Riverwatcher

by Ronald Weber

  “Any others like that up there?” Then Harkness said, “Tell you the truth, I’d heard over the grapevine you were writing a novel. Assumed you’d slit your wrists by now.”

  “I’m working on it,” Fitzgerald said. “The novel, that is.”

  “So you’re calling because you need a ghost writer, a shoulder to cry on, your job back, what?”

  “Help with a name.”

  “You can’t make one up?”

  “It’s not a name in the novel. I’m trying to locate someone as a favor for the sheriff up here. There’s been a killing in a state campground on the river.”

  “An AP story came through.”

  “In the campground at the same time was a fellow named Alec Proffit with an address in Norwich, Vermont. There’s reason to think he might be a journalist of some sort. I’m wondering if you could poke around for me, see what might turn up.”

  “More than you can find yourself?”

  “If there is more.”

  “And this sheriff up there is using you as his gopher?”

  “He’s got his reasons,” Fitzgerald said, but didn’t explain.

  “Give me some time. See what I can do.”

  “I’ll owe you one, Hoke.”

  “You figured I wouldn’t keep track?”

  *  *  *

  TWO HOURS WENT by before Hoke Harkness called.

  “Seems your man belongs to the American Society of Journalists and Authors. He’s a freelance writer with a specialty in outdoor stuff. He also turns out a regular column in a magazine called Angling World. Heard of it?”

  “Yes,” Fitzgerald said. “I subscribe. It’s a quality publication.”

  “If fishing magazines qualify.”

  “But I don’t recall seeing the name Alec Proffit in there.”

  “Try Will Woodsman.”

  “Sure. He has a regular column.”

  “Then here’s something maybe you couldn’t have found out. The column’s written by Proffit. Woodsman’s a pen name.”

  Fitzgerald said, “The column’s got an edge to it. Will Woodsman’s opinionated, outspoken. He’s always going after some rascals who’ve broken the rules—sporting rules, environmental rules, his own personal rules. He’s not big on humor or light touches. Half the time he irritates me, but I always read him.”

  “Thought that was the point if you’re a writer. Here’s something else,” Harkness said, “that’ll make your day. As Will Woodsman the guy’s published two collections of essays—outdoor stuff, apparently. And—get this—a half-dozen novels, suspense variety, under the name Peter Allston. Not written, you understand. Published.” Harkness paused. “Probably got himself a blonde bombshell wife, too.”

  “No doubt.”

  “So what now?”

  “I’ll tell the sheriff what you found out. It’s his baby from here on.”

  Harkness paused again before he said, “Writer you read in a magazine happens to be in a campground where a killing takes place, you’re living in the area, you’ve got the info before anyone else, but you just pass it on to the local sheriff? C’mon, Fitzgerald. You think I believe that you must think I’m dead.”

  “Something else I might do?”

  “It ever cross your mind? Write something for the paper.”

  “I forgot to tell you,” Fitzgerald said. “Proffit’s missing. Even so, his presence in the campground at the time of the killing might only be a coincidence. He might have been out here for the fishing.”

  “From Vermont? Stick to your novel,” Harkness said, “you think that.”

  *  *  *

  IT WASN’T THAT he doubted what Hoke Harkness had told him. Hoke was a stickler for getting things right. It was that he wanted confirmation about another matter, and Hoke couldn’t help with that. Mercy probably could, but Mercy was on her errand for Willard Stroud in Big Rapids.

  Fitzgerald drove from the A-frame to the Kabin Kamp, hoping to find Calvin’s pickup parked in front of the fly shop. When it wasn’t there, he stopped anyway, went inside. Verlyn was on the phone, red faced, enjoying himself. Fitzgerald, trying not to listen, searched through the shop’s shelves of sporting books in an alcove next to a display of fishing vests.

  “I told him,” Verlyn said happily when he hung up the phone, “he’s not running a police state. He doesn’t decide who can offer a reward.”

  Fitzgerald said over his shoulder, “Stroud, I take it.”

  “Said it would cause his office too much work. I said, ‘You’d have to answer the phone, you mean, work like that?’ He got hot, some reason. When he simmered down, I told him, ‘Give us a couple days, we know how much we got, we’d put an ad in the Call, announcing the reward.’ He said we couldn’t do that without the okay of his office. We’d be interfering in a murder investigation. So I said, ‘How’d it look if Gus Thayer ran a story saying the sheriff was blocking a reward? Like he was trying to hide something, that’s how.’ Stroud got hot again, some reason.”

  “Listen,” Fitzgerald said. “You ever have books in here by Will Woodsman? Collections of outdoor essays?”

  “Don’t recall.”

  Fitzgerald left the bookshelves and crossed the shop to the cash-register counter. “I was thinking Calvin might be around. He reads a lot.”

  “He and Kit, they’re off somewhere.” Verlyn turned, studied the black-lettered sign beside the display of tippet spools. “Fellow staying here put himself in for five hundred.”

  “He knew Charlie?”

  “Only heard me tell about him. Somebody who knew Charlie ought to be good for that much.”

  “You know the writer I’m talking about?” Fitzgerald asked. “He has the column in Angling World.”

  “An eco-freak,” Verlyn said. “Why I like him.”

  “Will Woodsman’s a pen name. Alec Proffit’s his real one. He writes novels under another pen name.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Me neither. But I thought Calvin might have.”

  “He’s got a head full of trivia, that’s so.”

  Fitzgerald asked, “Who had more? More information. Because he read all the time, knew all kinds of things?”

  Verlyn straightened behind the counter. “What’s Charlie got to do with this?”

  “Probably nothing. But it just struck me: Charlie might have known Woodsman was really Proffit, picked that up somewhere. He regularly read Angling World. I know that much. Up here he probably went to the library, read it among the magazines.”

  Verlyn cocked his head, peered at Fitzgerald. “You trying to change the subject? It’s the reward we were talkin’ about.”

  Fitzgerald shrugged. “I don’t know. Stroud could have a point. A reward might complicate the investigation.”

  Verlyn waited, still peering at Fitzgerald, before he said, “You just got yourself put down for five hundred.”

  *  *  *

  FROM THE KABIN Kamp, Fitzgerald took the South Downriver Road into Ossning, planning on stopping at the sheriff’s office and telling Stroud what he had learned from Hoke Harkness about the missing camper in Rainbow Run. But when he reached the main drag and was passing the Borchard Hotel in the direction of the city-county building, he changed his mind. He decided to rendezvous first with Mercy, see what she had learned in Big Rapids. Together they could go to Stroud with their information.

  In the meantime, there was the Ossning public library.

  Woodsman, Will brought up on the computer catalogue the two collections of essays, both checked out. Allston, Peter brought up nothing.

  Fitzgerald considered asking Wanda Voss, the librarian, if she had ever heard of novels by a writer of that name. And of course he could himself use the library’s Internet connection, seeing what Amazon listed. But he decided to do neither. He didn’t want to lose the sense of relief he felt, unbecoming though it was, in learning that whereas Alec Proffit himself had arrived in the Michigan woods, his string of novels hadn’t.

 
; The shelves of the Ossning public library remained wide-open territory for a fiction writer.

  12

  KIT KNEW WHAT was coming. Calvin hadn’t asked him to drive over to the cabin on the South Branch, stop in for lunch, simply to pass the time of day. What was coming was a lecture about Gwendolyn Underwood.

  Kit was on the screen porch of the cabin in one of Calvin’s beat-up wooden rockers, Calvin inside working on the lunch. Through the tangle of cedars and spruce in front of the cabin, Kit could barely glimpse the river, a flash of silver in the sunlight. Calvin thought you shouldn’t be able to see cabins from the river, the bank left natural, and Kit agreed. It wouldn’t be bad, though, sitting on Calvin’s porch, rocking away, with a full view of the water.

  When Calvin brought out the lunch, handing Kit his plate, Kit asked, “What this?”

  “Tuna salad, cottage cheese. You want crackers to go with it?”

  “I was thinking about a sandwich.”

  “Naw,” Calvin said, “this is better for you. You got to learn to eat right. Junk food’s all you eat around the Kabin Kamp.”

  Kit nibbled at the tuna salad, letting it go at that. He didn’t want to get into a big discussion of food with Calvin. Calvin was a nut about food. He whipped up a terrific shore lunch when he was guiding—small steaks, fresh morels, cooked carrots, red wine—but on his own he was practically a vegetarian. A fly-fishing guide who didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t eat meat—Kit figured you could scour the country and wouldn’t find a clone of Calvin. All he wanted to learn from Calvin, he had decided long ago, was what he knew about the river.

  “I go out with Gwendolyn tomorrow,” Kit said, trying to sound offhand. “You got any suggestions?” He decided he would get to the point of the lunch rather than let Calvin circle around it. Calvin could be as slow as Mercy when he was planning to lecture you. Only Verlyn came right out with what he had to say—maybe the only trait, it occurred to Kit, he shared with his father.

  “You got some brookies to hit. Go back there.” Calvin didn’t seem terribly interested, except in his food. He was chewing away like it was real food.

  “I was wondering about going upriver, trying around the TU access. She might pick up a rainbow in the riffles.”

  Calvin shrugged. “Your dad might not want you driving her anywhere. I think he wants her fishing around the lodge.”

  “There’s no fish around the lodge she can catch.”

  Calvin shrugged again, uninterested. Kit didn’t get it. He had given Calvin an opening, but Calvin hadn’t taken it. The lunch was shaping up as a long siege. Was until Calvin said, “You want a beer to go with the food?”

  Kit gave him a look before he said, “You don’t have any.”

  “I picked up a couple six-packs at High Pines on the way back from the fly shop. People stop by, good to have something on hand.”

  Kit didn’t believe that for a second. People didn’t stop by at Calvin’s since the cabin was a long way in from the highway along a rutted dirt road that wasn’t much better than a two-track. And Calvin wasn’t the kind of host who stocked his place with what he didn’t eat or drink himself. So what was going on? If a lecture wasn’t coming about Gwendolyn Underwood, what was?

  *  *  *

  KIT SIPPED A can of Budweiser while Calvin, settled in his rocker with a glass of lemonade, finished off his tuna salad. Kit let him take his time, there not being any other choice. Minutes dragged by.

  Calvin was looking out from the porch in the direction of the river when, out of the blue, he asked, “You still fooling with pot?”

  Kit nearly choked, a mouthful of beer rising into his nose. He ran the back of a hand across his face before he could say, “What?”

  “You used to. Do you still?”

  Kit waited, wondering what had happened to Calvin’s roundabout way of lecturing him, before he asked, “How come you want to know that?”

  “Charlie Orr used to smoke pot, fishing the river at night.”

  “He did?” Kit found himself saying.

  “Way back, when I first knew him. Your dad, too. Lots of fishermen did then, way back. Not me.”

  “Verlyn did?”

  “Don’t tell him I told you. What I’m asking is about Charlie.”

  Kit said, “Slow down, Calvin. You’re asking me if I’m smoking pot, then you’re saying Charlie Orr did. Way back. What’re you getting at?”

  Calvin kept looking out at the river, sipping his lemonade, acting as if they were talking about the weather. “You got any idea who’d want to kill Charlie? Harmless old guy camping in Rainbow Run, and somebody blasts his tent with a shotgun. Why would they? You got a guess?”

  “Somebody didn’t like him.”

  “That’s a possibility,” Calvin said, sounding thoughtful. “Another is somebody wanted his stash of pot.”

  “You said Charlie smoked a long time ago. So what stash?”

  “I thought you might tell me.”

  Kit nearly jumped out of the rocker, the plate of uneaten tuna salad teetering on his lap, beer splashing from the can. “You got it in your head I killed Charlie for his stash?”

  “Naw,” Calvin said. “I know you wouldn’t.”

  Kit tried to settle down, to sound as calm as Calvin sounded. “Then why’d you ask if I still used pot? Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “You do, it’s bad for your health. You ought to know that, smart kid like you. But what I was thinking, you aren’t so smart, you still use it, you’ve got to buy it off somebody.”

  “That’s good thinking,” Kit said, trying now to sound sarcastic. “The only thing grows up here are pines. So you’d have to buy it.”

  “So where?”

  Kit gave Calvin a long look before he said, “Let’s get straightened out. I smoked some down at school, I got caught with some in my dorm room, they were going to bounce me out, so I quit before they could. And then Mercy and Verlyn blabbed it all over town.”

  “Naw, they were disappointed you left college, is all.”

  “Keep listening, Calvin. Since I came home, I haven’t smoked once. And not because of my health. You know why? All pot ever did was give me a headache.”

  “So does beer, you drink too much.”

  Kit said, “We’re talking here about pot. I’m telling you I don’t smoke it. Haven’t since I was in school. End of story. Got it?”

  “Good news,” Calvin said, and looked pleased. Then he aimed a finger in the direction of Kit’s beer can. “You need another? Most of that one you spilled on my floor.”

  *  *  *

  HOW WERE YOU supposed to deal with older types like Calvin and Verlyn and Mercy?

  Kit never knew for sure, because they wouldn’t stay in focus, wouldn’t behave the way you expected them to. Take Verlyn, who had Jan yet was mooning over Gwendolyn. Take Mercy, who had gotten free of Verlyn yet moved in with Fitzgerald. Take Calvin, his nose usually out of joint about beer yet buying six-packs at High Pines. Sometimes Kit felt that they must have a different sense of logic than he did. Or none at all, logic being among the inevitable losses of age.

  So how should you deal with them? All you could do was go with the flow, ride the tide, seize the breeze, which at the moment meant lapping up the Budweiser Calvin had been illogical enough to provide.

  But that wasn’t quite right, writing Calvin off as illogical. Old Calvin could be devious, or try to be. The way he would figure—his kind of logic—was that beer would soften Kit up, get him to say something he wouldn’t say otherwise, cold sober. To get the information he wanted, Calvin could ease up on health matters for the time being. But Kit had straightened him out: There wasn’t any information to get.

  “So what I’m asking,” Calvin was saying, “is where you’d buy it.”

  Kit stared at him, startled. “I don’t. That’s what I told you.”

  “But where would you? If you did.”

  Kit said, “That’s what you want to know?” />
  “I’m not making myself clear?”

  Kit sighed and said, “You’re not talking about me? Where anyone would buy pot, you mean? Where Charlie Orr might have?”

  “Around here,” Calvin said. “Ossning.”

  Kit took a long swallow of beer, leaned back in the rocker, tried to glimpse the river again through the wall of pine beyond the porch. “I’m going to say this, then I’m heading back to the lodge.”

  “You don’t have to rush.”

  “I don’t know where you’d buy pot around Ossning. I don’t know because I don’t buy it. Maybe you can’t buy it. If you can, it’s probably out at the Keg O’Nails. Some dude hanging around there.”

  “Charlie never went to the Keg.”

  “Where I bought it was down in Mount Pleasant. You could buy it there right and left. Half the people in town where pushing pot.”

  “Because it was a college town.”

  “You could buy it in the Student Union, you wanted.”

  “What I figured all along.”

  Kit turned from the flash of silver that was all he could see of the river, looked at Calvin. “You figured what all along?”

  “That where you’d buy pot was in a college town.”

  “That’s what you wanted to know? Then why didn’t you ask me, straight out?”

  “I thought I did.”

  Kit stood up, headed toward the cabin’s kitchen with his plate and beer can. “Thanks for lunch,” he said over his shoulder.

  “You have enough to eat?” Calvin asked from his rocker.

  Kit wanted to say something back, sarcastic as all hell, but knew it would be a complete waste of breath.

  13

  A DRINK WAS ready, John Jameson with a splash of water, when Mercy came in the back door of the A-frame. She kissed Fitzgerald, took a sip of the drink, handed it back, said she wanted to get out of the uniform she had worn to Big Rapids.

  Fitzgerald was in a sling chair on the deck jutting out from the glass front of the house and overlooking a thick stand of woods, the river circling beyond in the early-evening light, when she reappeared in shorts, a tank top, bare feet. She sighed as she took the drink from him, eased herself into an adjoining chair.