Final Grave

by Nadja Bernitt

  “But the cops suspected Wheatley?”

  Jason glanced away. “Yes.”

  She saw he was holding back. “What do you think?”

  “If your mother met with foul play—and I’m sorry to say she must have—Robin Wheatley is not my first choice.”

  “Then who?”

  “The man with the birds.”

  Meri Ann recalled the querulous mountain man who ran the eagle sanctuary in the mountains north of Boise. “Harold Graber?”

  “Yes. I warned her not to get involved with that derelict, but she loved lost causes.”

  And birds, Meri Ann thought. “Did you tell the detectives about him?”

  “I never spoke to the detectives, but I mentioned it to your father. By the way, what the Sheriff’s Department did to him was unconscionable. You might not be aware, but they did everything but arrest him and put him in thumb screws.”

  “Oh, I remember, and I’m glad to hear someone else does.” She curbed her resentment, not wanting to get off on another tangent. If she didn’t hold her sharp tongue, pretty soon nobody would talk to her. She softened her tone. “If you wouldn’t mind, what do you know about Graber?”

  “I shouldn’t say anything, but it’s irked me for years. The police never followed up with him.”

  Jason’s intensity surprised her. She leaned forward, curious to hear more. “How long have you known him?”

  “Since childhood. My father hunted with his dad who was a fascinating man. We tagged along. You know boys and guns? But I finally quit going. Harold is dark at times and it bothered me” Worry lines deepened in Jason’s brow, as though the memory frightened him. “He killed for fun.”

  He sat quietly for a moment. Then he pointed to a stuffed elk’s head above his desk on the wall. “My father took him in one shot. He never let an animal suffer needlessly. Guess what I’m saying is there are responsible hunters and there are killers.”

  The animal’s glass eyes bore down on her, unsettling and lifelike. Her hands grew clammy and she rubbed them on the knees of her slacks. “It’s hard to understand how a man who likes to kill saves injured birds.”

  “It’s not easy to reconcile, is it? But then the birds he saves are killers themselves. I am the first to admit, the man’s a conundrum. He was accepted into Harvard’s medical school and went there two semesters. Then he dropped out, not because of poor grades. He despised ‘rich kids.’ Ironic, since his dad had enough money to buy and sell half of them.”

  She remembered Graber as an eccentric, a man dedicated to his birds. Now a more sinister dimension surfaced, and she couldn’t help but wonder if Harold Graber had something to do with her mother’s disappearance. At the very least she felt compelled to talk to him.

  The phone rang on Jason’s desk. She rose, using it as an excuse to get going.

  “Someone else will get that,” he said, and someone did.

  “Thank you, but I’ve taken enough of your time.”

  “Look, I shouldn’t have said anything.” He pushed up from the chair. “I didn’t mean to accuse Harold, he’s troubled, that’s all.”

  Again, she said, “Thanks.”

  Jason walked her to the door. “If you have more questions or if I can help you in any way, I will. And I mean that.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Becky and Meri Ann stood in the sun beside the stone garage at River House, the two of them ready to go their different directions.

  Meri Ann shielded her eyes with her hand. “Your hair’s so red, Becky, I need sunglasses to soften the glare.”

  “Don’t switch the subject from Graber.”

  “I’ll talk to him, that’s all.”

  “If you can just wait till I get back from Sun Valley, then we can go together.”

  “Are you worried about me?”

  “Not exactly, kid.” Becky shuffled her feet. “But just for the record, Graber’s been arrested.”

  “When, and for what?”

  “He was charged with animal cruelty or something. I think he held a shotgun on the deputies who went out there. It was in the papers. Anyway, why would you go there when his crazy eagle attacked you.”

  Meri Ann cringed at the memory, not so much from the bird’s behavior but from her fear of it. “It wasn’t the bird’s fault as much as mine.”

  “You never went back.”

  “Well, that was then and this is now.” The sun slid behind a bank of clouds and Meri Ann shivered at the sudden drop in temperature. “Let’s get going. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we’ll be back.” She opened the SUV’s door and gave her friend a hand up.

  Becky shut her door and lowered the window. “I’ll leave you a message so you know when to expect me. Check the answering machine by the front door. I won’t be late. We’ll go out for a steak and some bean sprouts or whatever organic delights you eat.”

  “What about Chinese or Thai?”

  “Cool. That sounds normal.” Becky waved as she backed out the long driveway.

  A moment later, Meri Ann headed out.

  For the second time that day, she cruised past Jason’s salon, heading east on Warm Springs Avenue. Rush-hour traffic slowed her through the city center but slackened when she cleared the sprawling new developments creeping around Table Rock.

  The neon cross unsettled her as it had the day before. Its cold light burned stark against the muddy clouds while crime scene images played in her mind. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel and forced herself to focus on the highway.

  Boise’s river rippled to her right. The road curved beside it, a road she’d traveled often to Lucky Peak Dam, where she used to swim and water ski on summer days. Rounding the bend, the dam’s concrete wall came into view. Water gushed from a relief valve like an Amazon’s fire hose feeding the river. The pounding force sent a fine spray onto her windshield, and she turned on the wipers. It seemed like another lifetime ago when she’d last driven up here; in so many ways it was.

  Everything she did, every place she went brought back memories of her youth, and innocence, a time when she didn’t have to be so strong, a time when her parents bore that burden.

  As she drove north the road narrowed, twisting and turning into the mountains. Towering ponderosa pines dotted the roadside and at every turn they seemed to multiply until she was in a forest. The stark brown earth and the massive boulders complemented the majestic trees. This was the road to Idaho City. Graber’s sanctuary was halfway between Boise and the old mining town, only twenty-some miles away. But the turn-off to Graber’s was closer, just past Grimes Creeks where the road snaked lazily into a canyon. She watched for a hillside of columnar basalt, a place with the look of a sci-fi cathedral. Finally, she spotted the volcanic outcropping with its dark iron post piles. Fifty yards ahead she saw a faded hand-painted sign, Graber’s Eagle Sanctuary.

  Her pulse quickened as she slowed for the turn. A steep dirt road twisted up the mountain. It wasn’t much more than a rutted path crowded by scrub cedars and towering pines. It felt claustrophobic until the trees thinned near the end of the road and she saw Graber’s weathered cabin atop a cleared knoll. The bed of a rusty pickup stuck out from behind a semi-attached shed. The clouds grew heavier and darker by the minute promising snow. In the dim light it was easy to see a lamp burning inside the cabin—someone was home.

  She shifted into park and sat. The futility of her visit struck hard. She debated whether or not to open the door and get out or to turn around and head back.

  She’d been here only twice before, the last time when her mom had organized a group of BSU students to lay a stone walkway. Graber had seemed friendly, a funny man with eyes as small and fierce as his raptors. He’d shot four or five rabbits that day, divvied them up for the birds. Meri Ann recalled the piercing shrieks as the birds tore at t
he flesh. Later, Graber had paraded around the cabin with a golden eagle on his arm for everyone to admire.

  But while the students oohed and aahed, the bird watched Meri Ann, specifically the tuna on rye in her hand. The bird swooped. She jerked away, but not before its beak ripped the sleeve of her jacket. She screamed and ran, locking herself in the Jeep. She still recalled the laughter of the university students and her humiliation at having run away.

  Suddenly, the light went out in Graber’s cabin and Meri Ann took note. It seemed odd to turn off a lamp, now, when he must have heard her car engine. Regardless, she meant to talk to him and it was too late to pretend he wasn’t at home.

  She opened the car door and stepped out. The rank odor of caged birds wafted down the hill, strong even with the wind picking up. She breathed through her mouth as she climbed the stone steps, the very ones she’d helped lay all those years ago.

  Halfway up, a door latch clicked.

  She craned her head and caught a glint of steel—a double-barreled shotgun—poking through the partly open front door.

  “Hold it right there,” came a raspy male voice.

  She stood stock still.

  The door parted slowly. “Who the hell are you? And what’s your business?”

  “Put down that shotgun. I’m not here about your birds, Mr. Graber. It is Mr. Graber, isn’t it?” She stood firm. “I’m Joanna Dunlap’s daughter.”

  Slowly, he lowered the shotgun.

  A lanky, rugged sixty-year-old man with the pallor of a heavy smoker stepped out. He wore a washed-out denim shirt and jeans with mud spotted knees. His pants were gathered around his waist, cinched by a worn western belt, and his steely hair was worn in a ponytail. Though she couldn’t see what he smoked, she bet on Marlboros. She eased up the steps, still leery of the shotgun.

  “I’m here about my mother. You remember her, don’t you?”

  He moved haltingly to the edge of the porch railing and squinted at her. He said nothing for a good five seconds which felt more like five minutes. “Joanna,” he mumbled. “Ah, yes, Meri Ann.” He nodded as if he approved. “You’ve come to see me.”

  Her lips parted in surprise. “You know who I am?”

  “I know more than you think.”

  The way he said it gave her pause, but then anyone holding the high ground with a weapon in hand gave her pause. “I’d appreciate it if you’d put the shotgun down.”

  He leaned it against the porch rail. It was still only inches from his hand. “Are you still afraid of birds?”

  She shrugged.

  “Birds won’t hurt you. I dropped out of medical school to doctor birds. Some folks say I’m non compos mentis.”

  She remembered Jason saying Graber was accepted to Harvard. It seemed incredible.

  “You seem nervous, Meri Ann. Are you afraid of me? You think I’m psychotic, maybe ready to commit?”

  “You’re a lucky man to be doing what you want. And I’d like to ask you about my mother.”

  His eyes moved up and down her as if she were on trial. “You think I killed her.”

  Meri Ann blew on her hands to warm them and to avoid his accusing stare. “I don’t think anything.”

  “Bull,” he snarled. “I never did anything to hurt your mother. She was like a daughter to me. I tried to give her advice, but she paid no attention to me. She’s dead. No one can bring her back.”

  Dead? The word bored through Meri Ann’s head like a slow turning drill. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe it herself, but she questioned his certainty. “But no one’s found her body.”

  “They’ve found her, Meri Ann.” He pointed his index finger at her. “That’s why you’re here.”

  “You seem awfully sure of yourself when you’ve only spoken to me for three minutes?”

  “You want details? Then come on in.”

  She wanted nothing more than to look inside his cabin, to see how he lived, to understand what made him tick, to look for physical clues that might support Jason’s theory about him. “Okay.”

  She climbed the last steps and took cover under his porch, not that it was snowing yet, but a bitter wind had come up. She didn’t crowd him or his antique shotgun, a beautiful firearm with a rosewood butt and fancy etched metalwork. He noticed her looking at it.

  “It ain’t loaded,” he said and broke it open for her to see. “Much as I’d like to snare a social worker, I ain’t got a tag this season.” He laughed at his quip as he stepped inside the cabin. In an eerie welcome, the door creaked as it closed behind her.

  The only inside light came from an old fashioned boxy television, the sound muted. The screen’s glow filled the Spartan room in which he probably slept and ate. His furnishings were few: a worn sofa in front of the TV, a desk and a rustic pine table with two chairs on the kitchen side. The aroma of tobacco and coffee filled the air just as it had in Becky’s den. It blended with the scent of a smoky wood fire, which crackled in a black iron stove. That was the only sound in the one-room cabin, except for a tapping at the kitchen window.

  Just above the sink, a bird hovered outside the window. Its beak tap, tap, tapped on the glass—shades of Edgar Allen Poe.

  “That’s Baby, my golden.” Graber leaned his shotgun beside a cupboard. His broad, boney shoulders swaggered as he crossed the room to the window and his eagle.

  “She’s huge,” Meri Ann said, with some trepidation.

  “Not as big as an American bald, but the biggest diurnal in North America.”

  “Diurnal?”

  “Means they hunt daytime as opposed to night. Magnificent birds. Ever see a sky dance?”

  Actually she had. “Yes, I saw something on a nature program where the birds lock talons and spin through the sky.”

  “That’s right. Your mom helped me write a grant to study them.” His eyes glazed over. “Hold on, Baby.” Graber unlatched the lock and slowly lifted the window.

  Meri Ann relaxed when she saw the galvanized metal wire of a cage, which reassured her that the raptor wouldn’t be flying around inside the cabin.

  “A creature God designed to soar through canyons. Now she’s trapped inside a cage with half a wing that won’t hold air.” He shook his head. “I ought to put her out of her misery.”

  Her discomfort about the bird had subsided, leaving her with only pity and concern that he might kill the hapless creature. Did he or didn’t he love his birds? Curious about the man, she watched him feed Baby scraps of what looked like raw liver.

  But Meri Ann hadn’t come into his cabin to watch him tend a raptor. She needed his attention and to turn the conversation back to her mother. “What was it you were going to show me?”

  Reluctantly, he closed the window and made his way to a desk at the opposite side of the room. He switched on a lamp, perhaps the one he’d switched off when she’d arrived. It spotlighted an ancient-looking portable typewriter like the kind Hemingway might have used but, more importantly, the light also shone on an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven photograph of her mom holding an eagle. The picture took Meri Ann’s breath.

  She drew closer to the desk as he removed a file folder from the right top drawer. The bulging folder was the color of a corn tortilla, and chock-full of yellowed newspaper clippings. From the volume of the file, he had saved a book of articles.

  “You wanted proof. Well here it is.” He opened the file folder and held up a clipping no bigger than a business card, one that looked newer than the rest. It read: BONES FOUND ON TABLE ROCK. “They’ve found her up there,” he said.

  But Mendiola assured her that he’d kept any association between the incident and her mom’s case from the press, so it couldn’t be more than an announcement of the find. She shrugged as if it meant nothing to her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  A ripple of sk
epticism crossed his face. “You can’t pull the wool over my eyes. I know what I know, and you know it too. Admit it, Meri Ann, and you’ll save yourself a whole lot of pain. Truth sets you free.” He turned to her mom’s picture, ran his finger along the frame. “Death frees a person, too. I think Joanna’s free, and maybe that’s a good thing. Ever ponder that phenomenon? As long as there is no pain, no prolonged illness—poof—you’re gone and as free as a bird.”

  But you’re gone and everyone who loved you is left without you.

  Her legs weakened. For the life of her she hadn’t expected insight into his philosophy of death as equivalent to freedom. In some ways she believed it too, but she didn’t want to hear it from him, not when it might mean he liberated people himself. The thought made her physically ill but she did her best not to show it. She braced her shoulders and lifted her chin.

  “You’ve obviously given a lot of thought to Mother’s case. Maybe you’re reading things into it that aren’t there.” She nodded in the direction of his file.

  “There you go again, playing me like a foolish old man.”

  She was playing him like the wild card he appeared to be. “I didn’t mean to.” She took a hesitant step closer to him. “Mind if I take a look at those clippings?”

  His eyes flashed a warning. “Later,” he said, “not now.”

  She backed off as he laid his wide hand on the file. His act of possession set her more on edge and she thought she had better get going. Though his age made her feel physically superior to him, she read him as borderline crazy. And every cop knows it takes ten strong men to subdue one madman.

  “Go on, get out. I see you looking at the door.” His lips curled in disgust. “You are afraid of me.”

  “On the contrary, I’d like to stay and talk to you. But I have an appointment. I might be back tomorrow, if you don’t mind.”

  Graber laughed. “Sure you will, probably with a friend or two.” He held the door for her.

  She tried not to hurry, at least not to appear overly eager to get out of his house. Sliding past him, she thanked him for his hospitality—though it wasn’t exactly hospitality in any familiar form. When she reached her car, she glanced back.