Dead Silver hd-2

by Neil Mcmahon

  I started leaning toward the notion that the best thing for everybody concerned would be to give him a good scare-let him know that he'd better stay away from human beings. But that was easier thought than done.

  I'd start carrying a pistol when I went outside, I decided-one that threw big slugs and made a lot of noise. If I met the bobcat with a burst of explosions and chunks showering out of the trees around him, that might get the message across. The weapon would also be a comfort when I came home after dark and walked from my truck to the cabin, just in case he was bold and hungry enough to take on something bigger than a bunny.

  I finished the beer and went back to puttering, while the tom curled up on the bed to sleep off his adrenaline and beer. I stacked the firewood beside the stove and started scrubbing out the blue enamel roasting pan I'd had soaking in the sink-waiting until a decent hour before I headed downtown for a Saturday evening tour of the bars, and maybe hooking up with a lady friend who wasn't interested in anything long-term, at least with me, but occasionally enjoyed the kind of company that was gone in the morning.

  When the phone rang, it brought me a routine touch of angst. I wasn't crazy about telephones-another of my regressive traits. I used mine mainly for work and other necessities, rarely for chatting, and it seemed to me that unexpected calls usually meant either hassles or outright bad news. But the news would come anyway, and answering was the only way to get rid of asshole solicitors who'd otherwise keep tormenting you forever, so I picked up and grumbled hello.

  At first I was sure I'd guessed right-it was some kind of a pitch. The caller was a woman whose voice I didn't recognize, asking for Hugh Davoren. But she sounded pleasant, slightly uncertain, and she even pronounced my last name right, to just about rhyme with "tavern." I tried to sound a little less brusque.

  "Speaking," I said.

  "This is Renee Callister. Do you remember me?"

  That caught me by surprise. I hadn't seen Renee or heard anything about her since I was a teenager. Ordinarily, I'd have stumbled over a name from that long ago. But I'd been thinking about her family because her father, Professor John Callister, had passed away earlier this week.

  After all this time, it seemed unlikely that she was just calling me out of the blue. I guessed that her reason had something to do with her father's death, which added a poignant element.

  Professor Callister had once been a prominent figure in Montana, a highly respected wildlife biologist and defender of wilderness. But his life was ruined when his young second wife was murdered, along with the lover she was in bed with at the time. Uglier still, Callister was the chief suspect. He was never formally charged, but the murder went unsolved and he was never cleared, either. He'd spent his last several years in a nursing home, after a series of strokes left him incapacitated and, eventually, comatose.

  That was the legacy his daughter, Renee, had inherited.

  3

  "Good God, Renee," I said, regretting my grumpy hello. "Seems like light-years."

  "A lot of ordinary years, for sure. I think the last time I saw you, you were about to leave for college, and your family had a backyard barbecue party."

  My recollection wasn't that clear, but I trusted hers. She was several years younger than me, so she must have been about ten then. She'd be in her early thirties now.

  I hadn't really grown up with Renee. Besides the age difference, our only point of contact was that our parents were acquainted, and that had ended when her folks got divorced and she'd moved to Seattle with her mother. My recollections of her were sketchy, mostly just images of a skinny, dark-haired girl. But she was sweet, solemn, and gentle in a way that wasn't just childish shyness-it was her nature.

  "I'm here in Helena, for Daddy's funeral," she said.

  "I saw the notice. I'm sorry." The sentiment was trite, but I meant it.

  "It's a mercy, really. I don't think he'd been aware toward the end, except maybe of pain." She sounded a little shaky, which was understandable. Mercy or not, losing a parent was losing a parent.

  "Is there something I can do?" I said.

  She made a slight sighing sound, like she was frustrated.

  "I hate to admit it, Hugh, but that's why I called. I feel guilty, barging in on you and asking for help right off. But there's so much going on, I'm overwhelmed."

  "I know that feeling. And believe me, you're not barging in on anything."

  "I was hoping you'd still be a nice guy," she murmured.

  Still? I thought. I couldn't recall ever being anything of the kind to her, but it was good to hear her say it.

  "Daddy never sold our old house, and I couldn't bring myself to do it while he was alive," she said. "But I want to now, and it needs some work. I heard that's what you're doing these days."

  I grimaced; I was probably going to have to let her down.

  "I am, Renee, but I'm committed to another job for the next couple months," I said. "Are you talking something major?"

  "It's hard to describe. But no, I don't think it would take long."

  Homeowners rarely thought otherwise.

  "Well, how about if I swing by and look it over?" I said. "I could give you an idea of what you might need done."

  "Really? You're sure it wouldn't be too much trouble?" I could hear the relief in her voice.

  "I was heading that direction anyway," I said, which wasn't strictly true. But I was glad for an excuse to abandon my chores, and my curiosity had awakened about her, her father, and the situation. "Call it an hour or so?"

  "Perfect."

  I was just starting to move the phone from my ear to its cradle when I heard her say, "Hugh?" in that same anxious tone as before.

  "Yeah?"

  There came a pause that seemed longer than it was.

  "Thanks. See you soon," she exhaled, and ended the connection.

  I had a feeling that wasn't what she'd started out to say.

  I hadn't forgotten my encounter with Mr. Bobcat. Before I left the cabin, I got out the loudest, most powerful pistol I owned: a.45-caliber government-issue Colt 1911 that my father had brought back from the Korean War. It had seen a lot of use; the bluing was worn and the action was limber, well broken in. I knew he'd been in a fair amount of combat, but he'd said very little about all that; I didn't know if he'd ever killed anyone with it, or if it had even been his. Still, I had a feeling that the usage hadn't all been on the firing range. I didn't shoot it often-a couple of times a year, for the hell of it-and I'd cleaned it not long ago. I checked to make sure the clip was loaded, the chamber was empty, and the safety was on, and carried it out to my pickup truck, a '68 GMC that was yet another of the valuable gifts that my old man had passed on to me.

  The afternoon was waning as I started down the narrow dirt road of Stumpleg Gulch toward Helena. It was late March, the time of year when spring was encroaching but winter still clung to a hold, and the two conspired together to turn the outdoors into a tedious, unwinnable mud-wrestling battle. The roads were covered with a layer of self-perpetuating muck, snow that had melted and refrozen dozens of times and all the dirt that got trapped in the process. If you bothered to wash your vehicle, it would only highlight the greasy black splotches that reappeared as soon as your wheels started turning, like shooed flies flitting back to a picnic lunch.

  The snowfields that blanketed the higher mountains were taking on a worn look, and the buds on the trees lower down were thickening. Patches of ice clung to the shoreline of Canyon Ferry Lake, but most of its solid freeze-over had broken up, and its miles-long expanse reflected the slaty gray sky in the afternoon light. Soon there'd come a couple of days when the sky cleared for hours at a time, the temperature climbed enough to make you break a light sweat, and you could almost feel the grass and foliage greening around you. Leaves would start competing with pine needles for sunlight, and insects would start tormenting mammals and delighting fish.

  Then, just about when you figured that winter was done for, you'd wake up early one morn
ing to six inches of fresh snow driven by a howling, subzero wind doing its best to tear your roof off.

  That was a quality of this country that I respected to the point of reverence. If you took anything for granted, you were likely to end up regretting it.

  4

  Helena had a fair number of stately Victorian houses, most of them dating back a century or more to when the area had been awash with mining money. The Callister home was one of them, up in the foothills toward the city's southeast edge. It was set comfortably apart from its neighbors, with a backyard giving way to forest that thickened as the terrain climbed.

  The quietly elegant old neighborhood looked directly over the state capitol grounds, which were dominated by the grand, high-domed, gray stone main building. Before it stood a statue of ex-territorial governor Meagher, on horseback with sword raised like he was charging back into action in the Civil War. His fate remained one of Montana's fondest mysteries-he'd vanished off a ferryboat on the Missouri River at Fort Benton one night, and was never seen again.

  North of the city, the land flattened out into the plains of the Helena Valley, bounded on the west by the foothills of the Rockies and on the east by the dark springtime glimmer of the Missouri. There was a lot of newer development that wasn't so attractive, but that was the price of living in a place that was becoming known.

  Out of long habit, I started assessing the condition of Renee's house while I was still driving up to it. It had suffered neglect during the years that the Professor had been in the nursing home. The eggshell white paint was dingy and peeling, the bottom courses of clapboard siding and the front steps needed replacing, and there were other similar concerns common to such places. But by and large, the exterior seemed in pretty good shape. The roofing looked fairly new, and while the foundation was rock and mortar like most its age, there was no visible sagging or other structural damage. The inside might be a different story.

  I parked on the street out front-leaving the driveway clear for the homeowners was another longtime habit-got out of my truck, and walked up the pave-stoned footpath to the house. As I got close, I glimpsed Renee's shape through a window, hurrying to the door. She must have been watching for me.

  Then, when she stepped out onto the porch, I had an odd instant-a sudden wash of familarity, almost like a deja vu. Maybe it was only because I'd known her long ago. But more than suggesting the past, this had an intriguing sense of here and now. It was a pleasant little shock, gone too soon.

  She was trim, verging on slight, with dark brown hair cut above her shoulders and eyes about the same color. She still gave off the solemn gentleness I remembered from childhood. I wasn't sure whether she was thinking of me as an old friend or a carpenter there to look at a job, so I only offered a handshake. But she clasped my hand in both of hers, fine-boned and warm, then drew me into a light embrace.

  We segued into small talk for a couple of minutes, catching up on our families and a little of our current lives. She was here alone; her mother was ailing and didn't travel well, and her brother was teaching in Japan and hadn't cared to make the long journey. Career-wise, she was doing well; she'd gone into science like her father, and was doing pharmaceutical research.

  She was also wearing an engagement ring that looked like it would add up to a pile of my paychecks.

  The strain she was under showed in her face, and she seemed nervous, like she'd sounded on the phone. I reminded myself that besides her worries, she was probably used to men whose clothes weren't stained with construction glue and who didn't drive the kind of vehicle you usually only saw in old Clint Eastwood movies. I changed the subject to the house, trying to put her more at ease.

  "What I've seen so far doesn't look too troublesome," I said. "Paint and a little carpenter work. I'd say go for it. Jack your curb appeal way up."

  "Thanks, that's good to know." She hesitated. "But there's another reason I called. Come on, it'll be easier to explain if I show you."

  She led me back down off the porch and around the side of the house, across a tree-dotted lawn that I remembered as lush and well kept but now was just a grass-stubbled mud patch, past flower beds gone to ruin.

  At the rear of the property stood a smaller building that the Callisters called a carriage house, but which probably had been quarters for the domestic help. Her father had converted it into his study.

  When Renee opened the door, I faced the most dismal sight I'd ever seen.

  The place had been infested by pack rats. Books, carpeting, upholstery, insulation-anything they could get their teeth into-they'd chewed to shreds and used to build their warrens or just strewn around. Worse, almost every surface was layered with their foul pelletlike dung.

  While I stared, she told me how this had happened. During the past years that her father had been in the nursing home, the main house had been occupied by a lowlife shirttail relative. He'd run it into the ground, using it as a crash pad for cronies and girlfriends, and when the pack rats invaded this outbuilding, he'd never lifted a finger to stop them.

  Renee had made a game start toward swamping out the mess, clearing pathways here and there and trying to rake it up. But it was unpleasant work, and heavy-a hell of a lot to take on for a woman to cope with by herself, while mourning her father to boot.

  I had to admit, realizing that this why she was courting my assistance was something of a comedown.

  Ordinarily, I wouldn't have touched it. I was no prima donna, and I'd done my fair share of grunt work through the years. But by now I was well qualified in a range of skills that were much in demand, from heavy highway and commercial concrete work through any kind of framing-my specialty-to high-end remodels. About all this called for was a flat shovel and a strong stomach.

  Then again, I didn't know anybody else who'd touch it, either; she'd be stuck with it herself. I decided that a day or two of slogging through rat shit wouldn't kill me. In a metaphorical sense, I did it often.

  "I could start tomorrow, if you don't mind me banging around on Sunday," I said. It would probably take longer, but I could miss Monday out at Split Rock and make that up next weekend.

  Renee didn't answer. She looked straight at me with her solemn gaze, like she was trying to make up her mind about something. I could just see her front teeth touching her lower lip. And it seemed to me that her eyes showed more than her earlier anxiety-pain, and maybe even fear.

  Then she threw me a curve that eclipsed everything else.

  5

  "There's a lot more to this, Hugh," Renee said. "I found something really creepy. I don't know what to do. I need somebody I can trust. But I know it's not fair of me to ask you. So if you want to leave, go ahead. Just please don't say anything to anybody."

  That was a lot to take in during those few quick, breathy sentences.

  I was gun-shy about a lot of things these days and I'd started looking at people more warily, for good reason. But my sense of Renee's sincerity hadn't faltered.

  I decided to go ahead, but to step very carefully.

  "I'll listen, Renee, and I've gotten pretty good at keeping my mouth shut," I said. "I can't promise more than that."

  She gave me an anxious smile. "That's a lot."

  I walked with her back to the main house, this time noticing the many rock outcroppings on the mountainside that boundaried the property's rear-the primary homes of pack rats. There must have been a thriving community in there, aggressively expanding its turf.

  Renee had gotten the bigger house pretty well cleaned up from the tenant's trashing. It was a splendid old place-nine-foot ceilings, oak floors, and the kind of finely wrought trim that had become as extinct as gaslight streetlamps.

  She left me in the kitchen and went to another room. A minute later she came back with a manila envelope and shook out its contents on the table-a dozen bits of ragged-edged paper, ranging in size from a postage stamp to a playing card.

  "I found these when I was trying to clean, mixed up in the rat gunk," she said, ar
ranging the scraps and flipping some over.

  I was puzzled, and more so when I realized what they were: fragments of photographs. The images were unclear-the colors had faded with time, and the rats had both chewed them up and stained them-but when I started to make them out, the strangeness factor of this day took another jump.

  They appeared to be nude shots of a young woman. In a couple of them, she was wearing a costume-cowboy boots, a fringed leather vest opened to bare her breasts, and, in the only one that showed a complete face, large dangly earrings and a cowboy hat tipped rakishly low above her mischievous smile. It was hard to judge their quality; about all I could guess was that they weren't from a magazine or straight computer download-they were printed on photographic paper. There were no markings on the back, no clue as to who the photographer might have been.

  I'd started to understand why this would upset Renee. Her father had always seemed a dignified, somewhat austere man, and no doubt that was how she wanted to remember him. Finding his study despoiled by vermin had to be yet another blow that she had suffered since coming here-a cruel trick of fate that mocked and underscored his ruined life. Learning that he'd kept a stash of cheesy porn would cheapen his memory further. But the way she was treating this like a nuclear secret seemed a bit overblown.

  Just as I was thinking that, Renee touched the fragment that showed the model's full face, with the earrings and hat.

  "This is Astrid," she said.

  Her words took a few seconds to register, but when they did, they hit hard.

  Astrid was Professor Callister's second wife, the one who had been murdered.

  6

  Renee and I talked the situation over for the best part of another hour. After she assured me that she was doing fine and had everything she needed, I headed home. My notion of going downtown had vanished, although I still wanted a stiff drink.