Buffalo Bill's Defunct (9781564747112)

by Simonson, Sheila

  “Communicate,” Maddie growled. “You found sacred objects that belong to my people yesterday, and I haven’t had a word from you.”

  Rob said carefully, “We found something that may be a fragment of one of the petroglyphs….”

  “Which one?”

  “The Dancers.”

  She groaned. The sound was dramatic but not theatrical. Maddie didn’t fake emotion. Her pain was real, but she was willing to use it.

  He let her express her indignation. When she wound down, he said, “We have a homicide.”

  “So I heard.”

  “I need to ask how you found out about the petroglyph.”

  “I have my sources.”

  Rob took an educated guess. Jake Sorenson had been brought in to work with the evidence team. Jake had a roommate who had also been at the scene. “Did Todd Welch tell you our victim is probably an Indian?” He used the term Indian with confidence born of despair. Madeline held “Indian” and “Native American” in equal distaste. He didn’t want to hear what she’d say about “Amerind.”

  She was silent.

  Todd’s mother was Maddie’s younger sister. Rob waited. So did Chief Thomas. She was both stubborn and intelligent.

  Rob sighed. “Are any of your people missing?”

  “You know what the job situation is like. The kids leave for college, or they go off to find work. They don’t always keep in touch.”

  How did she know the victim was young? He started to ask her, then decided to let it ride. “He would have disappeared early in August, first or second week.”

  Silence.

  “Think about it, ma’am.”

  “I’ll ask around,” she said heavily.

  Rob thought she wouldn’t have to. She would know. “About the petroglyph…”

  “What do you care?” That was a meaningless jab and both of them knew it.

  “Have you heard anything about the missing objects?”

  “I’ll get back to you.” She hung up on him, the second hang-up that day.

  Must be something in the air.

  ROB, Dave Meuler, and Earl Minetti met in Rob’s uninspiring office in the courthouse annex before eight-thirty Friday morning and talked strategy. They had had a look at the contents of the evidence locker, which were not inspiring either. The Swatch still kept time.

  Dave stood up. “I’ll get on the interviews right now—the retired folks and Darcy Wheeler.” They had thrashed out a list of questions and Dave was raring to go.

  Rob envied his enthusiasm, which was understandable. Interviewing witnesses had to be less monotonous than driving around placid Klalo in a patrol car. “You can catch the other neighbors after they get off work, but leave the Brandstetters to me.”

  Dave grinned. “My pleasure.” He gave a one-finger salute and left.

  Rob turned to Minetti, who was still sitting across the desk from him, upright as always. Earl sat like a Marine. “No fingerprint matches?”

  Earl shook his head, no.

  Rob shifted the greasy sheets of fax paper so as not to lose the ME’s report and the preliminary lab results in the general clutter of paperwork from pending cases. Forensics had been able to lift prints from the victim’s left hand, though not, unfortunately, from the Swatch. The national database showed the man had never been booked for a serious crime nor served in the military.

  Rob shoved himself to his feet. “He wasn’t a felon, not a convicted one anyway. He was young. He was probably an Indian. Can they do anything with teeth?”

  “He had good teeth,” Earl said gloomily.

  Rob walked to the window. “No dental work at all?”

  “Two small porcelain fillings. I sent out a request to the dentists.”

  “And Vancouver’s doing a portrait from the corpse?”

  “Right.”

  An artist’s reconstruction was necessary because the body had been savagely damaged by the beating, by rats, and by the action of insects after death.

  Remembering the gargoyle face, Rob shivered. It was raining and had been since they’d found the victim. Sympathetic magic. A gust of wind shook yellow leaves from the maples that rimmed the parking lot—spindly vine maples, weeds from the point of view of gardeners like his grandmother, but beautiful in October.

  “Uh, Rob?”

  “Sorry. What were you saying?”

  Earl gave a super-patient sigh. “I was saying, maybe the Lauder Point connection isn’t really there.”

  Rob turned and looked at him.

  Earl flushed red and stuck his jaw out. “I gotta say it, Rob. You have Lauder Point on the brain. Maybe the chunk of rock art isn’t connected to the killing at all.”

  “Maybe not. A whole series of unconnected felonies occurred in that garage. Bootlegging. Looting. Murder. God knows what we’ve missed. God knows what my grandmother missed, living there all that time.”

  “No need to get sarcastic.” Earl gave a righteous sniff. “I was just hypothesizing. And you told me she—Hazel, I mean—didn’t mention the bootlegging.”

  “No.” Rob turned back to the autumn scene outside.

  Carol Tichnor had not returned his call. He’d talked to King County and a car was on its way to her. So far he hadn’t found anyone local who remembered Otto Strohmeyer’s free enterprise. Rob had sent Thayer Jones to the Progressive to see what was in the weekly newspaper’s morgue. In the ‘Twenties it had been a daily. Now it was a step above Nickel Ads, but there were archives.

  Not that they’d say much. If Otto Strohmeyer had never been caught peddling moonshine, there would be nothing useful in the newspaper, even from those golden days of yellow journalism. Emil Strohmeyer’s obituary would list next of kin, though. Charlotte Tichnor had brothers and sons. There was Carol. Emil’s grandchildren were of an age to have grown children themselves. Lots of folks knew about Strohmeyer’s hidey-hole.

  The wind had picked up. Leaves whirled and settled on the windshields of cars in the lot.

  Without identification of the victim, Rob’s mind was whirling in circles like the leaves. No missing persons in a six-county area met the man’s description, now that fingerprints had eliminated three possibles.

  Earl made a noise, not quite impatient.

  Rob turned from the window. “Okay, let’s focus on the killing. I think it happened in the course of a felony—moving stolen goods.”

  “Which would make it homicide.”

  “Right. If he was beaten in a brawl unconnected with the petroglyph…”

  “He might have been.”

  “Then it may be manslaughter. In either case, we need to know whether the man was killed there in the garage or elsewhere. He was definitely moved post-mortem. It’s going to take time for the lab to give us results on soil traces from his clothes and so on, so let’s have another, closer look at the garage.”

  “Bloodstains?”

  “Spatter patterns on the walls, for example. You’re the expert, Earl.”

  “Thanks.” His lip curled.

  Asshole. Rob said, with malice, “Don’t forget to look outside— on the back wall of the garage. I’m sending Linda for a heart-to-heart with that realtor. We need to find the key to the back door, if there is one, and if there isn’t, we need to know why not.”

  “I think it’s against normal practice to mail a key to the former owner.”

  “Probably, but Carol Tichnor made a point of saying the sale hadn’t closed when she asked for the key.”

  “Still, if it was a multiple listing there were several sets of keys available.”

  “Good point,” Rob conceded. “Talk to Linda before she leaves for the agency office.” The keys were interesting only because neither lock had been forced.

  Earl rose. “D’you think the shovel was the weapon?”

  “It’s being tested.” Rob tapped the faxes. “But the wounds sound to me as if they were made with a thin metal cylinder. You should look for a crowbar or a tire iron, but I bet bucks the weapon’s at the
bottom of the river.”

  “Probably.” Earl left with minimal ceremony, still miffed and still self-righteous. Rob wished he’d shave off his mustache.

  Rob was confused. He needed to talk to Maddie Thomas face to face. The Lauder Point connection was questionable. It depended on Rob’s identification of the petroglyph, from memory and from photographs in the files he had salvaged from county park brochures. The photographs were not very good, and he was beginning to doubt his memory.

  Well, there were good photos of the fragment Meg McLean had found—Rob had seen to that. As soon as the artist’s portrait of the dead man was faxed, he’d take it and Linda’s photos of the flute player, and he’d drive upriver to Two Falls, Maddie’s home base. He thought about Todd Welch. Todd could drive him. Time for a little talk with Deputy Welch.

  Meanwhile, he had to find out more about Emil Strohmeyer’s heirs. He also needed to stretch his legs, so he decided to walk around to the courthouse for a copy of the old man’s will.

  It wasn’t that simple, of course. Outside his office, the big room buzzed with activity. Old Howell, the desk sergeant, and Jane Schmidt, the 911 day dispatcher, sat as the foci of a double spiral with deputies’ desks arrayed around them, some occupied. Phones rang and keyboards clacked. A chest-high counter kept the public at bay. A row of molded plastic chairs provided a resting place for the weary, in this case a depressed-looking Hispanic kid who, Rob recalled, was looking to delay the court appearance for his second DUI. At the other end of the row, a sad woman in a faded sweatsuit waited patiently for something.

  Rob stopped by two desks for a word on ongoing cases, then made his escape before Howell could disengage from the debate he was having with a red-faced tourist. Reese liked to chew the fat.

  Outside, the wind whipped but the rain had eased up. It was not, strictly speaking, necessary for Rob to go outside and walk around to the front entrance of the courthouse, but he didn’t like the slow plod through the corridors of the county jail, slow because of security checks. Besides, the courthouse was worth looking at.

  Erected in 1910, the Art Nouveau structure had become a place of pilgrimage for architecture students. It was a monument to pride, good taste, and corruption, an unbeatable combination. A lot of timber and railroad money had flowed through Latouche County in the years before World War I.

  He climbed the left wing of the imposing double stairway that led up to the front entrance and stopped at the top for a look south. Marigolds rotted in marble urns atop the newel posts. Below lay the wet roofs of the Klalo business district. Beyond the town, sheets of oncoming rain blew up the Gorge, revealing and concealing the dark slopes of the ravine. The river snaked between them, sullen gray.

  At the end of the last Ice Age, the pent-up waters of Lake Mis-soula in far-off Montana had broken through their ice dam, scoured the flatlands of eastern Washington into steep-sided coulees, then driven through fields of congealed lava four hundred feet deep in their westering rush. There had been people living in the area, Rob was sure of that whatever old textbooks said, and some of them had survived the repeated devastating floods. Their grandchildren told the stories and created the enigmatic drawings chipped into solid basalt. The petroglyphs spoke of human survival. Worth looking at. Worth thinking about.

  He entered the heavy double door and stepped into the rotunda below the stained glass dome. It was like standing beneath a giant Tiffany lamp. Heavy doors—glass and imported Philippine mahogany, as if local materials were inadequate to express the architect’s pride—opened on the central circle. He entered one marked records in brass letters. Time for a look at Strohmeyer history.

  SHORTLY after dawn, which was coming later in these northern latitudes, Marybeth Jackman called Meg and suggested lunch at Rosa’s Cantina.

  Meg was a snob about Mexican food, but she agreed at once. If rumors were flying up and down Old Cedar Street, they were probably also flying around the library. “Why don’t you bring Annie Baldwin, too?” she suggested, infusing her voice with faux enthusiasm. “I met her brother.”

  Marybeth sounded doubtful. Annie was driving the bookmobile in the east county that afternoon.

  “I’d like to get to know her. Bring her along for an early lunch—eleven-thirty. “

  “I’ll ask,” Marybeth said, her voice cool.

  She probably wants a scoop, Meg reflected, hanging up. She hoped the refried beans at Rosa’s Cantina didn’t come from a can.

  They didn’t. Rosa’s was a large cut above Taco Bell, the pico de gallo so fresh the peppers had barely had time to suffuse the salsa. Guitar music played softly. Meg ordered a nice seafood and rice dish on the lunch special, Annie chose a chicken enchilada, and Marybeth a salad.

  Annie seemed a little overwhelmed to be eating with supervisors, but Meg got her talking about her bookmobile patrons—lots of housebound people, elderly people who no longer drove and mothers of small children. Several children had a passion for dinosaurs. One tiny woman with large glasses read everything there was to read on naval battles of the Napoleonic Wars. A man from Two Falls was obsessed with books about edible plants.

  Meg was impressed with Annie’s willingness to cater to their interests, and with her encyclopedic knowledge of the many roads that led up into the hills. Meg said complimentary things about Annie’s husband’s automotive genius with the bookmobile, and Annie bridled and said oh that Jake, but Meg thought she was pleased.

  Marybeth listened with a polite smile and poked at her taco salad.

  Just when Meg was beginning to believe she might escape without having to talk about the Body in the Garage, Marybeth said, “Have they solved your murder yet?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Tell us about it!” Annie burst out. “Jake won’t say a word. Just that a city cop found a dead man buried in the floor of your garage.”

  Meg speared her last tiny scallop. “Well, I’d left the doors open to air the place out and Rob Neill saw a dog in there, digging away.” She gave them what she’d told Darcy, omitting the petro-glyph, but hyping the comedy when it came to the house search. They drank it up. Marybeth looked almost animated.

  “And that’s all I know,” Meg admitted.

  “Convenient having a deputy next door,” Marybeth offered. Meg thought the remark was not satirical.

  Annie said, “I like Rob. I was a year ahead of him in school. He was small for his age, weedy, must have grown six inches after he left. Everybody knew he was real smart. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather when he left all that in California and came home.”

  Meg’s ears pricked. “All that?”

  “Oh, you know, computers. He was in on some big stuff in the early days of the Internet, before Microsoft took over everything. I guess his marriage went down the drain, so he sold out early and moved north. That’s one version of things, anyway. He took real good care of Mrs. Guthrie when she got sick.”

  “Congestive heart failure,” Marybeth offered.

  “I wondered,” Meg murmured. “I admired her.”

  “We all did. After she retired as head librarian, she stayed on the library board. It was a darned good thing, too, what with those witch hunters wanting to burn all the books except the Bible and typing manuals.” Marybeth’s pale cheeks flushed.

  “Witch hunters?” Meg ventured.

  Annie gave a snort of laughter. “They wanted Snow White off the shelves. Can you believe it? Now they’re after Harry Potter.”

  “But Hazel Guthrie showed us how to deal with them.” Marybeth shoved her salad away.

  “It’s a splendid policy,” Meg said. “So Rob Neill took care of her. Literally?”

  Marybeth said, “He’s not a nurse and anyway she wasn’t confined to her bed. She just needed trained help. He hired good care-givers and kept a close eye on them.”

  Annie’s face darkened. “You have to do that.” Personal experience there. “He lived at his cabin up at Tyee Lake, but he spent time with his grandma almost ever
y day, Jake said. Even in the middle of a big case. She lived ten years after she was diagnosed, and she was still on the library board when she died.”

  “She was pretty sick, though, the last year,” Marybeth murmured. “Missed meetings or had to leave early. Nobody even considered asking her to resign. Rob did move into town, into her house, that last year.”

  “And Mrs. Guthrie died two years ago?”

  Annie nodded. “Rob’s been there three years now, but he still has the cabin up at Tyee. Took his daughter there in August. Nice kid, a real California girl.”

  “What on earth do you mean?” Meg asked, wondering if her Lucy was a California girl. She kept her voice humorous, but it was not a stereotype she liked.

  Annie blushed but stuck to her guns. “It’s just that she looks like she’s been, I dunno, waxed and polished?”

  Meg had to laugh. Marybeth regarded the two of them with incomprehension. Marybeth had a degree in Library Science from the University of Washington, whereas Annie had only a high school diploma and a couple of extension classes, but Annie was obviously brighter where it counted.

  A blond server, who looked uncomfortable in a vaguely Mexican costume, intruded to ask whether they wanted dessert or coffee. There was, she said, deep-fried ice cream. Meg said no thanks. Annie looked tempted.

  Marybeth glanced at her watch. “Just bring us the bill, please.”

  “My treat,” Meg said. “No, I insist.” She smiled at the waitress. “One check.”

  “Thanks,” Annie said. “Oops, I gotta go. See you.” And she whisked from the small restaurant almost at a run.

  “She’s punctual,” Marybeth murmured, as if that were Annie’s solitary virtue.

  “Hmmm. Ah, tell me, Marybeth, what do you know about the Tichnors, the people who owned my house?”

  “Not a whole lot. I didn’t grow up in Klalo, you know. I moved here from Portland.”

  “Must have been quite a shock.”

  Marybeth gave a short, sharp nod. “It was. My ex-husband got transferred. He’s a chemist. Then Georgia-Pacific closed the paper mill, and he had to commute to Camas. When we split up, I stayed on. My daughter likes the school, and we have a house.”