Gray Ghost Murders (9781101606070)
Read Gray Ghost Murders (9781101606070) Online
Authors: Keith McCafferty
ALSO BY KEITH McCAFFERTY
The Royal Wulff Murders
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. ⢠Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) ⢠Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England ⢠Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) ⢠Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) ⢠Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi â 110 017, India ⢠Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) ⢠Penguin Books, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa ⢠Penguin China, B7 Jiaming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2013 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Keith McCafferty, 2013
All rights reserved
Publisher's Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
McCafferty, Keith.
The gray ghost murders : a novel / Keith McCafferty.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-101-60607-0
1. Fly fishingâFiction. 2. MurderâInvestigationâFiction. 3. Madison River Valley (Wyo. and Mont.)âFiction. 4. Mystery fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.C334G73 2013
813'.6âdc23 2012037086
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
To the Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers ClubâBill Morris, Steve Dunn, and Keith Shein
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: Montana Metrosexual
CHAPTER FOUR: The Price of a Fly Fisherman's Soul
CHAPTER SIX: The Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers Club
CHAPTER EIGHT: Quest for Metal
CHAPTER NINE: A Night in a Grain Elevator
CHAPTER TEN: “A Theft of History”
CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Bullet and the Betrothed
CHAPTER TWELVE: Knocking on Heaven's Doors
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Shifting Polarity
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Realm of Gods
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Houndsman
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Field of Stars
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Dark Continent, Light People
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: A Study in Pointillism
CHAPTER NINETEEN: For Love of Fidelia
CHAPTER TWENTY: Charging Buffalo
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Resting the Trout
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: The Simian Man
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Worried Man, Worried Smile
PART THREE: THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: The Decoy
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: A Strike from the Bucket List
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: The Courtly Cowboy
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Loose Ends
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: The Scarecrow
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Return of the Past
CHAPTER THIRTY: Death with Honor
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: The Mystery of White People
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Return of the Gray Ghost
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Too Blue to Fly
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God makes some men poets. Some He makes kings, some beggars. Me He made a hunter. My hand was made for the trigger . . .
âRichard Connell, “The Most Dangerous Game”
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.
âHeraclitus, “On Nature”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A
lthough I give four Brewer's blackbirds credit for helping me finish
The Gray Ghost Murders
on deadline, many featherless friends also deserve mention. I wish to thank my brother, Dr. Kevin McCafferty, for acting as my medical adviser with respect to the illnesses that afflict several of the novel's characters. Kevin also is largely responsible for tearing me away from the desk so that I might renew my spirit on the magic carpets of rivers. Other companions of the rod, past and present, to whom I am grateful for their friendship and good humor include my son, Tom; my nephews Brent and Brandon; Mike Czaja; John Davis; Bob Bullock; Bill Morris; Steve Dunn; and Keith Shein. Also Tim Crawford; Bud Lilly, that great champion of the trout; and Joe Gutkoski, my wilderness mentor.
Parts of this book were written at Café Francais des Arts in Bozeman, where Francoise Manigault bakes the best
pain au chocolat
outside Paris. My thanks to Francoise and her familyâBernard, Alexandre, Andrew, and Ashleyâfor making me feel so at home.
None of this would be possible without the loving support of my wife, Gail Schontzler, or without the love of stories instilled in me by my mother, Beverly McCafferty.
I have had the good fortune to work with many fine editors whose guiding hands can be seen in these pages. At
Field & Stream
, among those who helped shape me as a writer were Jean McKenna, Slaton White, Anthony Licata, Mike Toth, Dave Petzal, Sid Evans, Duncan Barnes, Colin Kearns, Dave Hurteau, and the late Peter Barrett. My editor at Penguin Books, Kathryn Court, has taught me in her margin notes more about writing novels than I could have gleaned by obtaining an MFA. Associate editor Tara Singh also provided suggestions while keeping a firm hand on the tiller of the novel, steering it toward publication. Finally, my thanks to editor Beena Kamlani, who has the last word on the finished manuscript. She's simply the best.
To be successful, a book needs to stand out in a crowd, and I believe that the jacket designs for both
The Royal Wulff Murders
and
The Gray Ghost Murders
are among the most inviting and striking of any books published over the past decade. The Penguin designer Jim Tierney deserves all the credit, not only for his tremendous talent but for his patience in working with me to get the details of the flies right.
An unexpected source of help has been the actor Rick Holmes, who read
The Royal Wulff Murders
for Recorded Books. He not only did a terrific job, but caught several inconsistencies that I was able to correct in the final days before the book's publication. I feel lucky to have him on board for the audio version of
The Gray Ghost Murders.
The prerequisite for writing acknowledgments is obtaining a publisher and so having a book to write them in. I might well have written this novel without the help of my agent, Dominick Abel, but there's a very good chance you wouldn't be holding it in your hands right now.
Last, I want thank two legendary fly tiers who now fish those celestial waters where a well-presented cast is never refused by the trout. Lee Wulff's series of hairwing dry flies acted as the hook upon which the
The Royal Wulff Murders
was crafted. Lee was one of the greatest ambassadors the sport of fly fishing has ever known. Carrie Stevens of Upper Dam, Maine, designed the Gray Ghost streamer in 1924. In her first hour on the water fishing this most elegant of fly patterns, she caught a six-pound, thirteen-ounce brook trout, which won second place in the
Field & Stream
fishing contest. I have not yet equaled that catch in any river with any fly, but as nothing makes a fish grow bigger than almost being caught, I'm sure I have lost a few.
PART ONE
THE GRAY GHOSTS
The hands shook as the watcher adjusted the focus ring of the binoculars. In the circular field of view, he saw that the driver of the Pinto wagon looked older than the time he had seen him last, back in spring. Or rather his walk, as he climbed out of the car and moved into the shadow cast by the pylon of the river bridge, appeared hesitant, as if the driver was unsure of the footing. The simian slope of the forehead, the tight gray curls and liquid brown eyes over the broad nose and cleft chin, he could not see clearly from such distance. But the swinging-armed walk, the man bent forward as if his brothers had only recently left the security of the trees, would identify him anywhere.
For several minutes the driver was out of sight under the bridge and one of the hands that shook on the binoculars moved to the dog, the fingers digging under the collar to worry the fur. Maybe he had hidden the envelope too well. But then the man reemerged and it was plain to see that he was holding something. The driver got back into the wagon and from his vantage in the pines the watcher heard the Pinto cough to life.
After the vehicle disappeared, heading south up the river canyon, the watcher set down the binoculars. He felt the fish that had been swimming in his veins slowly subside. It would happen. The man still looked strong enough. The man would be worthy.
He lowered his eyes to the dog. He watched, a bystander to his own body, as his right hand jumped on the dog's neck. It was the same involuntary grasping that came more often now, that reminded him, as if he needed reminding, that the family nightmare had not died with his father's passing, but was beginning again.
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Prologue
K
atie Sparrow didn't think she'd be back tomorrow. Knowing a bit about men and one kind in particular, she didn't think the hiker that search and rescue was looking for was lost, or even that he was on Sphinx Mountain. She'd figured it for a “bastard search” from the get-go, ever since Lothar lost the man's scentâhis common-law wife had contributed a well-seasoned Bon Jovi undershirtâback at the trailhead. To Sparrow, this meant that instead of putting one foot in front of the other as he'd promised, Gordon Godfrey had parked his vehicle at the trailhead to erase suspicion, then had climbed into another rig. In this assessment she was in agreement with the wife, who had reported her husband missing. Godfrey, a schoolteacher with a scratch to itch that lay south of his belt buckle and a history of women cutting his face out of photographs, had left a note to the effect that he had backpacked up the Trail Fork of Bear Creek for an overnight fishing trip for cutthroat trout. He'd written that he'd summit the Sphinx if he got a “wild hair” up his ass. That had been three days ago. As he had not discussed the trip with his wife and had previously shown little interest in fishing, or in climbing anything steeper than the stairs to the second floor, she suspected a ruse. She thought he was with “that bitch” and told the deputy who had taken her call that if this proved to be the case, he had her permission to shoot them both and save her the cost of the ammunition, what with 180-grain Federal “Vital Shok” loads in .30-06 going for forty-five dollars a box.
“Now what the hey, Lothar . . . ?”
Katie Sparrow cocked her head upon spotting her dog, who had curled his tail and stiffened his back. The shepherd froze for several moments before turning in a half circle and lying down beside a boulder. He looked at Sparrow with his own head cocked, the faces of handler and canine showing similarly quizzical expressions, then he settled his chin onto his outstretched forelegs. The signal or “alert” was one that Katie had taught him, but for a moment she had a hard time comprehending. Godfrey, if in fact he had hiked here, might well be dead. Mountains in Montana could kill a man at any month and in any number of ways. But buried?
Still, there was no second-guessing Lothar. As a search-and-rescue K9, he was a bona fide triple threatâa Class III wilderness air scent dog who also had certification as a tracking/trailing dog and a human-remains detection, or “cadaver,” dog. Back at the trailhead, Katie had worked him in trailing mode with his nose to the ground, but after he lost Godfrey's scent only a few yards from the vehicle, she had taken him off leash and worked him as an air scent dog. That is, she had signaled Lothar to search generally for human odor, not a particular one, which he did with his nose elevated to catch particles of scent, consisting of sloughed-off skin cells eddying in the air. Dropping his head to the ground could mean anythingâto a dog the world was a wonder of distracting odors. But lying flat with his head on his forelegs could not be misinterpreted. There was a human body underneath the earth where Lothar was lying.
Sparrow's VHF radio crackled as she turned up the volume and pressed the transmit button.
“Jase. This is Katie. My dog just gave me an HRD alert.”
In the Incident Command trailer on the skirt of the mountain, some twenty-three hundred feet below and five miles to the west, Jason Kent set his coffee cup on the fold-down tabletop.
“Body, you're saying.”
“That's a ten-four. He's lying on it.”
“Above or below ground?”
“Buried. Earth's torn up in the vicinity, but the disturbance looks old. Like frost heaves, maybe. I suppose a bear could have dug it up a few weeks ago and scattered the remains, but I don't see bones.”
The radio went momentarily silent as Kent digested the news. He ran blunt fingers through his crew cut.
“You there, IC?” Katie looked at Lothar and mouthed the words “Good dog.”
“I'm here. It isn't Godfrey. Walt found him down in West Yellowstone at the Three Bears Motel. Very much alive. A little depleted in the prostate department, if you know what I mean. He was with a woman. Name of Marcy Hardy. We called off the search.”
“I didn't get the relay.”
“This just happened. I was about to notify the wife.”
“That ought to be an interesting call.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“So whatcha want me to do?”
Kent thought a second. “It's too late to get a recovery team there tonight. Mark the waypoint and get off the mountain. FWP says there's a sow grizzly with two cubs reported up the Trail Fork. I want you checked in with me before dark. Call with a progress report every thirty minutes. Are you packing pepper spray?”
“Always.”
“Keep your finger on the trigger.”
“Okay, I'm out.”
She holstered the radio. Carefully picking her steps, she worked around the places where the earth looked scarred and sat down next to Lothar. Katie Sparrow was a sun-streaked blonde with a wrenlike face and eyes as blue as an October sky. She looked quite small on the mountain, sitting beside a German shepherd that was bigger than she was. Crossing her legs in a lotus position, she fingered the brass locket under the neck of her damp T-shirt. For a little while she was on another mountain, far away, then she was back. She pulled a dog biscuit out of her shirt pocket. She broke off half to offer it to Lothar.
“You're such a good dog.” Her voice had become the voice of a young girl. “You're my boyfriend. Yes, you are.”
The shepherd gave her a soulful gaze and laid his head on her lap. Katie reached down and switched off the GPS unit strapped to his collar. She bit a piece off the remaining half of the dog biscuit and chewed it thoughtfully, wondering just whose bones she was sitting on.