Riverwatcher

by Ronald Weber

  Stroud held up a hand. “I’d like you to hear about that in his own words. Zack can play the cassette in the interrogation room.”

  “Now?” Mercy asked.

  “Elsie can get you coffee. You’ll need some.”

  *  *  *

  STROUD USED THE time they were gone to instruct a deputy to verify Alec Proffit’s story about eating breakfast at the Black Duck, then taking a room at the Wolverine motel. Another deputy was to inspect the contents of Proffit’s vehicle parked outside the city-county building—the big gray Toyota, Stroud emphasized, with Vermont plates. In the meantime, he intended to keep Proffit cooling his heels in a waiting room just beyond the interrogation area. If his story checked out and the Toyota was clean, there would be no reason to detain him any longer. Stroud would tell him, though, to remain in Ossning for the time being, at either the motel or the campground. If he chose the latter, a deputy would go out there first to inform the host couple that he was returning to his site.

  Finished, Stroud asked Elsie to bring him one of the sweet rolls Bonnie had delivered to the office and a fresh coffee. He nibbled on the roll, sipped coffee, watched the clock. Ten minutes went by before Elsie peeked in the office.

  “They’re coming back. She’s steamed.”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised,” Stroud said, and pitched what was left of the roll into his wastebasket.

  *  *  *

  THE FIRST THING Mercy said was, “I want to see that bastard. He’s under arrest?” Her face blazed with anger.

  Stroud asked Fitzgerald to close the office door, motioned the two of them back into chairs in front of his desk. Then he said to Mercy, “Why would he be under arrest?”

  “For killing Charlie.”

  “What makes you think he did that?”

  “I don’t know. But why else would he make such a wild accusation? He’s covering up for something.”

  “Let’s try to be calm,” Stroud said. “Proffit’s story is that he came out here to look into what Charlie wrote in his supposed letter, that poachers were messing up fishing on the Borchard and the DNR wasn’t doing enough about it. After a few nights on the river, he comes to the conclusion Charlie was right about the poaching. Then, before he can talk to him, Charlie’s murdered. So Proffit jumps to the conclusion that poachers or the DNR must be responsible. They wanted to stop Charlie from making complaints. And he sees this as a bombshell he can write up in Angling World.”

  When Stroud finished, Mercy waited a moment before she said, “You’re done being calm? Fitzgerald and I listened to the cassette. We know what he said. You don’t need to give us a summary. I’m responsible for everything the DNR does in this district, so when he says the DNR could be involved in a murder, he’s talking about me. You understand? Me.”

  Fitzgerald leaned over, touched Mercy’s arm. “We may be forgetting something. Proffit’s a writer. What really interests him is his column. Not Charlie, not poachers, not the DNR, but the column. With Charlie’s death, he thought he lost it—lost the column he was planning. He said that on the cassette. Then he realized that Charlie’s death actually handed him a better column. Charlie’s point, in his letter, was that poaching was a big problem on the river, but his murder reveals how big. Big enough to kill over. When Proffit charges poachers or the DNR with the murder, he’s really hyping his column—hyping it for himself, enriching it. Writers do that. They create enthusiasm in themselves for what they’re going to write.”

  Mercy jerked her arm away, glared at Fitzgerald. “You think that makes a difference?”

  “Only that, maybe, we shouldn’t take Proffit too seriously.”

  “Oh, really?” Mercy turned from Fitzgerald, directed her glare to Stroud. “I don’t care that Proffit’s a writer or what he’s got in mind. There’s a cassette back there on which he says the DNR could have had something to do with Charlie Orr’s murder. I take that damn seriously.”

  “I don’t,” Stroud said.

  Mercy blinked but held him with her eyes.

  “You didn’t have anything to do with Charlie’s death. Let’s put that to rest right now. That you wouldn’t like a subsequent story in Angling World blasting the DNR is another matter entirely.”

  “Right,” Mercy said warily.

  “No outfit likes bad press.”

  “Not bad, Stroud. Wrong. Charlie was simply wrong about lack of enforcement against poaching. That’s what I’ve been telling you. We’ve got a RAP program throughout the state—Report All Poaching—with a toll-free, rapid-response number to call. Now and then rewards are offered. Just now there’s a two-thousand-dollar reward for information about a gray wolf shot in the Upper Peninsula. I’ve tried to get all the guides on the river to carry cell phones, report any abuses they see, including poaching. I used to tell Charlie I’d buy him a cell phone if he’d carry it on the river, immediately report any poaching he saw. That’s the thing—you have to catch them doing it, seize the trout they’ve killed. You can’t just go around picking up worm containers. But you know Charlie. He went as light as possible as far as gear was concerned. He wasn’t about to carry a phone is his fly vest.”

  Mercy stopped. “You know about our enforcement programs. You’re briefed about everything we do.”

  Stroud nodded. “It’s your people I don’t know much about.”

  “What?”

  “Look, I know you had nothing to do with Charlie’s murder. But I’ll need to talk to your enforcement officer responsible for the southern district of the county.”

  “Vic Lanski? Why?”

  “See what he says about poaching activity on the South Branch. See if it matches what Proffit believes.”

  “I can show you the records. Vic’s arrests, citations, everything he’s done.”

  “I’d like something more personal.”

  Mercy’s eyes narrowed. “You think Vic’s involved in this?”

  “I don’t think anything. I just want to talk to him. He’s in a position to know what’s been going on along the South Branch.”

  Mercy seemed to rise from her chair, hover between sitting and standing. “And he’s on the river at night armed with a service revolver—and a shotgun in his patrol car. Oh, no you don’t, Stroud. If you talk to Vic, I’m present. He’s my responsibility.”

  Stroud tried to keep an edge out of his voice. But sometimes, with Mercy, you simply had to lay down the law. “A murder,” he said, “is mine.”

  18

  “WHEN I GET mad,” Mercy said, “I get hungry. I’m starved now.”

  “We could stop at the hotel,” Fitzgerald suggested, “grab a bite.”

  “I have to get back. There’s a pile of work. And I want to talk to Vic Laski before Stroud does.”

  “Be careful what you say.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t obstruct justice. Besides, what have I got to lose? I’ve already been charged with Charlie’s murder.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Well, that’s damn well how it feels.”

  They separated in the parking area of the city-county building, Mercy in her Suburban, Fitzgerald in his Cherokee. He drove through the main drag of the town, crossed the river at the canoe liveries, headed out along the South Downriver Road to the Kabin Kamp. It was Verlyn he wanted to talk to, but when he arrived it was Kit he found behind the fly shop’s cash register.

  “You missed him,” Kit said. “I got in from guiding, he took off to town.”

  “You’re guiding now?”

  “There’s a girl staying at the lodge with her dad, learning to use a rod. Calvin worked with her for a while, now me. We tried for some brookies downriver. No big deal.”

  “Nice looking girl?”

  “She’s still in high school.”

  Fitzgerald grinned and said, “I seem to remember some knockout high school girls.”

  Kit grinned back. “Calvin says, guiding, never mix business and pleasure.”

  “But you know Calvin.”

&n
bsp; “Yeah.” Then Kit erased his grin and said, “You come in for anything else?”

  Fitzgerald sat at the fly-tying bench, angled his head to examine a finished caddis fly still in the vise. It had a pale yellow body, blond elk-hair wing, and ginger hackle—a cheap, simple pattern favored by riverboat guides who had clients who left batches of them attached to bushes and trees. “Your dad guiding?”

  “Later this afternoon, if he gets himself back from town.”

  “What’s in town?”

  Kit shrugged. “You tell me.”

  Fitzgerald said, “I was with your mother this morning at Stroud’s office. The fellow missing from Rainbow Run turned himself in.”

  “I heard.” When Fitzgerald looked up from the tying vise Kit said, “The guy who trucks bread from the bakery was out here. Bonnie told him.”

  “Stroud’s right.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. The fellow’s name is Alec Proffit. He’s got the idea Charlie was killed by a poacher. Maybe a poacher Charlie saw or confronted on the river.”

  “I thought it was a nut case after his pot stash.”

  “That’s Calvin’s theory. Proffit thinks it was a poacher.”

  “How about Proffit himself? He took off from the campground after Charlie was killed. Why’d he do that?”

  Fitzgerald got up from the tying bench, crossed the shop to where Kit stood behind the counter, fly reels displayed beneath the glass. “A long story, one Stroud wants to keep under his hat for the time being. If Bonnie hasn’t already broadcast it.”

  “The bread guy didn’t say anything.”

  “Proffit believes there’s widespread poaching on the no-kill, flies-only section of the South Branch. Late at night. Somehow or other Charlie got mixed up in it. I wanted to ask your dad what he knows about the extent of poaching down there. I fish that stretch but not as often as Charlie did. Or through the night.”

  Kit said, “There’s poaching, sure. Slobs go in there, toss out gobs of crawlers, haul out monster fish.”

  “But how widespread is it? That’s the question. Apparently, Charlie thought it was so bad it was seriously harming the river. I never heard him mention it. But he did to your mother. He mailed her notes about it. And he used to pick up empty worm containers, leave them for the DNR.”

  “That’s useless. You’ve got the containers, so what? You’ve got to nail the slobs themselves.”

  “Charlie was hoping the DNR would crack down more. That’s why he contacted your mother.”

  Kit leaned toward Fitzgerald, elbows on the counter. “If Mercy wants to nab poachers, she should ask me. You hang around the Keg O’Nails, is how. Those slobs—it’s not fish they’re after. They load up their freezers, sure, but the big thing is talking about what they’ve done. They get together, bull about how they pulled one on the DNR, pulled one on big shots using fur and feathers and taking six-inchers. You hear them out at the Keg, laughing their asses off. Flies-only water only means better fishing for them. Places like this”—Kit’s eyes swept the fly shop—“they think it’s total bull. All you need is a Wal-Mart rod, crawlers, and to hell with the river.”

  “You know any of them,” Fitzgerald asked, “by name?”

  “Slobs like that? I keep my distance.”

  “It wouldn’t help anyway. As you say, they have to be caught poaching. Talking about their exploits isn’t enough.” Fitzgerald drummed his fingers on the counter. “Maybe I’ll see what Calvin knows. Is he guiding this morning?”

  Kit shook his head. “This afternoon. He’s probably fooling around at the cabin. Or hunting drug dealers.”

  Fitzgerald smiled, pointed at the reward sign by the display of tippet spools. “How’s it doing?”

  “Verlyn or Calvin, you think they’d know? But Jan’s keeping tab. The dough’s coming in.”

  “Let’s hope it helps.” Then Fitzgerald grinned and said, “Nice-looking girl, huh?”

  *  *  *

  ON THE WAY back along South Downriver Road, heading to Calvin’s cabin, Fitzgerald thought about Kit. Mercy’s son was warming up to him, slowly but surely. At first, Kit camping out at Danish Landing and coming over to the A-frame now and then for meals at Mercy’s insistence, he had barely said a dozen words all evening, and those to Mercy. He had examined Fitzgerald’s books and CDs and looked over the materials on his tying bench, but otherwise he acted as if Fitzgerald wasn’t there.

  It was understandable. Fitzgerald was from Detroit, rich by Ossning standards, living in a plush house on the river and fishing through the seasons while he wrote a novel. All that made Fitzgerald odd enough from Kit’s point of view, but the major oddity was that Mercy, suddenly, had rented out her place in town, moved in with Fitzgerald, and they acted like an old settled pair. Kit was bound to be puzzled. And wary.

  Fitzgerald’s strategy had been to do nothing—certainly nothing to suggest he wanted to be Kit’s buddy, let alone surrogate father. It was a tricky situation. Mercy would never agree to marry him without Kit’s approval—tacit approval, at any rate—yet that would have to come on its own, without any striving on Fitzgerald’s part. Kit was as independent as Mercy. He would warm up to Fitzgerald on his own terms—or he wouldn’t. Fitzgerald could only wait.

  So he had, and it seemed to be working. Now he and Kit talked when they were together. Kit stopped, uninvited, at the A-frame, even when he knew Mercy wouldn’t be there. Now and then he asked Fitzgerald about one of the books he saw in the A-frame, and he listened half-seriously to the CDs Fitzgerald played. He said that Van Morrison wasn’t too bad and Vince Gill was okay if you liked that kind of music. Fitzgerald was encouraged but careful not to push things. He still had to let Kit come to him.

  The best sign yet was Kit telling him about poachers boasting among themselves at the Keg O’Nails. If Mercy knew her son was hanging around the Keg, she would blow her cork. Kit knew that—knew Mercy considered the Keg the place where everything disreputable in Ossning took place—yet he had talked openly with Fitzgerald, man to man, a font of information about the Keg. Either he trusted Fitzgerald to repeat nothing to Mercy or hadn’t, at the moment, stopped to consider that he might. It seemed, whatever the interpretation, a step forward in the relationship.

  Which caused Fitzgerald to think about his relationship with Mercy. He disliked the word. What they had was a love affair, not a relationship. The only issue between them was marriage. Fitzgerald said he wanted to marry her, and Mercy said she wanted to marry him, and both knew they were only trying out the idea, seeing how it felt. Marriage wasn’t confirmation that they were in love; they were. Marriage meant, or ought to, that they were in love for the long haul. That expression, the long haul, would give anyone pause, especially if they had each failed, once before, to live up to it.

  Kit, it dawned on Fitzgerald, was a reminder to Mercy of that failure. She couldn’t help but see Verlyn in him—Verlyn who was now with Jan while she was with Fitzgerald and so much for the long haul of marriage. Kit’s warming up to Fitzgerald might not, finally, make any difference as far as Mercy was concerned. He was still her son with Verlyn. And Fitzgerald was still someone she loved but couldn’t risk marrying.

  When he came to the abrupt turn off the highway, Fitzgerald had to brake hard, at the same time felt a sense of relief. He could stop thinking, concentrate instead on negotiating Calvin’s rutted road.

  *  *  *

  HE FOUND HIM in what Calvin called a garage, a rough-sawn wood structure where he kept tools, canoes, and fishing equipment but not his truck. It never seemed to occur to Calvin to put the truck in the garage.

  He was cleaning and oiling a fly reel at the workbench when Fitzgerald entered and pulled up a stool beside him. “Busy?”

  Calvin examined the reel in his hands as if that answered the question. “Naw. Thinking.”

  “Very dangerous.”

  Calvin nodded his agreement. “About drug dealers.” He wiped excess oil from the reel, used the rag to cle
an his fingers.

  “We’ve been through this,” Fitzgerald said.

  “They could run a test on Charlie’s pipes, check for traces of pot. I told Stroud that.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. So I’ve got a better idea: Go down to Big Rapids, go out to the college, ask around if a guy matching Charlie’s description was buying pot. Recently.”

  “Stroud should go down, you mean?”

  “Naw. Who’d talk to him? He looks like a sheriff.”

  “I get it. You’re thinking of going down yourself, talking to drug dealers hanging around Ferris State.” Fitzgerald looked at Calvin, grinned. “Might work. You look like a left-over pothead from the sixties.”

  “What I figured,” Calvin said seriously.

  “Before you go,” Fitzgerald said, “you might want to consider another theory about why Charlie was killed. The camper missing at Rainbow Run turned himself in to Stroud this morning.”

  “Stroud toss him in jail?”

  Fitzgerald shook his head. “I’ll tell you why not.”

  He related to Calvin what he and Mercy had heard on the cassette recording of Stroud’s interview with Alec Proffit. And that when Proffit’s story about where he’d been since the murder checked out, Stroud told him to remain in the local area. He’d decided to go back to his site at Rainbow Run.

  “Poachers,” Calvin said. “Never thought about them.”

  “Neither did Mercy. Charlie used to send her notes about poaching activity and collect empty worm containers from the river. But she never made a connection between that and the killing.”

  “Charlie must have been ticked off big time with Mercy to write to Proffit.”

  “It was Will Woodsman he wrote to. He didn’t know Proffit’s real name. But you’re right. It wasn’t like Charlie to go over someone’s head, and writing to Woodsman was way over. Apparently, Charlie was hoping Woodsman would concentrate on how poachers were harming the river, but an article was bound to make the DNR look bad. Mercy would have taken a lot of heat.”