Antler Dust (The Allison Coil Mystery Series Book 1)

by Mark Stevens

  “His plane alone was worth $350,000 new,” said Allison. “He probably needed to or wanted to stay liquid.”

  “Liquid?”

  “Cash-wise liquid. So he borrowed it, or most of it. The debt gets registered with the state.”

  “I didn’t know about any of this,” said Trudy.

  “When my friend, this lawyer I know, saw what I was doing, he took me over to another computer in his office that has a hard line straight into the computer database for the courts. All the records and filings are there.”

  “There was a piece on a news show about those databases, public records at your fingertips,” said Trudy.

  “Type in his name, boom. Seems your husband isn’t a huge fan of the federal government and its pesky IRS.”

  “I can vouch for that,” said Trudy.

  “Three years ago, he was audited,” said Allison.

  “I remember an auditor who came to the house to look at the books. She looked like your typical suburban housewife mom. Hardly what you’d expect.”

  “A dispute surfaced. It was minor at first, but according to the transcript of the trial your husband came this close to being thrown in jail for contempt of court. Once we had his name and the case number it was easy to pull the records of what happened. Anyway, he didn’t show up for the first day of the trial. Then he insisted that he be allowed to claim the house, your house, as a deduction for his business operation.”

  “It’s a house, like any other.”

  “Claimed he entertained clients there. He apparently didn’t think there was any difference between home and going out to a restaurant.”

  “Never saw anybody,” said Trudy. “Or very few clients.”

  “A few facts spilled over the falls in the trial. My friend called again this morning. He was helping me put some things together. Want to know your husband’s net worth?”

  “Please,” said Trudy, closing her eyes.

  “We figure it’s about five million. This was five years ago. It’s been a while. Interest on that alone would add up considerably.”

  Trudy slumped at the news. She put her sandwich down.

  “Your husband has been successful for quite some time. But that much profit from the store alone? It’s hard to figure. And outfitting? He only has a dozen camps under his special-use permit with the Forest Service. And it’s not like he doesn’t have expenses.”

  “He could pay for my operation in a blink.”

  “Yes. He could pay for your operation in cash and let you stay the entire time, before and after, in the finest hotel in Denver.”

  “Incomprehensible,” said Trudy.

  Five million, thought Allison, was no more difficult to imagine than nine hundred thousand.

  “I know a guy who was the nephew of the guy who invented the grocery cart,” said Allison. “The grocery cart. It was a big deal when he did it. Everybody started buying more in the stores because they could carry everything at once and really load up. It changed the design of grocery stores. The guy inherited a fair chunk. He says it’s like discovering a secret room in your house that’s chock full of money, stuffed to the living gills. You go in there and take out ten, fifteen grand and go spend it, just a handful. The day you go back for more though, the empty space has filled up where you took money. The pile of cash has taken over a small closet. Must be nice.”

  “There must be an explanation,” said Trudy. “Maybe he’s lost it since?”

  Allison let Trudy answer her own question, let her struggle with it.

  “He was so kind, built that beautiful house, seemed so sure of the world and his role in it. Always did,” said Trudy. “You must think I’m a fool.”

  “Hardly,” said Allison.

  “What now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It all points in one direction. The GPS gear and everything. And especially what you said about Slowik, about how often George comes through with kills.”

  “Prime kills every time—or nearly every time,” said Allison. “They’ve gotta be rigged.”

  “What about Rocky?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “It can’t be good.”

  “Don’t say that,” said Allison. “You can’t think that.”

  “I can sense it.”

  “But we don’t know for sure.”

  Bear snorted. Scrub oak rustled above their horses. Allison looked up. The side of a four-door dark pickup had pulled up tight with the roadside. The diesel engine idled noisily. Popeye Boyles stood next to the cab, smoking a stubby cigar, one hand on the rearview mirror.

  Grumley came around from behind Bear, striding hard.

  “Trudy,” he said. “You know this is dangerous.”

  “No, wait,” said Allison.

  “You wait,” said Grumley. “She’s not well.”

  Grumley grabbed Trudy by the arm, pulling her up. “Give her the coat back,” said Grumley.

  “No, really,” said Allison. “I’ll take her back—”

  “You’ll do nothing. Got it? Nothing.”

  Grumley was directly in her face. Allison caught a nasty whiff of old sweat and rank grime.

  “George, really,” said Trudy.

  But George dragged her off. Allison snuck a glance at Boyles, who had the door to the pickup swung wide open.

  They loaded Trudy in the back seat. Boyles rode shotgun up front. The truck peeled out. Trudy stared straight ahead.

  ****

  A day later, the bank of gray clouds overhead was so thick that it was as if the Federal Reserve had stuffed the sun in its darkest vault. The humidity soaked Allison’s cheeks, her only exposed skin.

  She thought constantly of Trudy, of what Grumley might have said, of what Trudy would’ve said in reply and how ugly the day must have been after Trudy had been snatched away. She wondered how much Trudy might or might not have said. Allison’s hunch was, not much.

  Bear stopped in a boulder field on the southern flank of the butte, a spot where they usually lingered to drink in the vistas. The packhorse ambled to a stop beside them. Bear relieved himself as if on command. Allison climbed down and stepped a few paces off the trail to do the same. As she stood up, buttoning her jeans, she heard a distant snort. Horse. Ahead or behind, she couldn’t tell. She stood next to Bear and stroked his snout, looking and waiting for a horse to materialize. Nothing.

  “Weird,” she said. “I could have sworn—”

  They picked their way through the boulders and headed over to the western face of the butte where the trail plunged down through a section of krummholz, belly high to the horses. Her chaps strummed snow from the stubby branches as they rode. The smothering thickets opened up and gave way to a clutch of aspen. She took a deep breath, consciously filling her lungs to capacity with the damp air and she praised the fact that the world wasn’t all urban jungle. A Northern Flicker tapped the bark on an old lodgepole pine and darted low, swooping down at ground level, powered only by the intermittent flaps of its wings.

  The trail maintained its heading back to the north, gradually descending for a mile or so until it hit the bottom of the drainage before winding more steeply back uphill toward a high, lake-dotted plateau thick with aspen, a thriving undergrowth and every critter known to Colorado. Allison spotted the camp as the sun briefly threatened to define itself in the haze. She caught a wisp of shadow, her own, before it evaporated.

  “Hello!” she called from thirty yards out. “Anybody home?” “Hello!”

  The return call came from one of the canvas wall tents. A metal chimney puffed gray smoke into the drab sky.

  Allison hitched the horses. A man and woman draped in over-sized parkas emerged from the tent, smiles at the ready.

  “Nice day, huh?” said Allison.

  “If you like the inside of a walk-in freezer at night,” said the man.

  They all shook hands. Bill and Cindy Pearls, Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Outfitted as though enough catalog camping gear w
ould take care of everything, including sneaking up on a big fat mule deer. They huddled in the tent, the neatest and most immaculate indoor space Allison had ever seen this far from indoor plumbing. Somebody, she guessed, wasn’t doing much hunting. One of the other guides had set them up four days ago, but it looked like they had been airlifted in straight from a Martha Stewart hunting camp.

  “On the first day we got close to a couple of deer, two small bucks. You couldn’t have paid me to pull the trigger,” said Bill, laughing. “I love to eat meat and think venison is God’s gift to taste buds. Next to elk medallions, that is. But no way could I have been responsible for destroying one of those beautiful, beautiful creatures.”

  Bill had the tough-guy features of an ex-Marine or a football fullback: moose-like chest, zero neck and shoulders designed to absorb punishment in a variety of forms.

  “It was so cute,” said Cindy. “Thousands of dollars for all of this, months of preparation, even shooting practice, and he didn’t care.”

  “But I’m doing some serious reading,” he said, pointing to a stack of paperbacks. “And when it’s been clear, we’ve gone for hikes to look for the deer or elk.”

  “The other two hunters?” said Allison.

  “They went back out this morning to finish dressing a deer they dropped at dusk last night,” said Bill.

  “Close enough that we could hear the shot,” said Cindy, as if that made it more exciting.

  They unloaded Allison’s packhorse and Allison followed Cindy on foot to the spot where the others were supposed to be, less than half a mile from camp.

  “They weren’t quite sure about this part,” said Cindy. “But they said they wanted to get it strung up for the night.”

  The carcass was on the ground in a small clearing next to a frozen lake. The clearing had been charred and stripped of life by a spot fire not too many years ago.

  “Professional help at last,” said the woman as they approached. The woman’s job was to keep her hands tucked in her pockets and serve as head cheerleader. The man stood up, his hunting clothes bearing splotches of goo and red.

  “I think you would need to do this once or twice,” he said, “in order to avoid making a nasty mess. The video made it look easy.” Cindy introduced them around. Steve and Martha Ellis. She shook hands. He waved at first, removed his goopy glove for a handshake.

  “You had him hung up pretty soon after you shot him?” “Within an hour,” he said. “Tried to get most of the viscera out of the cavity before night fell and propped it open with a branch, but we didn’t get all the upper guts, the heart and lungs. We wanted to skin him and get the hide salted, but it was too damn dark.”

  Steve was compact and stout with a square head, black mustache and rounded red cheeks. Martha was a couple of inches taller. She looked more capable and more rugged, but only by a matter of degrees.

  Allison helped them skin and quarter the animal as Cindy and Martha chatted away, saying things like “yuck” at appropriate times, such as when Steve sawed through the eyeballs to save the skull and antlers.

  Allison stayed for a late lunch at the camp. Cindy whipped up tuna salad that was one part fish and two parts mayonnaise. More goo. It followed her around. Trudy’s tuna was vastly superior, with a gourmet’s touch.

  Bear and the packhorse munched oats as she loaded them up. Because of the quartered deer, she would have to return to the barn rather than make a stop at another camp up over Black Squirrel Pass. She had been half hoping to go back that way again and look from the same spot where she had seen the man dragging something, to see if it would help her recall anything useful. She’d also wanted to bring down a good chunk of the dead elk for tests. “Somebody will come pack you out the day after tomorrow,” she said, climbing up on Bear. The four of them stood around kicking at the snow.

  “So if we happen to get another deer down today or tomorrow and if you know I’ve already filled my tag and if you know old tough guy Bill here didn’t do the shooting ...?”

  “What?” said Allison. “You think that’s okay?”

  “Two licenses, two guns, two hunters, two deer. No biggie.” “Just checking,” said Steve.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine their mini-mansions in the suburbs, with the hand-waxed automobiles, plush carpeting and fixed routines. Another Friday night, another pan of lasagna or whatever it said on the schedule. She wondered what it must be like to go through life on a static ride, safe and beyond trouble, outside fate’s scrutiny, with a steady stream of income, untormented by nine-hundred-thousand-dollar windfalls and decisions over whether or not to sue your own government. She once knew that world. But she couldn’t recall how it had felt, probably because she hadn’t seen the need to feel it or define it. Minutes ago she had sanctioned the death of another deer. The pilot didn’t want to die. Ray Stern did—so why care about his killer? Was it better to let it be? Better for whom?

  Bear was content with the idea of following his tracks back to the barn. His steps were brisk. But they wouldn’t make it back before dark.

  “Whoa,” said Allison. Bear looked around like he was wondering what she had forgotten this time.

  A set of unfamiliar horse tracks headed off the trail and up the ridge on a diagonal line. Not tracks, really, but snow kicked up and disturbed. Distinctively horse. They were only a quarter mile from the camp. She slipped off Bear and walked ahead, down the slushy trail bed. Her packhorse followed Bear’s line closely. The tracks were clear. She studied the set, a wider arc on the horseshoe itself. Perhaps a much bigger horse or mule. The gait was long too. Back at Bear’s side, she peered up the slope and back behind her. She stood up in the saddle and looked down the hill. The woods were empty.

  Three hours to dusk. Five hours to the barn. Night temperatures headed for the low teens. The footing around the front of the butte, through the boulder field, wasn’t ideal in daylight. They would go until an hour before dusk and stop. “You’re going to be mad at me when you see me break out the tent,” she told Bear. “It’s for the best, though.”

  The thick woods gobbled up what light the heavy clouds did not. A cool breeze cut across her face and started loosening the treetops from a frozen slumber. The weather might be starting to pack its bags, having already stayed beyond its invitation.

  Two hours later, Allison spotted a small, flat clearing down off the trail. A forest floor coated with pine needles in mid-July, now it held a foot of snow. A ring of towering lodgepole pines guarded the space.

  She took the packs off the packhorse and the saddle off Bear. She tied the deer quarters together and hoisted them up on a rope, ten feet off the ground. She set up the pup tent in a patch of snow after digging out a square so she could stake it in frozen soil, using a hammer. Her hands shook as she tried to hold the stakes steady. She tossed her sleeping bag inside with a small roll of extra clothes. She would fashion a pillow out of a combination of clothes. She scouted for firewood, retrieving dead limbs from what she could reach. She made a fifty-yard sweep in four directions before there was a pile that matched the tent’s height and width. A hatchet turned one branch into wood shavings. She made four more piles of successively larger twigs, sticks and smaller limbs. A dry exterior was the key, dry enough so she could fool the fire into thinking that it wasn’t winter, that all the fuel was premium stuff.

  She needed green limbs that could serve as a platform for the fire. Two perfect branches, both slender and clean, would have been reachable if she’d been able to stand on top of the snow. If she was, say, weightless. To reach another good candidate, she had to shimmy up a trunk a bit thicker than a telephone pole and whack away with the hatchet. “You’ll survive,” she said. “I’m a bee. This is my stinger.” Ten more chops and she was through. She made six pieces out of the limb closer to her tent. She lined the six up side by side, wedged together by the snow. She built a teepee of the smallest twigs in the middle of her platform.

  The first match blew out. The flames from the second leapt in
to her vented stack of miniature lumber like they recognized good fuel by smell. A soft crackle went up within a minute. She fed the wood down the fire’s gullet. Every taste became another, larger bite. And then nothing, as if someone had covered the fire with an invisible glass hood. The flames shriveled up and died. Screw it. She went to Bear’s saddlebags for a packet of liquid napalm, a plastic tube like a frozen ice pop. She always brought a few spares along. Bear probably knew she was cheating. She dribbled the goo on the wood and lit another match to the glob.

  “Hey, okay, big deal,” she said to Bear. “Turn me in.”

  The fire sputtered for a second and burst into full-bloom. Dinner would be beef jerky, an apple, slices of yellow cheddar.

  The fire roared. The earth around it started to soften. She went to check on the horses and give them the last of the oats. She sat by the fire warming her hands and toes. The orange furnace was the only thing to watch. The flickering light danced to an irregular but busy beat.

  The horses whinnied sharply and Allison stood up abruptly out of instinct, except the ground rushed up from the side and whacked her shoulder and head. She yelped with surprise and grunted as she smacked the earth.

  Her feet didn’t move and she looked up, groggy from the tackle. She tasted the residue of seawater, its stinging bitterness and slimy texture filling her mouth.

  Why couldn’t she move?

  His body squashed her legs. He flipped her over. He shoved her head down in the snow, all his weight and strength pounding into her. She didn’t want to exhale in case that last lungful was all that kept her rib cage from collapsing. Her cheek on the snow started to freeze. The hand on her butt felt enormous. Her left arm was tucked tightly underneath. Not for long. He jerked it around and tied her arms together behind her back. He had come a long way if this was going to be rape. The idea flashed and was gone. He was sitting on her butt, yanking the knot together.

  She risked a breath, inhaled snow, spit it out.

  “What the—” brought a whack across the back of her head. “You’re fucking around where you don’t belong.”