“Not necessarily a mother and cub. The cats could be siblings or mates. Male cats will sometimes provide for the female during the time they are together. As we are discovering, mountain lions are much more social than previously thought. I see you remain unconvinced, but I do have evidence. Your words are my evidence.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
Blake opened the laptop computer on the end of the table. He began to click keys. “I want you to hear something,” he said. A minute later, a long, drawn-out, very humanlike scream filled the room. It was a somewhat modified rendering of the scream Sean had heard on the mountain the night that he backpacked out the last of Martha’s elk meat.
“What you heard is called caterwauling,” Blake said in a matter-of-fact voice. “It’s the mating call of a female mountain lion, but males and young cats will on occasion caterwaul as well, either because they are agitated or as a means of communication. You told me that the sound you heard came from the ridge where you saw the lights, where this woman was killed. It makes no sense that a lion, having just made a kill, would leave that kill to cross a steep canyon and visit an old elk kill, or whatever it was you smelled. However, if it was providing for another lion in the vicinity, then it is logical that it would call to it. You do see what I’m getting at.”
“Yes,” Sean said. “There were two lions on the mountain that night.”
“And they were both very hungry. You do see that you are lucky to be here, don’t you? Yours was not a normal encounter. You were very much on the menu.”
“I do.”
* * *
• • •
WHEN BLAKE EXCUSED HIMSELF a few minutes later, saying he needed to check on the lynx, Sean thanked him and left by the front door to unleash Choti. He led her to the side of the yurt, where Scarlett sat in the tub. She was enshrouded in steam, her presence as much felt as seen.
“Don’t worry—I can’t see anything,” he said to her. “I just wanted to say thank you and good-bye.”
“Did Drick flatter you into soliciting his help in the hunt?”
“He said he would participate if asked.”
“My brother does enjoy his effect on people. Sometimes, he is flattered right out of his clothing, especially on our fundraising tours. I can hear him being flattered in the room next door. Of course I am only his sister. And he is raising money we need for our nonprofit. What call do I have to object to his indulgences?”
Sean had nothing to say to this. After a brief silence, she said, “Forgive the bitterness of my tone. I see you have your dog. A sheltie, isn’t she?”
“Her name is Choti. It means ‘small’ in Hindi.”
“Yes. I don’t speak the language, but I do know a few phrases. Drick and I worked in the Gir Forest. Did he tell you how proud he is to be called Kesin, the Long-Haired Lion?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice the skin grafts on his cheeks?”
“I noticed the skin was sort of sunken.”
“He had mountain lion whiskers implanted with skin grafts. They didn’t take. He also had his nose flattened and made wider to resemble the nose of a cat. He’s quite mad, you see.”
“Your brother doesn’t seem mad.”
“You, who know him so well.”
A ticking of near silence ensued, made more conspicuous by the whispered bickering of the coals heating the water.
“He had a very interesting theory.”
She listened as he told her.
“Yes.” She nodded slightly. “My brother always has interesting theories. Some are on the mark. In this case, knowing what you told us, I would tend to agree with him. Would you like to hear my advice?”
“Of course.”
“Never turn your back. On any predator. Would you please hand me my robe?”
Sean picked it up from the railing. “I’ll avert my eyes.”
“No, keep them open. I am not modest, and I want you to see the stakes of the game you are playing.”
“I wasn’t aware I was playing a game,” Sean said.
“That would be your mistake.”
She stood from the tub, her hands crossed over her chest. She turned her face, so that he could see the scarring on her cheek, and then dropped her hands to her sides. Naked, she turned to face him. Enshrouded by the steam, she looked at him for a few long seconds, her ghostly appearance seeming to shiver, her breasts rising and falling, her chin held high, her expression frank. What Sean saw shocked him. Five parallel scars, starting from her right shoulder, scrolled across Scarlett’s chest and stomach. The scars looked as if a large paw had raked the length of her torso with one long, deep swipe. The healed tissue shone white against her skin, ugly, yet in its symmetry oddly beautiful, like the ritual scarring practiced by tribal members in parts of Africa. Showing her body to him, Sean realized, was not exhibitionism. What she was showing him was a message written in blood, long dried now, that carried a warning.
“Good-bye, Sean.” She put on the robe and shook his hand with the same strong grip with which she had introduced herself, then rubbed Choti under her chin. She looked up at Sean and smiled, and then the smile was gone, leaving all the sad knowledge of the world in her eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Woman with Coffin Eyes
Number four Castle Lane was off a dead-end gravel road outside Silver Star, a two-blink town on the west bank of the Jefferson River. Sean found a boulder painted with the number and brought his binoculars to bear on the house. It was tall, a gabled two-story mounted by a conical stone-and-mortar turret, hence the name of the road. A chimney belched smoke that caught on the gnarled branches of an aspen stand and gave the place a cemetery feel. Stalling, he looked again at the map that Garrett had drawn on the cigarette paper, then he slowly motored up the drive.
A well-kept Tahoe in front of the house sported a bumper sticker in the shape of a home plate. It read ARIZONA CACTUS LEAGUE. Sean squared his felt Seratelli as a woman opened the door and stepped outside, followed by a shepherd with a sable coat that uttered a growl very deep in its chest.
“State your business,” she said.
Sean took a look at the dog and did so, taking in the woman’s appearance as she considered his words. She was of medium height, but her posture made her look taller. A woman of angles, with broad shoulders, a tapered waist, and long legs. She wore skin-tight black leather pants tucked into black cowboy boots with red roses, and a black doeskin jacket with a fringe. A gray shawl shifted like an uncertain cloud on her shoulders. A silver belt buckle showed off a turquoise stone. Her hair, jet black, a streak of silver at one temple, was pinned up over a face that was more carved than molded. Like her truck, she was vintage but very well kept. He put her at sixty, give or take.
He told her about the woman staying in the trailer who had met her death, possibly at the teeth and claws of a lion. All the while, he watched her face for a reaction, difficult as that might be to decipher with her eyes hidden behind dark glasses. The expression on her face indicated to Sean that this was news to her.
“A mountain lion, you say to me. Like a cougar? I never heard such a thing.” She had an unplaceable accent. “You’re sure it wasn’t a wolf? We had them in the old country. My grandfather would tell stories. Even today they are around. A hiker was killed last year by wolves when she was investigating some ruins on the coast.”
What ruins? What old country?
“They say the woman’s thigh bones were cracked wide open, that no dog’s jaws would be powerful enough to do that damage. A tragedy.”
“The evidence points to a mountain lion,” Sean said. “Are you Greek?”
“I am Romanian and Greek. What’s it have to do with me, this cat?”
“The trailer was registered to you. You’re Virginia Jenny, aren’t you?”
“Jenny was my married name
. My husband called me Virginia because I smoked Virginia Slims.”
“What was your name before you married?”
“Adrianna Koslovovich. Is the trailer currently registered to me?”
Sean admitted it wasn’t. The plates dated back thirty years, before Montanans were offered permanent trailer licenses.
“If you’re talking about an Airstream, that was stolen from these premises many years ago. Parked right where you’re standing. I had my suspicions about who did it. I thought he’d hauled it up to Alaska.”
“Did you report it stolen?”
“To American authorities? A person persecuted for her service? Don’t be foolish. Where is this trailer? I would like it back.”
“It’s up the Johnny Gulch Road in the Gravelly Range. That’s near Ennis.”
“I don’t know the place. The town, of course, I know.”
“Ms. Jenny, I’m not here to poke into your business. I’m just trying to find out who this woman was. She’ll have people who will care. They deserve closure.”
“Of course you’re trying to poke into my business. You think she’s a prostitute. Otherwise, why are you here?”
“I’m just trying to put a name to a few bones.”
“What makes you believe that anyone would care about what happened to this person? You speak of closure. All that means is she won’t be coming around again, dragging her drug addiction behind her, making a person want to lock the drawers.”
“I really don’t know if anyone else cares. But I do. Someone once told me that when you investigate a case, you join teams with the dead. You stand for them and you wear their colors.”
“You’re talking about murder. This isn’t murder by a human being.”
“Nevertheless,” Sean said.
A small movement of her chin. “What are we doing standing on the porch?”
“So your dog won’t kill me when I go inside,” Sean said.
She smiled then, a smile that, if briefly, made Sean wonder what she would look like with her glasses off.
“What’s your dog’s name?”
“Cerberus. Do you know Greek mythology? No? Cerberus guards the entrance to the underworld. He has three heads. One can never have too many eyes watching out for one’s safety, don’t you agree? Be careful not to trip. I’m not a vampire, despite rumors to the contrary. I live in darkness because of an eye condition. It is called photophobia. My irises are sensitive to light. That is why I wear polarized glasses when I go outside. Also why I don’t wear silver jewelry in the sun. My eyes could be burned by my own bracelet. Indoors, I can take the glasses off as long as I keep the curtains drawn. I am one with the night, and so this inconvenience is minor. And the dark is lovely, is it not?”
Sean followed her into the twilight zone of the house, with its dark, heavy furniture, dark hallways leading to dark rooms, where dark deeds might have been done. In the living room, the only color was the golden pulsing of embers in a stone fireplace.
“I can offer you apple cider or brandy. The cider has a bit of a kick.”
“I’ve been up since four. I could use a bit of a kick.”
She brought back tumblers from the cave of the kitchen. “We’ll sit here.” Indicating chairs. She took the beaded, upholstered chair opposite him, with a low coffee table between them. They touched glasses.
“Na pane kato ta farmakia.” It came out as all one word. “Let the poisons go down.”
Sean drank the poison.
The woman removed her glasses and set them on the table.
“What is it that you wish to know?”
“Her name, to start with?”
Wool gathered in the dark corners of the room. It was a comfortable silence, nonetheless.
“I’m not evading your question,” she said at length, “but I don’t know her name. Twenty years ago I would have, because the girls who worked for me were my daughters, some more than others, but I cared about all of them. But times, they are not the same. What do you know about the world’s oldest profession, as they call it?”
Sean shrugged.
“Don’t answer with your body language. I cannot see you.”
“Very little,” Sean admitted.
“You’re not one of those boys whose father took him to a freight car at the railroad yard? Paid the yard bull to look the other way while he lost his virginity? It is quite common, though today, I am informed, it is in a house in Livingston. Off Front Street, I am told.”
“No,” Sean said. “I lost my virginity on the bank of the Battenkill River, in Vermont. There were fireflies under the weeping willows.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Bats were eating them.”
“How . . . quaint.”
Silence again, but not heavy.
“This woman who was killed, was she Indian?”
“The person who saw her last said she was white. But she had grown up on a reservation. The Flathead.”
“I ask because if she is Native American, I will not be able to help you. There are thousands of Indian girls prostituting themselves and being prostituted by others. That is human trafficking, an industry built upon a drug culture.”
“Meth,” Sean said.
“Then you know about this?”
“I know that the Mexican cartels target reservations and that the addiction rate among Indians is the highest of any ethnicity in the nation. I know that users will sell their souls to get high, regardless of their color.”
She nodded. Sean felt rather than saw it.
She said, “They will sell not only their own souls, but the bodies of their children.”
“Ms. Jenny, anything you tell me, it doesn’t have to leave this house. And you have your own protection from authorities, from what I’ve heard.”
“True. When you have in your possession compromising evidence about those who would seek to persecute you, you are granted a level of immunity from their persecution.”
“This person is beyond protection now, yours or anyone else’s. You risk nothing by telling me her name.”
“If you are saying that because you believe it, you do not know the people you work for. They would delight in dragging my name into this unpleasantness.” She paused. “You say that you join teams with the dead, Sean. May I call you Sean?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Do you really believe the memory of this person is best served by broadcasting her profession and the circumstances of her death?”
Now the silence was Sean’s. It was a strong argument, all the more so in the absence of a traditional crime. He took the last of his drink and set it down on a coaster.
“Ms. Jenny—”
“Call me Virginia.”
“Virginia. Why now? Why her? These are two questions I’d like to find answers to.”
“You do not think her death, it is coincidence? A lion without his kill is no different than a man without his woman. They both need to be fed, and when you are hungry, one meat is the same as another. Go back to this trailer. You speak of the precautions I have taken in my profession. That means you have heard what they are. Perhaps others have taken similar measures.”
“You mean compromising evidence. Can you speak more plainly?”
“I think I have. Now I have told you as much as I’m going to. But when you do find out what has happened, I would like to share a bottle of wine with you over a plate of pasta. Somewhere dark. I find you attractive. Very much so. You will find our age difference is of no consequence.”
“I’m engaged.”
“That is a pity,” she said. Then, unexpectedly, he heard a trilling of laughter, like the spilling of coins.
“If I have learned anything in my time on Earth,” she said, “it is that the only words that mean less to a man than ‘I am engaged’ are ‘I am married.’ I won’t walk you to t
he door, so as I said before, be careful not to trip.”
He didn’t, and when he turned to look back at her, she had shaken out her hair so that it made a black waterfall down her back. She held her cider glass up, canting it to catch the glow of the fire’s embers. Sean shut the door behind him, leaving her to enjoy what glimmers of light her eyes could stand.
* * *
• • •
HE WAS SIX MILES down the road when the invisible pipe he was smoking gave him one of the answers he sought. He tapped the contacts button on his phone and scrolled to the bottom of the alphabet. The accusatory voice of Katie Sparrow was slightly tinny. Sparrow was a Yellowstone Park ranger who volunteered as a dog handler for the county’s search-and-rescue team.
“Watcha want?” she said. “I got a life, you know.” A pause. “Sort of.” Another pause. “If you count sleeping with a bunch of dogs.” The sliding notes of her life, defiance to pathos in one exhaled breath. Sean had heard it before.
“Hi to you, too, Katie. I’m hoping you can put that life of yours on hold for a couple hours.”
“When?”
“Now’s good.”
“Okay.” A brighter note. “But only because I’m still in love with you.”
“Ditto,” Sean said. Their running flirtation had occasionally led to the bedroom of Katie’s one-hundred-year-lease Forest Service cabin, and to neither’s regret. He told her where to meet.
She hesitated. “I ain’t putting Lothar on any cat track, if that’s what you’re thinking, thank you very much. I heard what happened to that old hound that run him.”
“I’m not asking you to bring Lothar. Just your metal detector. And the usual.”
“Now you’re talking. How will I recognize you? We haven’t listened to no wolf packs for a time now.”
“That’s because I got engaged.”
“When did that ever mean anything to the male of the species?”
Sean laughed.
“How’s that funny?”
“It’s just that you’re the second woman who’s told me that today.”
The Bangtail Ghost Page 10