Riverwatcher Read online

  The state parks people in Lansing would be pleased that Rainbow Run was returning to service, the murder put behind, business as usual. But she wouldn’t forget. And neither would the maniac who had crept up to the campsite, fired a shotgun into the white tent, crept away. Charlie was gone, but not the terrible reality of what had happened to him.

  Mercy left the table, crossed the campsite, followed a path that led in the direction of the river. How many times had Charlie come this way? In recent years he had rarely fished the stretch of the Borchard mainstream along the campground, driven off by heavy canoe traffic, preferring the wilderness water of the South Branch. But this is where he first fished the river, camping on the high banks when Rainbow Run was an angler-only campground—where he continued to take walks on trails deep into state-forest property. In some ways there were more reminders of Charlie here, in the thick growth and downed timber, than in the swept-clean campsite she had just left.

  But it wasn’t Charlie she wanted to think about here. It was Charlie’s killer. She hated to admit it, but Alec Proffit might be right. It might be a poacher. Charlie was concerned about poaching, and he spent his nights fishing the no-kill section of the South Branch, prime water for poachers. If he saw poachers at work, it wasn’t like Charlie to confront them, threaten to turn them in. It had been a point of mild contention between them, Mercy arguing that citizens had a duty to actively support the DNR by reporting poaching, Charlie agreeing but at the same time resisting the role of informant. Writing her notes and collecting empty worm containers was as far as he would go.

  But maybe, his concern over poaching deepening, he had changed. Maybe one night he confronted a poacher, announced he was reporting him. Or maybe it happened another way, a poacher seeing Charlie observing him, assuming Charlie would report him. So . . . But going to the extreme of killing Charlie would imply—wouldn’t it?—that the poacher had a lot to lose if he was turned in.

  The loss had to be more than the prospect of a stiff fine and jail sentence. And more than the public shame that would follow, or should follow, from seeing yourself written up in the Call. Still, she recalled the word that had come to her before, thinking about Charlie’s killer. He was a maniac. How could you reason your way into the mind of someone like that?

  Mercy followed the path through the woods until it veered alongside the river. Through the tops of pines she could see the water below, dark, quick-flowing, shimmering in patches of sunlight. Ahead of her was a broad grassy clearing, wild blueberry and seedling pines taking over yet not fully erasing the scars of old campfires. It was probably the area where Charlie had first camped on the Borchard. Farther ahead were the remains of an old log stairway, nearly hidden now in hemlock, leading from the high banks down to the water. It was probably the route he had first taken to fish the river.

  When she came to the edge of the clearing, Mercy sat on a downed log, hearing the deep quiet, letting herself stare into the encircling woods, trying to think. Confronted with a maniac, reason might be of little help, but it was all she had. And reason told her that if Charlie’s killer was a poacher, he wouldn’t have killed simply because, Charlie reporting him, he faced a fine and jail and shame. Poachers were used to all that. It was part of the cat-and-mouse game they played out with authority.

  So it had to be something more, a greater loss. But what? What would matter so much to a poacher?

  20

  “YOU’RE NOT GUIDING me now,” Gwendolyn protested. “We’re having lunch, is all.”

  “Yeah,” Kit said, “but you’re supposed to eat in the lodge.”

  “I asked your mom for two box lunches and—”

  “Jan’s not my mom.”

  Gwendolyn nodded. “I forgot. Anyway, your dad and my dad won’t know. They’re floating the river.”

  “And I’m minding the fly shop.”

  “You can see from here if anybody comes in.”

  “That’s not the same as being there.”

  “Oh, come on,” Gwendolyn said. “Eat.”

  They were sitting on the peeled-log bench beyond the stand of white birch at the river’s edge, box lunches on their laps. Beyond, under the noonday sun, tiny trout rose in the middle of the stream, dimpling the surface. Gwendolyn had waited until her father and Verlyn left for the South Branch, one of the Kabin Kamp’s riverboats towed behind Verlyn’s Land Rover, before entering the fly shop and telling Kit she wanted to eat together by the water. There was something she wanted to tell him in private.

  “The reward,” she said now. “Did you learn how much it is?”

  Kit bit into half of a smoked-turkey sandwich, shook his head.

  “I did. I asked Jan.” Gwendolyn nibbled on a dill pickle. “Over five thousand dollars.”

  “No kidding,” Kit managed to say with his mouth full.

  “That’s a lot, huh?”

  “Not bad.”

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  “Just eat,” Gwendolyn said, “and listen. I thought maybe you’d figured it out for yourself by now.” She put the pickle back in the box, began nibbling on a carrot. She didn’t seem interested, Kit noticed, in her sandwich. “What does it cost at Central Michigan for a year?” Before Kit could answer, Gwendolyn said, “Forget that. I’m sure it’s more. But five thousand would be a start. You know, one step at a time.”

  Kit finished the half sandwich, wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I’m earning money here. I don’t need the reward. Besides, who said I’m going back to college?”

  “You said you might.”

  “Yeah, might.”

  “Let’s think about it. To get the reward, you need to tell the sheriff who killed Charlie Orr. That’s how it works, right?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not interested.”

  “Of course you are,” Gwendolyn said, and pointed to the other half of the sandwich in his box lunch. “Just eat.”

  Kit stared at her but picked up the sandwich. Gwendolyn was beginning to remind him of those bossy girls, usually the good-looking ones, of his own high school days. One minute you were helping them out, like teaching Gwendolyn the basics of fly fishing, the next thing you knew, they were running your life. Or trying to. Kit told himself that listening to Gwendolyn was one thing, doing what she said another. The distinction had thus far kept him a free man.

  “So we’ve got to figure out the killer, is all. Jan says the sheriff hasn’t a clue. But we’ve got to hurry. Other people will be trying for the reward. That’s why I wanted to talk outside.”

  Kit kept eating, let her go on. “Jan said Calvin thinks Charlie Orr was killed for his hash. He smoked while he was fishing, somebody noticed, went to his tent to steal his supply, killed him in the process. Calvin’s on the lookout for people around here smoking hash.”

  “Hash?” Kit edged out.

  Gwendolyn seemed surprised. “What we call it at school.”

  Kit finished chewing, wiped his mouth again, looked at her with a cocked head. In some ways Gwendolyn wasn’t as young as she appeared, and her pricey school might not be as cut off from the real world as he imagined. “Here we call it pot.” Then he said, “That was yesterday’s theory. Today’s is he got nailed by some poachers who didn’t want Charlie blowing the whistle on them.”

  “Poachers?”

  “Slobs using worms and keeping fish on flies-only, no-kill water.”

  Gwendolyn seemed to ponder the explanation for a moment before she asked, “What’s Calvin think?”

  “It doesn’t matter what he thinks. Calvin knows about fish, not everything else. There’s another guy involved, name of Alec Proffit. He was camped in Rainbow Run near Charlie. The sheriff’s keeping the details under wraps, but this guy has reason to think Charlie got mixed up with poachers. Like I say, it’s today’s theory. Who knows about tomorrow.”

  “But could it be?”

  Kit picked his pickle out of the lunch container, tried a taste, found it too sour. “There’s poachers on the river
, sure. And they’re slobs. I don’t know if they’d kill anybody.”

  “How could we find out for certain?”

  “We?”

  “C’mon, Kit. You can’t get the reward otherwise. How can we find out?”

  Kit dropped the pickle back in the container, gave Gwendolyn a brief smile. He was back on his territory now, instructing her again, Gwendolyn paying attention. “You hang out at a place called the Keg O’Nails. All the slobs in the county turn up there, poachers included. You listen to them talk. If someone blew away Charlie, sooner or later he’ll be bragging his head off about it.”

  Gwendolyn’s eyes narrowed to a frown. “You’d think he wouldn’t.”

  “You don’t know poachers. They don’t care about the fish they haul out of the river. Talking about it, that’s the real game.”

  “Bullshitting, huh?”

  Kit’s smile returned, deepened. “You got it.”

  “So let’s go to this place, listen in.”

  “You kidding? Your age, you wouldn’t get a foot inside the door. Besides, your dad’s going to let you hang out at some dump at night?”

  “He wouldn’t know. After a float trip he’s sound asleep by nine o’clock. I could slip out of my room, go out the back way of the lodge, meet you.”

  Kit kept smiling. “You’d do that?” Then he said, “Forget it, Gwen. No way we’re going to the Keg.”

  “So how else can we find out?”

  “Hang out at night on the South Branch, pretend we’re poaching, talk with the other poachers. They get as beered up on the river as they do in the Keg. They probably talk their heads off.”

  “You know that?”

  “Not from experience. I keep my distance from those slobs. But I’m sure we’d learn plenty.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “Let’s do it,” Gwendolyn said. “Tonight. I’ll meet you behind the lodge as soon as it’s full dark. We’ll go to the South Branch.”

  Kit stared at her. “You serious?”

  “Weren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You were just bullshitting?”

  Kit stiffened on the bench. “I was telling you, theoretically, what could be done. I couldn’t take you down on the South Branch at night. Your dad would kill me. After that Verlyn would. It’s stupid. I shouldn’t have said anything. And I shouldn’t have let you talk me into this box lunch.”

  “Too late,” Gwendolyn said. She was gazing at him, her eyes wide and dark, a broad smile on her face. She was about the best-looking girl, Kit realized, he had ever seen. He was still gazing back at her when Gwendolyn said, “Have my sandwich if you want.”

  *  *  *

  “IS HE UP yet?” Mercy asked into her cell phone.

  “More than that,” Angie Laski said. “The sheriff was here.”

  “Damn it all. I wanted to talk to Vic first. Prepare him.”

  “You should have prepared me. I had to chit-chat with the sheriff while Vic got out of bed.”

  “Sorry about that. I didn’t think Stroud would barge in on you. Shows what I get for being a sensitive soul.”

  “Hold on, Mercy,” Angie said. “He’s coming.”

  On her way from Rainbow Run, Mercy had stopped at the High Pines convenience store for coffee and a sandwich. While she ate in the Suburban, she called Vic Laski’s number, intending to give him warning before she arrived at his home in Kinnich. Earlier, calling from her office, Angie had told her Vic was still asleep. He had been on duty late into the night—something to do, Angie thought, with illegal tree cutting on state land—and Mercy had said not to wake him. She would phone again later.

  “Sorry about that,” she repeated when Vic came on the line.

  “No matter.” Vic’s voice was weighted with sleep. “I didn’t have anything to tell him.”

  “I should have forewarned you, anyway. Stroud’s got this hot idea that Charlie Orr may have been killed by a poacher on the South Branch. That’s why he wanted to talk to you.” Mercy stopped herself. She was telling Vic what, now, he knew. “It went all right, then?”

  “I told him I knew Charlie. You couldn’t help it, the amount of time he spent on the river. But I wouldn’t have figured a poacher killed him.”

  “Why not, Vic?”

  Mercy could sense him shrug on the other end of the line. “Poachers kill fish, not people.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you can’t say for sure one didn’t. Anyway, I told Stroud I didn’t have any reason to think a poacher was the killer.”

  “What else did you talk about?”

  “He wanted to know how well I knew Charlie. I said well enough to talk to when we met up on the river. No more than that.”

  “He ask you about the amount of poaching that goes on?”

  “He brought it up. I told him there’s always some, but it’s up and down. Right now it’s down. We got more problems with people hauling out pines than fish.”

  “Angie said you were on an operation last night.”

  Vic’s voice cleared, gained strength. “We got lucky. Nailed a pair, both repeat offenders. We ought to get jail time.”

  “That’s great, Vic. But Stroud wasn’t interested?”

  “Only about the river. He wanted to know if we talked about poaching, Charlie and me. If Charlie thought it was a big problem. I said Charlie never mentioned it that I recall. We talked about bug hatches and weather, that sort of thing.”

  “Great, Vic.” When Vic didn’t respond Mercy added, “If Charlie was killed by a poacher, it wasn’t due to lax enforcement. It just happened. That’s what I mean.”

  “Sure,” Vic said.

  “The killing couldn’t have been prevented by the DNR. It wasn’t anything under our control.”

  “Sure, Mercy,” Vic repeated.

  *  *  *

  AFTER SHE FINISHED talking with Vic Laski, Mercy remained in the parking area of High Pines, her coffee cooling in the Styrofoam container. She knew how she was acting: defensive, circling the wagons, protecting her rear end—the knee-jerk bureaucratic reaction she professed to hate in others. It was all totally unnecessary. Alec Proffit had apologized for what he had said about DNR involvement in Charlie Orr’s death, an apology he would repeat to Willard Stroud.

  What rankled, nonetheless, was an implication that remained: that if the DNR had rid the river of poachers, one wouldn’t have killed Charlie. That was absolutely mindless, of course. It would take the Navy Seals to end poaching, and even they might not be up to it. Still, if a poacher killed Charlie, the DNR came under a shadow, mindless or not. Actually, it occurred to her, a second shadow, the first being that the killing had taken place in a state campground under DNR supervision. She had ample reason, in other words, to feel defensive, though she might—with a little effort of self-control—be less out-in-the-open about it.

  From the Suburban she phoned the sheriff’s office. “Well?” she said when Elsie put Stroud on the line.

  “I called,” Stroud said, “you weren’t in your office.”

  “I’m in my car, at High Pines, drinking lukewarm coffee. I just talked with Vic Laski. You hadn’t arrested him, I found.”

  “Never intended to. Only thing I learned is Charlie didn’t complain to him about poaching. Seems he only complained to you.”

  “I told you,” Mercy said. “That was Charlie’s way. I was a friend—and I was the boss. He wouldn’t get on the case of an employee like Vic.”

  “All right,” Stroud said. “But that doesn’t square with Charlie writing to Alec Proffit, someone he didn’t know, complaining about the DNR to him.”

  “I realize that,” Mercy sighed.

  “Other than that, Laski gave me the company line about poaching on the river. Admitted there’s some, but it’s not the be-all problem Charlie claimed to Proffit.”

  “It happens to be the truth, not the company line.”

  “Then how could Charlie be so wrong?”<
br />
  Mercy sighed again. “I don’t know.”

  Stroud said, “There’s something else to tell you. You remember the report we had about the place on the river broken into, shotgun taken? Gus Thayer blabbed about it at the news conference. We got hold of the owner out in Montana, pushed him about his gun collection. Now he’s saying he’s pretty sure he doesn’t own any .16 gauges. If a gun was taken, it’s more likely a .410 or a .12 gauge. He told Zack Cox, on the phone, that he’s partial to little guns and big guns.”

  “Oh, swell,” Mercy said.

  “He can’t say for sure until he gets back from Montana. But the way it looks now, there’s no connection between the break-in and the murder. No question, Slocum Byrd says, it was a .16 gauge used on Charlie.”

  “Another dead end, then.”

  There was silence on the phone before Stroud said, “Thought we’d agreed on another expression.”

  “Find me a better one. Anyway,” Mercy said, “how come I wasn’t notified about the reopening of Rainbow Run?”

  “I tried to get you. Fern knows. People downstate keep calling, telling me it’s time to reopen, August coming, all that. No use them calling you. I was the one had the campground closed. I made a deal with Lansing, let the first loop open.”

  “And I wasn’t notified about the removal of Charlie’s things.”

  “Ask Fern about that, too. Slocum was finished with his work. Things had to be removed sooner or later.”

  “I would have preferred later.”

  “I would, too,” Stroud said, his tone suddenly grave. “But what good would it do?”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “Zack went out there, told the host couple first, so they’d know we were clearing out the campsite. Said Billie broke down, cried.” When there was more silence on the line, Stroud said, “Anything else to talk about?”

  “I was trying to think of another expression for dead end,” Mercy said.