Riverwatcher

by Ronald Weber

  *  *  *

  BUT THAT HADN’T been entirely right. While she was talking with Stroud, she had been trying to think of something else as well, something that had held in the back of her mind since leaving the campground for High Pines. Stroud, mentioning Billie Berry, had brought it closer. Still . . .

  Mercy considered stopping at the Kabin Kamp, lengthening the period before she had to get back to the office, allowing herself more time to think. She could see Kit, even Verlyn. Somehow that might help. But at the Kabin Kamp she was likely to run into Jan, and that, definitely, would not help.

  A better idea was stopping at the Six-Grain Bakery, seeing Bonnie. Bonnie could talk your arm off, but she had a knack for listening, too, even when you were just chatting away, aimlessly. If anyone could help, Bonnie might.

  Mercy was halfway back to Ossning, driving through long stretches of jack pines on the South Downriver Road, when she suddenly pulled onto the shoulder of the road, put her emergency signals on, left the engine running. The thought that had broken through was so startling that she needed a moment of calm, a moment to concentrate. She closed her eyes, squeezed them tightly shut, held herself still.

  When she opened her eyes, she immediately reached for her phone, punched in the numbers of the A-frame. She wouldn’t need Bonnie. Stroud had gotten her on the right track.

  It was Billie.

  21

  IT WAS LATE afternoon when Mercy reached Fitzgerald in his Cherokee. She had first called him at home, then at the car, and Fitzgerald explained that, following a stop at Calvin’s cabin, he had taken a walk in the woods along the South Branch, thinking about the case. Mercy told him he could stop thinking. She had figured something out. Something important.

  But she didn’t want to tell him about it on the phone, and she was tied up now, so she wanted to meet, the moment work was over, for a drink at the Borchard Hotel. She couldn’t wait until they both were home.

  When she arrived, Fitzgerald was at the bar, talking with Sandy. It took several minutes before Sandy, after serving them schooners of beer, drifted away. “What I figured out,” Mercy said at once, leaning close to Fitzgerald, “was about Billie.”

  “Billie?”

  “Not that she killed Charlie. Stroud had to consider her a suspect, simply because she found Charlie’s body. But I never did. Lord, no.”

  “So why is she so important?”

  “Because of Burt.”

  Fitzgerald took a long drink of his beer, wiped foam from his mouth, leaned back for a full look at Mercy. Her hair was more wind tossed than usual, except wind had nothing to do with it. It was the unruly nature of the hair itself, a perfect match for the dark, wild, unruly cast—at this moment—of her eyes. “You know something? You look terrific. Who would know you spent the day behind a desk?”

  Mercy gave him a narrow-eyed appraisal. “You don’t look so bad yourself. And it was only part of the day.”

  “Sorry?”

  “At the desk.”

  Fitzgerald smiled and said, “Want to drink up, head home?”

  “Not until I tell you this.”

  “So get started. I’m not sure how long I can last.”

  “I’m trying. This is serious.”

  “All right.” Fitzgerald let the smile slip from his face. “It’s serious, and it’s about Billie because of Burt. I’m with you that far.”

  “It’s what Billie told me about Burt.”

  “Told you when?”

  “I’ve got to backtrack a bit. I went out to Rainbow Run after we left Stroud’s office this morning. I wanted to confront Alec Proffit about what he’d said on that recording. I was going to really chew him out. But he turned out, big surprise, to be a pussycat. He didn’t argue, took back everything he’d said, admitted he was wrong, said he’d set the record straight with Stroud. I said he’d damn well better set it straight on another cassette. And he agreed, just like that.”

  Fitzgerald said, “Wait. You and Proffit had this talk at the campground? Just the two of you?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “It ever occur to you to bring me along? Proffit could be Charlie’s killer.”

  “I doubt that. Anyway, I had to deal with him myself. You heard what he said about the DNR.”

  “You should have had somebody with you.”

  “Well, I didn’t. And it didn’t matter. He was perfectly agreeable.”

  “A pussycat.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good looking?”

  Mercy pivoted on the bar stool, glared at Fitzgerald. “I’m trying to tell you about Billie and Burt. Alec Proffit’s looks have nothing to do with anything.”

  “Except in a general way. Published writers shouldn’t have good looks. They shouldn’t have all the luck in the world.”

  “You’ve got nerve talking about luck. Now listen. After I left the campground, I spoke with Vic Laski from my car, then with Stroud. Stroud had gotten to Vic before I had, so we went the rounds about that. Then we talked about the fact that Lansing wants the campground available for August, so Stroud’s allowing the first loop to open. And he’s removed everything from Charlie’s campsite. Theona said she wants it all. Stroud told me that when Zack Cox told Burt and Billie about Charlie’s things, Billie broke down and cried. That’s what got me thinking about Billie.”

  “You said Burt was the important one.”

  “He is. But you have to see how it comes around. At the campground, before I talked to Proffit, I talked to Burt, asked him how he and Billie were doing. He said they were getting back to routine. So that started me thinking, back in my head somewhere, about their routine. Not the work routine of campground hosts. Their other routines. For Billie it was talking to Charlie every morning, but that was something she couldn’t do anymore. For Burt it was fishing in the evening, and that’s something he could still do. Billie had told me how regular he is about it, fishing in the evening. And she told me something else. That’s why Billie’s the key.”

  “Keep going.”

  “You remember I went to see her right after Charlie’s death? That’s when Billie told me she and Burt called Charlie the Odd Fellow. But that isn’t important. Something else is. That morning, before going out to see Charlie, Billie made coffee in the trailer. While she was waiting she took a cleaned trout Burt had caught, put it in a plastic bag, put the bag in the freezer compartment. With other trout Burt had caught. So you see?”

  “Frankly,” Fitzgerald said, “not a thing.”

  “Burt caught the trout. The freezer compartment has other trout in it, all caught by Burt. Trout, Fitzgerald. Trout.”

  “Trout?” Sandy had materialized in front of them, hands on her hips. “Special tonight”—she dipped her head toward the dining room beyond the bar—“it’s rainbow stuffed with crab, you’re so inclined. Shipped all the way from Idaho, if you believe that. You’d think Michigan would have plenty. Farm raised, of course,” Sandy said, and winked at Mercy.

  When neither Mercy nor Fitzgerald responded, Sandy turned away and moved down the bar. “You need another,” she called over her shoulder, “yell.”

  “So you see?” Mercy said, and edged close again to Fitzgerald. “What Billie said made me realize Burt fishes at night and kills trout. I knew that, but I hadn’t realized it. It might explain everything. Burt might be poaching, and Charlie might have found out.”

  “Wait,” Fitzgerald said. “It doesn’t follow that Burt’s poaching. Not just because he’s out at night and keeping trout. Not all the river is catch and release. Should be but isn’t. So there’s nothing necessarily illegal about a freezer full of trout.”

  “Sure, sure, sure,” Mercy said. “I know that. But there’s more.”

  “Go on.”

  “Let’s assume Alec Proffit’s right: Charlie was killed by a poacher. I hate that, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume it. And assume Charlie was going to turn the poacher in. Maybe Charlie said he was, or the poacher just thou
ght so. But there’s a problem: Poachers kill fish, not people. So, in this case, the poacher had to be really worked up over Charlie turning him in. Worked up about more than a fine or jail. So what could it be, a big thing that would cause a poacher to kill to keep Charlie quiet?”

  “You’re going to tell me.”

  “Loss of your position as campground host.”

  “Oh, come on,” Fitzgerald said after a moment.

  “Just listen. Assume that Charlie saw Burt poaching on the South Branch in no-kill water. Maybe Charlie even said something to him about it, threatened to go public. But that doesn’t matter. It’s enough that Burt knew Charlie had seen him. If Charlie told me, Burt and Billie would be out on their ears in a flash. Burt would have known that, so he had to silence Charlie. Burt’s the one, remember, who reported hearing shots in the campground. Firecrackers, he said. There’s a good reason why he heard them.”

  “Because he pulled the trigger of the shotgun.”

  Mercy raised a hand, then let it fall back to the bar. “It all fits.”

  “Not unless Burt cares enough about the campground job to kill for it.”

  “I know,” Mercy said. “All he and Billie get out of it is free camping. And there’s some sort of status, I suppose, in being a host couple. Maybe it’s only the campground itself. Rainbow Run is a great place on a magnificent river.”

  “It still seems a leap, killing for that reason.”

  Mercy swiveled on the bar stool, glared again at Fitzgerald. “I don’t like what I’m saying. I’d already convinced myself that Burt had nothing to do with the killing—and it doesn’t exactly put the DNR in a terrific light if one of our campground hosts was involved. Imagine what Gus Thayer would write in the Call. I don’t even want to imagine what Alec Proffit might write. You, too. You’d be hearing from the Free Press, wanting something out of you. It would be a mess, and I’d be the one closest to it.”

  “I know,” Fitzgerald said.

  “So I’d leap at any other explanation if I could come up with one. I’m stuck with the fact that Billie might have unwittingly given me the key—that Burt killed Charlie to cover up his killing of trout, and all because he feared getting booted out as campground host. I know it’s zany, but tell me something different.”

  Fitzgerald took a long drink of beer, wiped his mouth, slow about it, Mercy still glaring at him. At length he said, “There’s a way of finding out.”

  *  *  *

  THEY DECIDED TO eat in the hotel dining room, though neither of them felt like ordering the stuffed trout. When Mercy said, “At home, Fitzgerald, we’re turning into health nuts,” they decided on steaks, fried potatoes, and onion rings, with a bottle of red wine as hopeful counterpoint to the cholesterol intake. It was still early, the dinner crowd of tourists and locals not yet assembled, the old Finn everyone simply called Nils not yet perched on his stool at the head of the room, squeezing once-familiar tunes from his accordion.

  “Well,” Mercy said while they waited for the food, “how?”

  Fitzgerald said, “By starting with your first assumption. We have to find out if Burt’s a poacher.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m the one to do it. I’ll follow Burt when he goes out, locate the part of the river he fishes, see if it’s no-kill water. It won’t be hard following him, if he actually fishes at night.”

  “He does.”

  “So that’s what I’ll do. We’ll go home, I’ll get my fishing gear together, I’ll drive out to the entrance to Rainbow Run, wait there for Burt’s truck to come out. If it does.”

  “It might not,” Mercy said. “When he came to the office, he told me he hadn’t fished the night before. Because of Billie. On the other hand, out at the campground, he said they were getting back to routine.”

  “It’s worth a try then. Tonight.”

  Mercy said, “You remember something, Fitzgerald? My seeing Proffit alone? You didn’t think that was such a hot idea because he might be the killer. So how about you running around after Burt alone?”

  “There’s a difference. Burt won’t see me. I’ll just be keeping an eye on him.”

  “He could see you, just as he may have seen Charlie. I’m going with you.”

  “You can’t. Burt knows you. Even if he spots me, he won’t make anything of it. I’m just another fisherman on the river.”

  “You visited Charlie. He may remember you.”

  “That’s possible. I had to pass by the host’s trailer to get to the back loop road. Now and then I got a look at both Burt and Billie. So, yes, he may recall me. But it’s a chance we have to take. There’s no way he wouldn’t be alerted if he saw you on the river. Just remind me about Burt’s truck. Make and color.”

  “It’s one of those big ones, enough to pull that fifth-wheeler. Chevy Silverado or something. All white.”

  “Good,” Fitzgerald said. “Easy to follow.”

  When dinner came, they ate in silence. Afterward, when Fitzgerald asked if she wanted coffee, Mercy shook her head, told him she just wanted to finish the wine. They could make coffee at home. After Fitzgerald refilled her glass, she said, “I still don’t like it. Why don’t we tell Stroud, let a deputy follow Burt?”

  “There’s a chance Burt would recognize him. Stroud’s people have been in and out of Rainbow Run the last couple days. There’s something else.”

  Mercy swirled the wine in her glass, looked across the table.

  “If Burt isn’t poaching, you wouldn’t want it around that the DNR had any suspicion of a campground host as Charlie’s killer. This way, me following him, we keep the suspicion between ourselves.”

  “I could ask Vic Laski. He’d keep it under his hat.”

  “Could you be certain of that?”

  Mercy thought for a moment, said, “All right. But you don’t confront Burt, anything stupid like that.”

  “I’ll see if he’s poaching, is all.”

  “Then?”

  “Then we have to test the next assumption. If he was found out, would that be reason enough to kill.”

  “How do we do that?”

  Fitzgerald filled his own glass with wine, leaned back from the table, grinned at her. “I’m the entire brains of this organization?”

  Mercy didn’t grin back.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful. If we’re lucky, we’ll know by night’s end if there is a next step.”

  22

  THE TOUGH PART was convincing Gwendolyn she couldn’t come with him. She had wanted to sneak out of the lodge as soon as her dad went to bed, join Kit in his Toyota truck, search along the South Branch for poachers who might know something about the killing of Charlie Orr, might even be boasting about doing it. Kit went through a list of reasons why she couldn’t come along, but the only one that persuaded her was that poachers wouldn’t say a word in the presence of a girl. All of them were male chauvinists.

  She could believe that, Gwendolyn said, poachers being lowlifes in other ways.

  What faced Kit next—how best to join up with poachers, overhear their talk—was comparatively simple. He considered canoeing the no-kill section of the river, stopping to shoot the breeze with poachers if and when he ran into them. He could cover the most water that way, but the canoe would be a dead giveaway he wasn’t a poacher himself. A poacher wouldn’t talk to a canoeist any more than to a girl. The only way with a chance of working, Kit decided, was to wade the river, stop when he found poachers, try to get them talking. It would probably take him three nights to cover the bulk of the no-kill water.

  He thought he looked the part. He had put on patched-up waders, found an old spinning rod someone had abandoned at the lodge, bought a container of worms at High Pines. He didn’t wear his vest with all the fly-fishing gadgets hanging from it—another certain giveaway he couldn’t be trusted by poachers. As an added touch, he bought a stringer at High Pines, fastened it to the suspenders of his waders.

  He had left his truck at Schoolcraft Bri
dge and entered the water just below, the upstream boundary of no-kill water. His plan was to wade as far as what locals called Frenchtown Flats, leaving the river there and hiking the DNR ski trail back to his pickup. He figured that would be a good night of detective work. When he returned to the lodge, he had agreed to signal by blinking his headlights three times in the parking area beside the fly shop. She couldn’t wait for morning, Gwendolyn had said, to learn what he had found out.

  Clouds now scudded past a half moon, the river a silvery path for a time, then a black void. Kit moved down the center of the stream, the unfamiliar spinning rod in one hand, on the lookout for bank fires or the sudden flare of a flashlight on the water. It surprised him, as it always did, how acutely he heard at night: the motion of the water, crests breaking against woody debris, birds in the pines, animals back deep in the woods, all the dark music of the river. It was always slightly spooky, especially when you heard, a few feet away, a big brown slurp a bug from the surface. You froze then, trying to fix on the spot as you stripped out line for a back cast.

  Except, this night, he wasn’t fishing. He was a one-man search party.

  What Gwendolyn said about the reward had seemed, when she brought it up, far-fetched, but the more Kit thought about it the more he warmed to the idea. Somebody was going to get the reward, so it might as well be him. Gwendolyn thought the reward would be his ticket back to college, and he let her think that. It might, as a matter of fact. But the main thing was how teed off Verlyn and Calvin would be if the reward they got up was won by Kit. The appeal of that was enough to keep him on the river, searching, for three nights. If nothing turned up by then, to hell with the reward.

  When the moonlight was strong he moved ahead quickly, keeping to the center of the stream but careful to make as little sound as possible. He hadn’t seen another fisherman until, fifty yards or more downstream, he saw a light snap on, hold for a minute or two, snap off. He edged closer to the bank, shadowed here by the pines, and moved ahead. Finally he could make out the silhouette of the fisherman, using a fly rod, casting to a bend where the water deepened. He must have used the light to change flies. Kit was sure, given the way he cast, he was using flies.