“So,” she said, sticking another fly to the cup. “It’s over now. Jake can rest.”
I squawked: “Someone gave B.L. a tip?”
Ingrid nodded serenely, gripping another hook in her vise.
“Ingrid,” I said, “if Mel O’Malley killed your husband while everyone else was at the village board meeting, then how does anybody else know about it? Who else is available to know where the ponytail is? How does someone else tip off B.L.? And why does B.L. believe it?”
She wound her thread to the hook bend and tied in an orange polyfiber butt. She said, “Don’t ask me how things work in this town. I never did get it.”
“And excuse me,” I said, feeling my brain jump a rail. “But you’re about the last person I expected to see sitting here tying flies.”
The smile again, this time to herself. She tied down the tip of a palmer hackle.
“Was that a question?” “You tie flies?” “I tie to calm down.” “Jake taught you?”
“No.” She reached her long arm out for a coffee mug, and she looked at me over the rim as she sipped. Her eyes sparked oddly. “I taught Jake.”
I took a nice slow breath, letting things settle into their new positions. Ingrid taught Jake. I hadn’t expected that. “When did you meet Jake?”
“Five years ago,” she said. “Jake’s design firm bid on a project for the resort my family owns in Jackson Hole. My father’s still mad that I fell for Jake. Jake was a city boy then. He couldn’t even hold a rod.”
I looked around the coffee shop, still trying to recalculate everything. The shop looked different somehow.
“There are none of those big orange stone flies in Black Earth Creek,” I said finally.
“No shit,” answered Ingrid.
“Black Earth is a little creek, muddy bottom. Not like out west.”
“No shit.”
“No room to cast half the time. Trees and weeds. Tight corners.”
“No shit.”
“You never even fished Black Earth, did you?” “Once,” she said, “and that was enough.” “But Jake loved it here,” I guessed.
She sighed as if this were more true than she could bear to think about. She stuck another big orange stone fly in the rim of the foam cup. Then a voice startled me, booming down the stairwell. “Inkie!”
“My big brother from Wyoming,” she told me. “Yes?” she called back.
“What do you want me to do with Jake’s fishing stuff? You want to me to pack that too?”
Another sigh. Now I had it. The pictures were gone from the shop walls. The artwork was gone. Ingrid’s touch had been stripped away. She was selling. She was leaving Black Earth. She was tying western flies. She was going home.
“Inkie? You hear me? What do you want to do with Jake’s stuff? His vest, rods, his waders, all these reels, this big box from the taxidermist …”
“Toss it,” she called back.
“It’s good stuff, Inkie.”
“I don’t want to see it around.”
“But you must have somebody here you know … could use this stuff …”
She shrugged weakly. Like she didn’t care. Like she didn’t have the energy to think about it. Like she really wanted Jake’s stuff tossed.
The Dog … he laid a paw on her shoulder. “Like me,” I said. “I could use it.”
Evidence of what exactly?
Inside the Cruise Master, I tore open the long box from the taxidermist. Not that I hadn’t guessed, but Jake Jacobs had caught himself a monster brown trout. The dimensions were engraved on the mounting plate: twenty-seven inches, nine-and-a-half pounds. He had caught it on Black Earth Creek, April 15 of that year. If my guess was right, though, he had mounted it not for the boast. He had kept it for evidence.
But evidence of what exactly?
I flopped Jacobs’ waders over the back of my galley bench. As could be expected, they were top of the line, nearly brand new. I spread them out to see if he used a belt to protect against drowning from filled waders. He had. But I saw, in the back, where a man sat down, a small, precisely circular hole, about a centimeter in diameter. The margins of the hole looked melted—like he had sat on a cigar—which I could believe. I’d done it. Twice, to be honest. But if Jacobs had waded in to his waist, I mused, he would have gotten wet. He would have waded back out, cursed himself, stayed in shallower water thereafter, until he could put a patch on. It didn’t seem to mean much. Frustrated, I let go of the waders.
I mixed up a vodka-Tang and resolved myself to go through Jacobs’ little notebook again, looking for anything that might now connect. Again I was confronted with the notations of a fish counter—but now I wondered if the Friends of Black Earth Creek founder had another purpose in keeping meticulous track of every fish he caught. I knew only one thing for sure. The guy caught a lot of fish. If the stream was fading, as Milkerson’s study indicated, I guess I should have been here back when it was good. I guess we all should have.
Grasping, I decided to inspect the vest again. I had done it once, in Jacobs’ office, but maybe I had missed something. I laid every item out on the galley table. Jacobs’ fly boxes displayed the energy and zeal of the man. He had ten of everything. His tippets were tightly organized in a linked stack. He had his floatant bottle in a nifty little harness, and his nippers and hemostats were connected to the vest by retractable cords. Then I found something that made me think. From an inner pocket, after the flashlight, the license, and package of gum, I lifted out a nail knot tier. It was still in its package, unopened. As if Jacobs was planning to learn the nail knot but hadn’t tried yet.
Now, with rising interest, I rifled through the rest of the inner pockets, finding a pack of matches and the kind of braided loops used by a fisherman who can’t, or won’t, attach his leader butt to his fly line by using a nail knot. It was a question of convenience, dexterity, experience. The braided loops picked up water and threw spray onto the water. That was fine on big, fast, snow-melt water, but I hated them on small, spring-fed streams like Black Earth Creek. But I had used them, too, when I had first started fishing. They were easier—if you knew what to do with them. You had to carefully shrink-melt them on, if I remembered right.
And when I laid out all of Jacobs’ spare reels—all five of them—I found that one after the other had the fly line and the leader butt connected the easy way, with a store-bought braided loop. I felt my chest tighten. I knew I had it suddenly.
Someone had killed Jacobs before the sally hatch, earlier than eight p.m. But they hadn’t just retied his fly. Jacobs’ killer had caught him without a fly on his leader—in fact, Jacobs’ killer had caught him without any leader on at all. Jacobs had just bought a new fly line, hadn’t he? Hadn’t I found the box atop his filing cabinet? So, after Jacobs was dead and shorn of his ponytail and floating discarded where I had found him, his killer, in order to attach a Jake’s Yellow Sally, had been forced to tie on a whole new leader.
That meant, in the heat of the crime, the killer had used whatever knot came naturally. Forget the yellow sally for a moment, I told myself. This meant the killer’s knot tying skills would be on display in the connection between the leader and the fly line—and the whole braided loop thing hadn’t rung a bell.
I clearly recalled the killer’s choice in the glow of my LCD key chain light, through the mesh of Bud Lite’s evidence locker: a nail knot.
And now I remembered my inspection of the place where Jake Jacobs had died. The Respect Landowner’s Rights sign had been freshly hammered off its fence post. It had flopped around upside down, its top nail missing.
The killer had needed a nail, in a hurry, to put a leader on Jacobs’ line. I was sure of it. Few people could tie an old-fashioned nail knot.
But Jacobs’ killer was one of them.
The dog had put two and two together
As the sun rose on another eighty-degree Black Earth dawn, I was hiding in a tool shed on the Sundvig farm across the highway from the campground. My
first morning in Black Earth, three days ago now, I had been up stirring Tang, watching a milk truck pull in. I had wondered, that morning, at the voices, unintelligible over the distance and the rumble of the truck, but clearly agitated.
Now, up close, Junior’s neighbor Elmer Sundvig was in a squeaky rage: “Christ all Friday, Lumen! Do you gotta cut the corner like that? Every dang time? Those are Vera’s tiger lilies—no, hey, dangit, get your wheels off of there!”
The milk truck engine shut down and the door slammed. Lumen Bostock, the poacher, hit the ground in his tight little boots and said, “Whassat?”
“Those are Vera’s tigers, dang it all!”
“Kiss my keester, Sundvig.”
Bostock was getting right down to work, hauling his hose out toward the milk house. I rose for a look through the dust-grimed window. Bostock was followed by a limping old man in coveralls and a red cap. The milk house door shut with a bang. I slunk from the shed and into the cab of the truck.
The Dog imagined he had put two-and-two together. The best motive for killing Jacobs belonged to the village president, Bud Bjorgstad. Jacobs meant to drain his lake and spoil his property. Yet what had been discouraging me all along was the image of a Bud with his bad back negotiating the rough and swampy terrain around the creek and then wrestling a specimen like Jake Jacobs underwater long enough to drown him. That picture just wouldn’t play. Now, to that difficulty, I had to add President Bud’s almost certain inability to tie a nail knot. This of course pointed to the obvious possibility that Bud Heavy had hired someone else to do the deed—a killer who, when faced with the blank end of Jacobs’ line, had passed on the braided loops, perhaps not even recognized them, and instinctively tied a nail knot.
Keeping low, I slid across Lumen Bostock’s seat into the passenger’s spot. Jacobs had cost Bostock a few hundred bucks in fines. Jacobs had challenged Bostock’s notion that the stream belonged to the few who had fished it first and longest. Jacobs, I felt sure, was Bostock’s primal enemy.
The cab floor on the passenger side was so cluttered that opening the door on that side would have sent a cascade of fast food junk, newspapers, magazines, and assorted poaching supplies out onto the farmer’s driveway. I pawed through this mess for the jug line set-up I had chased down the stream a day ago. On Bostock’s poaching rig, I recalled, were assorted line-to-line connections of the type that would take a nail knot.
I heard Bostock exit the milk house. He crunched alongside the truck and started the pump. My sense of what would happen next stopped right there. How long would it take to pump out the milk? How big was the farm? What did Bostock do while he waited? Maybe he climbed back in the cab and read … and right there I glanced at the stuff in my hands and felt sick. Low-grade porno in one hand, real meaty stuff, a neo-Nazi rag in the other hand, announcing recent developments in the world of hatred, all of this stuff floating around in a smelly soup of A&W bags and Dew bottles and Copenhagen tins.
I hauled up the milk jug with the line wrapped around it. I could feel the hum and chug of the pump. Over that, Bostock was twanging some crap about the lilies to the farmer’s wife, Mrs. Sundvig, who had come out to fuss over them. An old dog had come out with her, and was yapping and snarling hoarsely at Bostock.
I thought I had the bastard. I really did. But the moment my fingers touched the knots I knew I was wrong. I didn’t even have to look. Big lumpy things, overtied, asymmetrical, ignorant. Granny knots in paranoid profusion. The big brown trout with the earring inside its gut had pulled out some dumbass knot. That’s why it was swimming around under the jug. There was no way, and I knew it. There was no way Lumen Bostock had coolly tied a nail knot over the body of a dead man.
Then the pump stopped. I heard the slam of Bostock going back through the milk house door to unhook his hose. I slid across the driver’s seat and jumped from the cab—straight into business end of a cattle prod.
Mrs. Sundvig squinted up at me.
“I thought I seen you sneak in there.”
“Shhhh,” I told her. “Shhhhh. Remember me?”
Chapter 37
By the time I had slipped Mrs. Sundvig and reached the Pêche Tôt, Ingrid Jacobs had a U-Haul trailer packed and hitched to a black Mercedes SUV parked out front. The vehicle had Wyoming plates, a little cowboy riding a bronco through a thousand miles of bug-spat. Ingrid’s brother leaned on the hood with a foam cup of coffee. He looked vaguely amused by the sight of me coasting up in Junior’s pickup.
“Ingrid’s on the phone,” he told me, nodding toward the shop. “She’ll be out in a minute.”
Not if she saw me out here, I guessed. As someone wellschooled in blowing town, I thought I knew how she was feeling. Her anxiety would be high, her senses sharp. She would know why I’d come. I’d decided that Ingrid Jacobs could tie a nail knot. Not only that, she could tie a couple extra Jake’s Yellow Sallies, as needed. She might even have been clever enough to tie the second one on improperly to direct suspicion away from herself.
I looked the brother over. Big guy with an easy, rich-kid’s manner. Ingrid without all the angst. Perfect teeth. Named Wyatt, I remembered, from when he’d given me Jake’s stuff. Wyatt looked like he had gotten up too early.
“So after Ingrid leaves, what happens to the shop?”
He yawned and shrugged. “She listed it. Good price. We’ll see.”
“And the house?”
“Same.” He took a long swallow of coffee. “You a friend of Inkie’s?”
“Not really,” I said. “We just met.” I added a lie. “She was going to tie me some flies.”
I watched Wyatt’s manners kick in. He overcame his sluggishness of mood and said, “Oh? Maybe I can help you. What kind?”
“I was headed west,” I said. “I’m kind of a trout bum. I thought I should have some big yellow stones. But I’m sure your sister didn’t get a chance.”
He was already opening the tail end of the Mercedes. “She’s got all her stuff back here. I was planning to hit some big water on the way home. Cheer Inkie up. How many did you need?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I didn’t come asking for flies. I just was coming by to tell your sister never mind. I mean, with her loss and all … I just didn’t realize she was leaving town so soon.”
Over his shoulder, he gave me a knowing grin with just the right touch of sadness. “Not soon enough for Inkie.”
Right, I thought. Not soon enough for Jake. I was feeling a little raw suddenly. I mean, here’s a young couple, Jake and Ingrid, married without kids—couldn’t they get along? Did they think their lives were tough? So Ingrid was a little uncomfortable, things were a little inconvenient for her, maybe her husband had a little juice for another woman—so … what? … kill the guy? Frame up an innocent bystander? Run home to Daddy?
I had to know if Ingrid could tie the nail knot. I could see her and Bostock suddenly—filthy little Lumen Bostock and his airs of supremacy—could see him working with Ingrid and her own airs—Bostock and Ingrid and Bud and his schemes—working together. B.L. getting wagged along like the tail on a dog.
I could see where Ingrid’s reels were. “Inkie” was the psycho-organized type. Her teeth had to be straight, for one thing—braces at age thirty—even though she was already beautiful, not to mention rich and married. Her reels were packed in one of those fancy reel cases that cost a few hundred bucks in the fishing catalogs.
“You fish too?” I asked Wyatt.
“Only the good stuff.”
I felt annoyed. “And which is the good stuff?”
“We’ve got a stretch of the Bison River that’s as pretty as you could hope for, I’ll tell you that,” he said as he rummaged around. “No damn trees in the backcast. No mud. Wide as a football field.”
He turned with a box containing about a hundred yellow stone flies. “Take what you need,” he said.
I took a half dozen. I thanked him. I asked him to thank Ingrid for me. Then I said, “What do you do othe
rwise, Wyatt? When you’re not fishing?”
He shrugged. “Mining. Timber. Cattle. We have a resort in Jackson Hole. There’s more than enough to do. I’m busy as hell, actually.”
“It’s nice that you could come out and help your sister get her stuff together.”
“Oh,” he said, and he heaved a weary sigh. “Actually I was kind of on standby these last few months. We all knew Inkie was going to leave Jake.”
He looked up and down Main Street, Black Earth. “She hated the place,” he said. “No mountains. Tiny streams. Mom fifteen hundred miles away.”
“But the day Jake died,” I said, “Ingrid was at a village board meeting asking for a permit for sidewalk tables at the café. Why would she do that if she were going to sell the place and leave?”
He shrugged. “She cared about Jake. She was going to leave him the shop. She wanted it to succeed.”
I stared at Ingrid’s reel case. Then I glanced into the Pêche Tôt, where she stood wrapped in a phone cord, the big orange cat curling about her legs.
“So did Jake know Ingrid was unhappy?”
Wyatt gave a helpless snort, as only a brother could.
“When Ingrid’s unhappy, the whole world knows.”
I looked back at her reel case. Then the door of the Pêche Tôt squeaked open. Ingrid stumbled out with the cat in her arms and locked the door.
She looked at me without really seeing, and suddenly I felt my theories shift again. Her eyes were hollow and vacant, surrounded by a muddy discoloration that made me understand that the events of the last few days had finally caught up with her. I knew the look of grief. I knew the stumbling gait, the vacant eyes, the bad skin. I’d spent some time, years back, staring in a mirror. Grief was a slow-moving train wreck. If the Dog knew anything, the Dog knew that.
Her brother nodded at me, but Ingrid’s eyes stayed down. “I gave your friend some yellow stones.” “Thank you, Wy.”
The Nail Knot Page 19