the schedule.

  But Yount also didn’t mind being served. After the airplane landed, Yount watched as Grumley loaded their gear into an old Ford pickup. He let Grumley assemble a plate of food for lunch: gourmet bits of smoked sausage and sharp Gouda cheese with rye crackers, grapes and homemade soup from an oversized thermos. Grumley cracked caps off two bottles of German beer. They ate standing on the dirt strip next to the Mooney, which provided a break from the persistent wind.

  The truck bounced over rutted dirt roads, which zigged and zagged at right angles back toward a cluster of hills to the north. Grumley followed directions scratched on the back of a used envelope. The envelope had been attached to the pickup’s visor. The roads were unmarked but the distances between them served as a gauge. The few landmarks that existed—a mailbox, a telephone pole, a type of fence—matched up well with the scrawled directions. They truck followed the grade uphill and the structured grid of roads collapsed on the steeper terrain. The snow covering the road amounted to wind-blown patches at first and finally obliterated the hard-packed soil altogether.

  They reached a north-south shelf that offered a panorama to the west, a hundred or so miles down an immobile ocean of forest and rangeland. The snow had piled high on the road in spots and Grumley dodged them where he could and gunned through the hubcap-high drifts where he couldn’t. The road petered out. They stopped behind a pickup truck with a camper shell. Three horses stood silently nearby, two saddled and ready, the third with saddlebags, all hitched to the side mirrors on the front of the truck.

  Yount turned down the offer of hot coffee in the camper and watched as Grumley organized the loading of the packhorse with their personal effects and weapons. Grumley and Yount dressed in heartier winter gear in the camper. Yount climbed up on Dozer, a large chestnut and white Appaloosa. Grumley took Flapjack, a smaller but surefooted quarter horse.

  Two hours later, most of it spent climbing, the horses kicking through a foot and a half of snow, they arrived at a four-man canvas tent. A campfire burned outside. The tent sat in a clearing ringed on three sides by a tightly packed grove of blue spruce.

  One of the guides heard them coming and stepped outside. Grumley introduced Yount, who gave off an air of impatience. The rifles were taken down, unpacked, checked and loaded. After hearing the herd was less than a mile away, up and over the ridge behind them and likely to be nestled down in scrub and heavy cover, Yount chose his .340 and 250-grain bullets. Grumley had a Savage 99. The other three of Yount’s rifles would stay.

  A guide produced a walkie-talkie, muttered something softly into it and waited for the response back. Ten seconds of silence preceded the whispered response. Grumley led Yount on foot, heading for a jagged knoll on top of the ridge. Yount tried to hide the fact that he was working. The slope required them to jab their toes into the grade for balance. Grumley set a steady pace, knowing it was harder to stop and start repeatedly than it was to keep plugging.

  He could not take his mind off Applegate and Allison. Yesterday, Trudy had called him in from the garage where he had been welding a busted hinge on an incinerator. Trudy said they had teased a report on the evening news about a protest at the sheriff ’s office. She was pretty sure she had seen another picture of his “pal.” Sure enough, the first report showed Applegate and the bitch, Ellenberg, stomping around the cops’ parking lot, demanding action. Applegate must have stepped onto the train on one side and off on the other. The one thing he couldn’t do was reach through the television and grab Applegate by the neck and use the microphone cord coming off the reporter’s camera as a noose.

  Grumley would have to track him down, again. This time would be the last.

  “Last bit of full-blown daylight.”

  It was Yount.

  “We’re fine,” said Grumley.

  From the stone outcrop they spotted the guide, who was crouched low behind a boulder halfway down the slope on the other side. The guide spotted them and used both his arms to signal them to stay low. They did, hunching over as they walked down. The wind was in their faces, which helped.

  “Three hundred yards,” whispered the guide, using his thumb to point up and over the boulder. “Some beauties. Watch your step. A couple of stragglers have ventured over this way in the last hour or so.”

  Grumley led the way out, heading parallel with the ridge top to maintain the higher ground for as long as possible. The ridge was dotted with massive Douglas firs and lodgepoles, ringing an old burn. A red-tailed hawk circled silently in the dusk. Elk tracks wound through a stand of aspen. Grumley saw one pile of the distinctive, elongated scat and it was fresh. Yount spotted an elk first and emitted a soft cluck as he stopped and squatted slowly. He cocked his head to the left as a way to point. A long-necked cow was picking her way around the base of a lodgepole, chewing grass that poked up through the snow.

  Yount shook his head no. Too small.

  The elk munched, oblivious. Grumley signaled to stay put and still. The cow drifted off. Grumley led the way in behind it, using the trees and the steady breeze in his face as cover. The snow crunched a bit too much for his liking. The overnight freeze had created a crust on the surface that would make it difficult to sneak up on anything. Any attempt at forward progress could spook the cow and as a result the whole herd. Wherever it was. The good news was the snow depth, only a foot or so. The elk weren’t having any trouble finding food to keep them satisfied. But the hunters’ best bet was to stay put. Grumley figured twenty minutes of shooting light remained. Perhaps the herd would drift back in their line of fire.

  Yount pointed in the direction he wanted to go. He was ten yards back, hanging low.

  Grumley pointed to his boot, to the snow and his ear. Too noisy, he communicated with this pantomime.

  Yount shook his head no and pointed ahead. Grumley put up his hand like a cop stopping traffic. But Yount started walking, bent at the waist. He headed straight for the close cover of the pines and skirted them, staring ahead. Every step came with a crunch, soft and audible, like a cannon shot to elk radar. Trying to avoid a pattern, Yount took three steps and waited, two steps and waited, four steps and waited. He crouched at the base of a tree.

  Grumley took aim at the back of Yount’s head, lining up the crosshairs on the spot where the top of his fleece collar touched his neon green cap. Through his scope, made for spotting the spine of an elk at three hundred yards, the back of Yount’s head filled his field of vision. Pop, pop, pop said Grumley to himself. Why did some of ’em always think they knew better? He wanted Yount to turn around so he could catch him in the face.

  Yount stepped around the tree out of sight. Gr
umley raised the rifle and propped the butt of it in the snow so he could lean on the barrel. He waited and listened, thinking he could hear Yount’s steps, but it was his imagination. A black-backed woodpecker swooped through two nearby lodgepoles, landed on a third and chiseled for beetle grubs. The tops of the lodgepoles swayed, but the wind at ground level eased. Grumley waited fifteen minutes, figuring Yount had taken responsibility for his own hunt.

  The bull strutted out between two trees and stood rock still. A gift. Grumley automatically took in the length of its antler beam, a cinch fifty-incher.

  The bull dipped its head down to feed. The antler tips were as high as the top his shoulder. The rack was deeply curved with long brow points and nicely shaped sword points. The bull, giving Grumley a broadside view, looked up. Its ears jutted back. Grumley tried to keep his thoughts from moving. The bull took a step to its left and turned slightly, the ears going slack. Grumley lowered the sight until the crosshairs found the bull’s shoulder. It was eighty yards to the elk, maybe a shade less. The spine would shatter easily. His brain and finger were considering the shot when he heard another crack, not far away. The report surprised him. He had nearly forgotten Yount. At the sound, the bull bounded off its hind legs. Grumley followed the target as it reared and followed the shot in the distance with one of his own. The bull pulled its rear legs in and sat down. It teetered and collapsed sideways. Grumley lowered the rifle and jogged toward his kill. The shot had shattered the bull’s spine; no finishing shot was required.

  It would take the whole crew to help quarter and pack out so much food. The horses and the help weren’t far, but the gutting job would have to be done by campfire light.

  He heard Yount before he saw him. He came running like a three-year-old who had discovered candy.

  “Holy—” he said, half out of breath, taking in Grumley’s kill. “I thought mine was—Jesus, look at this mother.”

  “Father,” Grumley corrected.

  “You got one?”

  “A cow, nothing to write home about.”

  Yount was breathing hard, whether from excitement or exercise Grumley couldn’t tell. Some hunters were like that, the adrenaline pumped up at the idea of killing something.

  “One shot,” said Yount, inspecting the blood-caked hole in the bull’s backbone.

  “Yours?” said Grumley. “Where’d you hit her?”

  “Rear quarters,” said Yount. “She got about five paces and called it quits.”

  “I’ll trade you,” said Grumley.

  Yount looked at him like he had spoken in another language.

  “This baby is trophy class.”

  “Cow meat is sweeter. You tell your story, I’ll tell mine. Switch the bodies.”

  “You have quite an accommodating guide service.”

  “Hey,” said Grumley. “If you drop something better tomorrow, we’ll switch back. If you don’t, you hang this rack.”

  “Best damn outfit this side of the Mississippi.”

  “We like repeat business,” said Grumley. “Let’s go raise some boys to excavate all this meat and hang it up to cool. Unless you’d rather—”

  “It’s getting awfully dark,” said Yount. “I’m not sure I could handle a sharp knife in these conditions. And I’m a mite thirsty from all the aggravation that goes along with this hunting business.”

  “Feeling tuckered?”

  “Christ,” said Yount. “The only way to have made it any quicker would have been to chain these suckers to a tree.”

  ****

  Allison was stepping out of the shower, replaying the “conversation” with Ellenberg over and over in her mind, when she heard the horse snort. She grabbed a towel, yanked open the bathroom door, shouted “just a minute.”

  Underwear, socks, jeans and sweater were tossed on as quickly as possible, the jeans battling damp skin. She opened the door barefooted.

  “Just waking up?”

  Bobby Alvin, one of Grumley’s hunting grunts.

  “Making up for the hot water we all miss during season.”

  “No need to get dressed on my account.”

  Bobby Alvin had been a three-night fling many months ago. At first he came across as the cool, low-key, earthy sort whose every move and thought was born and bred in the backcountry soil. He had short hair and square but rugged good looks, with deep-set eyes. Her downfall. His attitudes were as natural, normal and relaxed as a cow grazing in a pasture. He was a big one, barrel chest over knobby, gnarled legs that flopped beyond the end of the bed. But Alvin’s world didn’t stretch much beyond horses and hunting. She realized she had been mistaken when he didn’t seem to care about anything outside his shallow puddle. It was Allison’s relationship with Alvin that made her realize her own interest in the rest of the world was not so easily squelched. The sex had been forgettable, coarse and abrupt. When The Boy Scout—Slater— showed up on her radar, Alvin hadn’t put up much of a fight.

  “Coffee?” she offered, heading to the pot to fill the tank with water.

  “Got any bourbon?” said Alvin, plunking himself down at the table. He sat sideways in a chair, tilted it back so he was leaning against the wall.

  “Most likely,” she said, opening a kitchen cabinet to check the supply. She found a bottle of Wild Turkey. He poured himself an unhealthy portion.

  “You called?” he said.

  “I was wondering if you could tell me who camped last week with that guy Dean Applegate.”

  She was careful to put the focus on Applegate, not Alvin’s boss, Grumley.

  “The quiet one.”

  He knocked back his first drink and reached for the bottle.

  “How’s that?”

  “I helped pack Grumley and his buddies up and down three years running and I never could figure out that guy.”

  She let it dangle. She wanted to poke around, but didn’t want to sound like the FBI.

  “Now I hear he’s all over, talking like a raving madman,” he said. “Go figure. I couldn’t get ten words out of him. Not like the others.”

  “The others,” said Allison. “The others were—”

  “Pretty cool. Flatlanders, don’t get me wrong, but they knew it. Applegate always had to have his camouflage.”

  “Do you know them?”

  “By name?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nicknames—two of ’em. ‘Fishy’ Marcovicci and ‘Locks.’ Oh, and another guy named Frank. And Grumley and Applegate. Why don’t you ask George?”

  This was the hard part, not knowing how secretive to be, not knowing how much she could trust Alvin. This was the part where she had hoped he would play stupid.

  “He’s a busy guy ...”

  “It has to do with Rocky, right?” he said. “Word is out that you’re poking around. I’ve had questions myself. I mean it’s been a long time now. Too long.”

  “The cops are petering out,” said Allison, “and don’t seem to care.”

  “And that’s because—”

  “They’re too busy with the guy in the deer suit,” she said.

  “And what do you think these three have to do with anything? They’re puppies, let me tell you, who could barely manage to survive for a day by themselves in a stocked hunting camp with a full-time maid.”

  “I’m curious if they know anything.”

  Alvin buried his nose in his drink and crossed his eyes to watch the fluid go down.

  “You don’t think the cops already got to ’em? Hell, they found me. One of the guys from one of our camps got pinned down on his way out, just because he was driving out from Grumley’s barn. He tried to explain that they had been hunting eight miles north of Ripplecreek.”

  “You’re probably right,” said Allison.

  “It’s possible Rocky got caught, strayed from his camp. Maybe he couldn’t find his way back. Froze or something.”

  “I suppose,” said Allison. She said it with a touch of conviction, but didn’t mean it.

  “What you need
is all the guns in the valley that day, test all the ones that could have handled the bullet that zipped into Mr. Deer Suit, get one stupid murder or accidental shooting or whatever it was off their minds.” Alvin spoke like it was all a snap. “And get the cops to help find Rocky.”

  The phone rang.

  “Allison?” It was Trudy.

  “Yes. Hi.”

  They had been talking on the phone daily, but this was the first time Trudy had initiated the call.

  “Do you have a second?” said Trudy.

  Alvin took a drink, looked tense, but wasn’t going anywhere. Allison turned away, toward her small kitchen.

  “I need a second,” said Trudy. “My airport friend called. I told you George took the plane out. He’s coming back late this afternoon. Very quick trip. An overnight, which is unusual. And the jet that brought in one of his customers—well, the pilot is there now. They’re prepping it. I guess it’s one of those new corporate jets. A Gulf Something.”

  “Stream,” said Allison. “A Gulfstream.”

  “Expensive,” said Trudy.

  “Very,” said Allison.

  Alvin looked at her and smiled.

  “I thought I’d let you know.”

  “Interesting. Thanks,” said Allison.

  “Did you get your house back together?” said Trudy.

  “For the most part. It looks okay. Look, I’ve gotta go now, but I’ll stop by real soon. Thanks.”

  Allison hung up. Alvin’s grin was gone; he was stone-faced.

  “Was Rocky fighting with anyone?” said Allison.

  “Cops asked that one eight ways from Sunday. No.”

  “You think he was up there working?”

  “Sure.”

  “He wasn’t doing anything—”

  “Peculiar?” said Alvin.

  “Yeah.”

  “Rocky Carnivitas? Maybe he smoked a joint now and then, maybe he drank too much in the shit-kicking joints, I don’t know. You think you’re concerned, go ask Trudy Grumley.”

  “Why her?” Allison played innocent.

  “The Grumley crew, that was one of things we had to do, rotate in on ‘Trudy Duty.’ Woman’s got a problem with her brain, it freezes up, I guess. I’ve never been there, thank God, when it’s happened. Anyway, we’ve got to babysit her, take her places. She can’t drive.”