Riverwatcher Page 7

  “Awful idea. We get flooded with calls, we have to sort out the crazies, we track down what seems promising. Takes all our time.”

  “But that’s it. You might get something promising.”

  “We already have. What I’m going to tell you,” Stroud said, “stays in this room. We checked out the three occupied campsites at Rainbow Run. One is a young couple with kids trying out a new tent camper. They never saw Charlie, didn’t know anybody was even camping back at the end of the loop, but they may have heard something in the night. One of the kids was up, crying, and they heard this noise but were too sleepy to pay much attention. It might have been what Burt Berry heard, but they can’t swear to it. An older couple in a travel trailer didn’t hear a thing. They come up every year from Indiana. They’d talked with Charlie in the past but not this year—and last night was just like every other night. They say they sleep like logs when they get out in the woods. That leaves Only Orvis.”

  “Who?”

  “What the Berrys called the other camper. Seems he’s solo, fishes at night, fancy equipment. We haven’t talked to him yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Best reason there is. Can’t find him.”

  *  *  *

  STROUD CALLED OUT to Elsie, and they waited until she brought in coffee in Styrofoam cups. He told her to close the door on the way out of the office.

  “Well?” Mercy said.

  “We’ve got an understanding?”

  “Oh, for goodness sake, Stroud.”

  “The guy registered at the campground, so we’ve got his name and home address. Alec Proffit, Norwich, Vermont. Now why would someone from Vermont come all the way to Michigan to fish?”

  “Better fishing?” Mercy said.

  “Long drive, there to here.”

  “Maybe he flew, rented a vehicle. We’ll know the plate on his car from his campground registration.”

  “It’s a Vermont plate on a gray Toyota Land Cruiser. So we know what we’re hunting for. We know something else. We took a look at the guy’s campsite. Lot of gear there, so you’d think he hasn’t taken off for good.”

  “That’s legal, going through his belongings?”

  “Legal enough when we found one of those spiral notebooks. Stenographer’s notebook. Just a single thing in it.” Stroud paused, looked from Mercy to Fitzgerald, held Fitzgerald’s gaze. “Bunch of notes about Charlie.”

  “Good Lord,” Mercy said.

  “Looks like he was watching Charlie, shadowing him. He’s got in there about Charlie going out fishing at night. He went to the same area, over on the South Branch, fished himself but kept an eye on where Charlie was. No indication he ever talked with him. Just made these notes.”

  “But why would he?”

  Stroud kept looking at Fitzgerald. “That’s what I’m wondering.”

  Fitzgerald said, “I had a feeling this was getting around to me.”

  “Not too surprising. You notice the notebook that TV girl used during the news conference? Dead ringer for the one in Alec Proffit’s tent.”

  Fitzgerald stroked his chin, looked at the framed topographical map of Tamarack County on the wall behind Stroud, sipped coffee. Finally he said, “You think he’s a journalist.”

  “You’re quick,” Stroud said.

  “Anybody can buy a notebook like that. But let’s say you’re right—the missing guy’s a journalist of some sort. A background check will tell for sure.”

  “We’ve got the state police running one. And we’ve got out the alert about his vehicle.”

  “The next question is why a journalist would be interested in somebody camped all summer in Rainbow Run. You might make a story out of that, I suppose, but it doesn’t sound very exciting. Charlie was unique but not that unique. And you wouldn’t come all the way from Vermont for a story like that.”

  Stroud leaned back in his chair, nodded his agreement. “There’s something else in the notes. This fellow did more than keep track of Charlie up here. He went down to Big Rapids, snooped around, found out Charlie’s wife is a school librarian, retired. Has a bunch of Big Rapids addresses jotted down. Charlie was retired from the post office. I didn’t know he was from Big Rapids.”

  “He mentioned it,” Fitzgerald said. “But I never heard him talk about the post office. I didn’t know what he’d retired from.”

  “Early retirement—one of those management shifts. He took the opportunity, got out. This Alec Proffit, he wasn’t just interested in Charlie as a fisherman. It’s more than that. No reason to go down to Big Rapids if it wasn’t.”

  “But what more?” Mercy said.

  “You see why I didn’t bring it up at the news conference?”

  “Of course. But what’s the next step?”

  “Keep seeing if we can locate this Proffit.” Stroud paused, looked from Mercy to Fitzgerald. “And try to figure out why he was shadowing Charlie.”

  “How?” Mercy asked.

  “What I think the sheriff’s getting around to,” Fitzgerald said to her, “is this isn’t free coffee.”

  *  *  *

  STROUD’S PLAN FOR Mercy was that she should drive down to Big Rapids, pay a call on Charlie’s wife. It would be an official call, as a DNR supervisor of the campground in which Charlie died, offering her condolences. She could also offer her services with funeral arrangements. The state police had notified Charlie’s wife of his death, but the body wouldn’t be released until Slocum Byrd was finished with his examination. Mercy might act as a go-between, helping Charlie’s wife make decisions at a painful time. Stroud didn’t know if there were children, adults now, helping her as well.

  Mercy’s real task would be to learn what she could about Alec Proffit. Had he spoken with Charlie’s wife? Had he spoken with post-office authorities in the town? What had he done in Big Rapids? Stroud could send a deputy down there, but Mercy going would rock the boat less in the event Alec Proffit wasn’t involved in Charlie’s death. Stroud didn’t want the investigation to get ahead of itself. He didn’t want to give any indication Proffit was a person of interest until more information was in hand.

  “You mean I’m more subtle,” Mercy grinned at him, “than your ham-handed deputies?”

  “What I mean is I thought you’d want to help. We’re working together on this, we said. While you’re at it down there, you could try to get a feel for Charlie’s family situation—wife first of all, relatives, children if there are any, friends. We may have to move the investigation in that direction.”

  “Proffit seems a better bet.”

  “Maybe. But there’s a rule of thumb: Don’t count your chickens ’til they’re hatched.”

  “Highly original. All right,” Mercy said. “I’ll phone from the office, see if I can call on her sometime tomorrow.”

  “Let me know right away what you learn.”

  “You know how I follow orders.”

  “Why I mentioned it,” Stroud said.

  Stroud’s plan for Fitzgerald was that he would look into the possibility Alec Proffit was a journalist. He could call someone he knew at the Free Press, get the ball rolling. There must be some data bank of journalists the paper had access to. Stroud could have the state police run the same kind of check, but for the time being he preferred to limit their help to matters of criminal background. He didn’t want the state police looking into anything about journalists, stirring up that nest of potential trouble. Imagine something like that getting back to a fool like Gus Thayer.

  “Okay,” Fitzgerald said at once.

  Stroud looked at him closely.

  “The paper will help. No problem.”

  “You’re gathering information, is all.”

  “I won’t write anything, if that’s what you mean. We still have a deal: I ever do, I’ll let you know in advance.”

  “All right,” Stroud said.

  “Oh, come on,” Mercy said. “We’re all doing this for Charlie. That’s the whole point.”

 
; “It is,” Fitzgerald said.

  Stroud nodded and asked, “You want more coffee?”

  “No,” Mercy said, “but what’s that business Gus had about a break-in and a shotgun? “

  “Another thing to chew Gus out about, bringing that up. Caretaker of one of the places down from Rainbow Run, where you come into the river along Dunkellin Road, he discovered a break-in and called the office. He checks the place once a week, so there’s no certainty when it happened. He thinks only one thing might have been taken—shotgun from a gun cabinet. He doesn’t know what gauge.”

  “Doesn’t the owner know?”

  “You know the area I’m talking about, all log places, look like motels they’re so big? Those places are closed up most of the time, owners gone. This case, the owner’s off fishing in Montana, you can believe that. Has a place on the Borchard yet goes off, middle of summer, to Montana. I don’t understand rich people.”

  Mercy said, “You ought to talk more to Fitzgerald.”

  “He means the filthy rich,” Fitzgerald said. “So it may have been the shotgun that killed Charlie, but there’s no way of knowing until the owner returns.”

  Stroud tossed a hand in the air. “All he can tell us is the gauge of the gun, assuming he can remember. If it’s a .16 gauge, stolen within the rough time period of Charlie’s death, there might be a connection.”

  “But it won’t matter,” Mercy said, “if you don’t find the gun. All you’ll have is a possibility.”

  “We’re checking the area around Charlie’s campsite, tramping through the woods. We find anything, all that jack pine, it’ll be dumb luck.”

  “There’s one thing,” Fitzgerald said. “The break-in at an empty house—that might suggest knowledge of the river. Someone had been around enough to notice the house wasn’t being used. He wasn’t a stranger to the river.”

  “Maybe,” Stroud said. “On the other hand, maybe he was a stranger who stumbled on an empty place.”

  “More dumb luck,” Mercy said. Then she said, “Let’s do something, talk about it later.”

  9

  “TACKY,” JAN SAID after Verlyn placed the sign near the fly shop’s display of tippet spools. She took the sign down and replaced it with a piece of white cardboard neatly lettered with a red marker in sweeping cursive.

  “Can’t be red,” Verlyn told her. “Charlie’s dead.”

  Jan turned the piece of cardboard over and redid the sign with a black marker. “Better?”

  “Except it looks like a woman wrote it.” The message itself, though, was still exactly to the point: CHARLIE ORR REWARD FUND. SEE VERLYN OR CALVIN.

  “You’ll have to start a separate bank account,” Jan pointed out, “to keep track of the money. You’ll have to account for every penny.”

  “I got it.”

  “And there’s what the reward goes for. You’ll have to specify. It could go just for information.”

  “I got that, too.”

  “Or the information would have to lead to the arrest and conviction of the killer.”

  “Quiet day in the lodge?” Verlyn said. “Nothing worth doing in there?”

  Jan bit her lip, gave Calvin a wan smile, turned on her heel. Calvin watched until she was gone from the shop. “Mellow out,” he told Verlyn. “She’s trying to be helpful.”

  “We don’t need any help. We’ve got a sign, we take the money that comes in, we hand it over to Stroud. Let him decide what it goes for.”

  “Right,” Calvin agreed.

  “I told Graham Underwood about Charlie before you came upriver. Put him in for five hundred, he said.”

  Calvin winced. “I’ll do a couple hundred soon as I get my checkbook from the cabin.”

  “Reward of a few grand, information will roll in. Stroud’s getting his job done for him.”

  “Right,” Calvin said. He was sitting on the high stool at the tying bench that occupied the center of the shop but hadn’t clamped a hook in the vise, beginning something. Usually he didn’t hang around the fly shop without tying, working automatically, talking with Verlyn or with customers if they wanted to talk to him, keeping busy. Some days, bad weather or no guide trip scheduled, he would finish a half-dozen flies before he knew it. Today, with the news about Charlie Orr, he didn’t feel like starting even one.

  “I’ve got a call in to Mercy,” Verlyn said. “Fern Lax said she was tied up with Stroud, some kind of news conference. Fitzgerald’s over there, too.”

  “So maybe Stroud’s got it solved already.”

  “Not unless a guy walked in the door and confessed.”

  Calvin said, “You got somebody in mind?”

  “I was speaking in general. I’ve been thinking, going over names, trying to make a list. No problem if I’d been the one camping in Rainbow Run. List as long as your arm. Same for you.”

  “Naw,” Calvin said. “A few women I’ve dumped, is all.”

  “With Charlie I can’t come up with a single name. There’s some probably thought he had a screw loose, living in a tent. Hell, I thought he had a screw loose.”

  “Naw. Eccentric, is all.”

  “But that’s no reason to shoot him.”

  Calvin nodded, stroked his beard, looked beyond Verlyn at the sign beside the tippet spools. “You’d need a good reason.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. There isn’t one.”

  “Maybe there is.”

  “Well?” Verlyn said when Calvin didn’t continue.

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Dammit, Calvin. You’re getting into a bad habit. You start something, then clam up. You don’t want to tell, don’t start.”

  “All right,” Calvin said.

  “But you did start. So tell.”

  “You’ll be pissed off when I do.”

  “Tell.”

  “After the kid came downriver to get me, it popped into my head. Seeing him did it.”

  “Kit?” Verlyn snapped.

  “Not the kid himself. That old stuff. What he got himself into.”

  *  *  *

  “WE TURN HERE,” Kit said when they reached a small clearing in the jack pines with a shallow rivulet crossing it. “We follow this down to the mainstream, walk upriver the rest of the way. Verlyn goes bonkers otherwise.”

  “Keep the peace,” Gwendolyn Underwood said. “I understand.”

  She wasn’t, Kit had decided, the spoiled rich brat you would expect. She didn’t have any hesitation about hiking back through the woods to the Kabin Kamp, and she’d had a ball getting brookies to strike a Parachute Adams in a stretch of water that allowed long, smooth drifts. She wasn’t quick enough setting the hook, but she was getting better—and she didn’t get down on herself when she missed a strike. She just made another cast, concentrating all the harder. Kit had to tell her when it was time to head back to the lodge for lunch.

  “Couldn’t we stay,” Gwendolyn had said, “while they’re hitting?”

  “Your dad will wonder where you are.”

  “He knows I’m with Calvin.”

  “Except you’re not. And he expects you back for lunch.”

  The jack pines closed in again, and they walked along the rivulet, single file, Kit leading the way, rods held pointing behind them. When they reached the mainstream, Kit told Gwendolyn to be careful, there was muck they had to get through to reach the streambed, and she moved up beside him and put a hand on his arm, steadying herself. The grip of her fingers was amazingly strong for someone so slender.

  “That’s the only bad part,” Kit said when they reached firm footing, “following the stream back to the river.”

  “It wasn’t so bad,” Gwendolyn said.

  “There’s some places, you don’t know your way, you sink in past your knees. You need help getting out.”

  “You know a lot about the river.”

  “I should,” Kit said, “growing up here.”

  “Couldn’t you be my guide?”

  Surprised, Kit turned, l
ooked into large eyes beneath the blue cap, realized with more surprise that Gwendolyn was still gripping his arm. “Calvin is.”

  “But couldn’t I ask your dad for you?”

  “You could,” Kit said after a moment’s consideration. “But you’ll have to play it by ear, be sort of tactful. Verlyn and Calvin, guys that age, can be touchy as hell. And about nothing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You might say it’s because of what happened to Charlie Orr. Calvin feeling the way he does about it. You understand, Gwen?”

  “Yeah,” she repeated, and seemed not to notice that he had shortened her name.

  *  *  *

  BEFORE CALVIN COULD explain, Jan came into the fly shop and announced that fresh coffee was ready. For Calvin there was tea.

  “We’re busy in here,” Verlyn told her.

  Jan looked around the shop, seeing no one else there, but held her tongue.

  “I could stand a mug,” Calvin said.

  Jan gave Verlyn another look. “Honey?”

  “Bring it,” Verlyn said, “you’re gonna keep asking.”

  Calvin waited until Jan had brought two big mugs, then left again for the lodge before he asked Verlyn why he was being so rough on a wife who was going out of her way to be a sweetheart.

  “None of your business.”

  “That’s so,” Calvin agreed.

  “The one smart thing you ever did,” Verlyn said, “was not get yourself married.”

  “I figured it wouldn’t work with being a guide, going to New Zealand, things I do. You got a different situation. You need somebody to run the lodge. Who’s gonna do that except a wife? You learned with Mercy.”

  “I learned a lot with Mercy. All bad.”

  “Funny thing,” Calvin said. “She says the same about you. But it doesn’t figure—everything bad yet you two end up with Kit. He’s a good kid.”

  “Okay,” Verlyn said. “You’ve had a slug of tea. Now get off the dime.”

  “It’s not about Jan.”

  “Dammit, Calvin.”

  “Coming upriver I was thinking who’d want to shoot Charlie, harmless guy like that, and came up blank. There’s no reason, which means shooting him is senseless. Now you think about that a while, senseless crimes, and you ask yourself what’s going on. Going on these days. It’s always the same thing. You read about it all the time in the papers. You with me?”