Dead Water Page 7

  “Can you give me a description of this Winston?”

  “He’s kind of nondescript really. Not the type to stand out in a crowd. Medium height, dark hair, very clean-shaven … a good Republican face. Nice-looking in a bland, baby-face way. Pleasant smile … but plastered on, if you ask me.

  “The one distinctive feature I remember about the guy is that when he lies, which he did throughout my interview with him, he has a nervous tic … constantly clearing his throat. You know, Doc, I can check the morgue here at the paper for a photo for you folks. We ran a head shot with the story, and I know Michael attended a lot of charity events when he worked for Ashley. I’m sure we’ll have some good photos.”

  “That will be a huge help,” said Osborne. “Thank you very much.”

  There was a sudden silence on the phone and Osborne wondered if they had been cut off. “Hello? Hello?”

  A soft mumbling. He could barely hear Gina’s voice.

  “What? I can’t hear you.”

  She took a deep breath. “I said, I’m sure I’m the reason she’s dead, Dr. Osborne.”

  “Because she fired him? Broke the engagement, I assume?”

  “No. She did nothing of the kind. She listened. She refused to confront Michael, but she did take her books to an outside auditor, thank goodness. He was already into her for half a million bucks.”

  “So he was stealing from her?”

  “That’s what I called it, but she tried to tell me that they had some misunderstanding, that he thought he already owned half the company and this was money for an acquisition of some kind. Pure baloney. I didn’t believe it.”

  “If she thought that, why did he leave?”

  Gina was quiet again. Osborne waited.

  “I called him on it. A week after meeting with Ashley, knowing she was in Chicago on business, I confronted him. I told him that if he didn’t resign, I would tell Ashley the rest.”

  “Which was?”

  “He had a wife and three children living in Houston, Texas. He heard me all right. He left town the next day. I never told Ashley what I did. She would never have forgiven me.”

  “Do you think she still wanted to marry him?

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. She refused to prosecute. She let him run off with all that money.”

  “Then why on earth would he want to kill her?”

  “I’m sure he blames her for all the deals that fell through when he had to leave. After all, if he hadn’t tried to scam Ashley, he would never have run into me, and he would have made a fortune here. He had a lot of people conned, Doc, and he could have left when he wanted to, not because he had to.

  eleven

  “As the fish strikes, the line has to be given a little jerk … the timing and the pressure have to be perfect—too soon or too late or too little or too much and the fish may have a sore mouth for a few days but will probably live longer for his experience.”

  Norman Maclean

  “Insects always hatch at the nicest time of day,” said Lew, inhaling happily as she scanned the view over the rushing water. She had pulled into a clearing beside the Tomorrow River, jimmied open the rear door of her beat-up Mazda fishing truck, and was now standing with her hands on her hips, feet planted wide apart.

  “Those flats,” she said, pointing to the river burbling fifteen yards off to the right, “are very shallow, very easy to wade. A lot of smooth pebbles and very few boulders—oh golly, look at that.” She cupped her right hand over her forehead to shut out the sunlight flooding in from the west. “I don’t believe it. We might have a true caddis hatch, Doc.” Osborne followed her gaze to the river. The dusky summer sun infused the air with a golden light. Wings shimmered as tiny insects spun across rushing, bubbling, foaming waters.

  “I love this time of day,” said Lew, “all-hallowed dusk.” Her voice had slowed, taking on a husky tone quite unlike her usual clipped curtness. “Whoa! There’s a rise!” The woman’s enthusiasm made Osborne laugh out loud. “See Doc? Over there!”

  Osborne looked hard, trying to see what on earth she was seeing. Years of lake fishing made it no easier to differentiate a rising trout from a riffle. Nor were his eyes familiar with rivers, especially rushing rivers, which are very different from self-contained, predictable lakes.

  Rivers are alive, always changing, always moving, pulling you in. Osborne admitted only to himself that he feared rivers, even the shallow ones. The innocent facade of a dry, smooth boulder could easily hide a slippery, dangerous, deep hole. A river was like an angry woman: riveting in her energy, treacherous in her depth.

  Lew walked down to the bank of the river, grabbed at the air, tipped her head down to examine the insect in her hand, then lifted her palm to release it. Hands again on her hips, a pleased grin on her face, she watched the tiny flight back over the churning water. Osborne watched her.

  The fatigue of the long day, the frustration of the delays by the Wausau boys, the sadness of the meeting with the Herre family, the awfulness of the shattered heads and decaying bodies—all was wiped away. Sheer pleasure shone in her eyes as she charged back up the slight incline to pull off her uniform and pull on her fishing gear, all with the energy of a kid. Too shy to let her see him watching, Osborne looked past her to the river, still searching to see what she saw.

  He put on his polarized sunglasses. The surface glare vanished, and the world changed.

  “My God, look at that!” He couldn’t help but echo Lew’s excitement. Dozens of trout were rising, catching the emergers, the newborn insects. Everywhere he looked he saw fish jumping. Trout by the score. He never knew there could be so many trout in one stretch of water.

  “I gotta tell ya, Doc,” said Lew as she untied her boots and threw her waders down on the ground, “this black caddis hatch, you see something like this maybe three times in your life. So hurry up. Let’s go play with some fish!”

  Reaching behind her, Osborne swept up his waders, boots, fishing vest, and rod case. He turned around to find Lew unbuttoning her blouse. She yanked it off, then pulled on a khaki fishing shirt, sleeves already rolled up. It was only seconds between the blouse and the shirt, but Osborne didn’t think he would ever forget those seconds: the swell of her breasts against the cups of her white bra, the creamy skin, the soft shadow of nipple. He ached to touch her with an ache he hadn’t felt in years. But even if he never did touch her, it was a thrill to feel so alive again…. Still, he would love to touch her. He could always hope.

  But he was here to fish not dream. Osborne addressed a more immediate task: He had to tie a new tippet onto his leader. The prospect was daunting and a challenge he preferred to meet in private. He tarried pulling on his waders and boots so he wouldn’t feel self-conscious executing sloppy knots in her presence. He knew without asking that Hank Kendrickson could tie on a tippet in five seconds or less. Hank Kendrickson could tie a blood knot one-handed. With help, maybe he could tie one around his neck. The thought was absurd but amusing. Osborne chuckled out loud.

  “What are you laughing at?” said Lew walking toward the river, bulky in her waders and vest.

  “You,” he said, fitting together the sections of his fly rod as she charged into the water, “you’re a vision in rubber.”

  She made a gesture with her right hand that made him laugh harder, then turned her attention to the river. “Oh God, here we go! I’ll work that hole up at the first bend, Doc. You take the one straight ahead.” She pushed upstream in the knee-deep water. “Remember to stay close to the bank, and don’t let your shadow spook ‘em, Doc.”

  He let her forge ahead before he adjusted his polarized sunglasses so he could see through the bifocals. From one of the small left front pockets of his fly-fishing vest, he pulled the two-inch square envelope that held his new tippet. Holding the envelope in his teeth, he threaded the line, clipped off the old, too-short tippet, and set to attaching the new one to his braided leader. Good, done.

  He was concentrating so hard, he hadn’t even heard
Lew return. Startled, he looked up from where he sat on the bank to find her standing four feet off to his left, watching him.

  “I have a present for you,” she said. “A thank-you for all your help today. Here.” She held out a trout fly. “I tied this myself. It’s a La Fontaine Emerger, my version of a black caddis.”

  “Why, thank you, Lew. I’m not sure what I did to deserve this….” Osborne reached for the trout fly.

  “You did plenty, Doc. If it hadn’t been for you and Ray, my investigation would still be at point zero. I’d be ridiculously late with the IDs, and most of the evidence at the sites, particularly that first one, would have been destroyed. You know that.”

  Yes, he did. A late afternoon thunderstorm blew away not only the humidity and the summer haze, but the cloudburst had pounded the ruts and footprints near the trestle back into the sand.

  “I forgot to ask. Did your bug man make it in time?”

  “Yes, thank you. If I hadn’t called him when I did, we might have missed that, too. Told me he got maggot samples from both corpses, Sandy Herre and the Olson woman, and he ought to be able to establish time of death to the hour, if not closer. We did good today, Doc.” She gave him a warm and wonderful grin.

  So he was happy to accept the trout fly and relieved to see it was tied onto a healthy size-fourteen hook, large enough for him to be able to thread the tippet in easily, thanks to his bifocals. Any smaller, and he was likely to struggle for hours unless he put on his good reading glasses, which he hated to do. He was always afraid he might lose them in the river.

  “Hold on, Doc.” Lew reached for his tippet after he had twisted and looped a pretty good knot. “With these emergers hatching, I think you need to put a sinker on right about … here….” Using her teeth, Lew clamped a tiny hunk of lead onto his tippet above the fly. “Then … I’ve got this great new trick….”

  She pulled a small disk from a pocket high up on her vest and opened it to pluck a gob of bright orange gunk, which she squeezed around his tippet about eighteen inches up from the fly and the sinker. “Hank showed me this, and I love it. Okay, try a false cast. Let’s see how it works.”

  Osborne made an awkward move with his fly rod. Leader, tippet, and fly flapped in the air.

  “What the hell is wrong with your leader?” Lew demanded. She grabbed at the line and checked it closely. “Oh, shoot, you’ve got one of those damn braided leaders. Now why are you using that? I hate those things.”

  One new leader and trout fly later, Osborne was finally in the river, casting into the pool he was directed to by Lew. “When the hatch is this thick,” she said, “you want to isolate a fish and go after him, otherwise you’re just practicing your casting.” She watched him false, then roll cast. “Good, better. But you need to practice off your dock.”

  A sudden swirl hit the water by Osborne’s fly, his rod bent, and Lew, who had just turned away, swung back around and crouched, crying, “Set the hook! Set the hook!” The rod flipped up, and she dropped to her knees in the water, frustration and laughter on her face. “Oh, God, Doc, you’re so slow. You are so slow!”

  The fish long gone, Osborne looked at Lew, sheepish and bewildered. “A grown man humbled by a twelve-inch fish. This is a tough sport.”

  “Next time,” said Lew, “you want to tighten the line with a nice even pull. Okay, now I’m going to leave you alone. You work on mending your fly. Keep the rod tip parallel to the fly as you let it swing back, imitating the current.” She lifted her rod and made an incredibly smooth, easy cast, demonstrating what she meant. Osborne watched in silence, then nodded.

  She waded off to position herself near a pool about fifty feet away. The water around them burbled softly, making it easy to talk.

  Concentrating on his form as he cast, then doing what he thought was mending the fly, Osborne decided to ask a question that had been nagging him ever since she invited him to fish earlier that day. “So how many boxes of flies does your friend Kendrickson carry when he fishes?” Osborne tried to sound casual.

  Lew sent out a lovely cast. “You boys never grow up, do you. Always comparing.”

  “Not at all,” lied Osborne. “I assume he knows a lot more than I do and is better prepared. Ties his own, huh?”

  “Yep, he does. He runs that game preserve, y’know, so he gets a lot of his own supplies from the deer, elk, turkeys, even some more exotic birds. I’ll have to ask him to show you his dead animal room. It’s pret-ty amazing. Quite the professional setup.”

  “Nothing like an expert.” Osborne flopped his fly and hoped to hell she didn’t see.

  “I didn’t say that. His casting technique is sloppy. But he tries, you have to give him credit for trying.”

  “You didn’t answer my question, Lew.”

  “Ten boxes.”

  “Ten?!”

  “So he’s a show-off. But we know that, don’t we.” Lew’s tone was matter-of-fact. Osborne was acutely aware that she had once exhorted him to never enter a trout stream with more than one box of trout flies, albeit selected with care after observing the hatch or possible hatches.

  Still, Osborne had to admit Hank sounded experienced if not expert. And experts like to fish with experts. Darn, he cursed again all the years he had let his fly-fishing equipment lie unused because Mary Lee resented the expense.

  “Hank runs a game preserve, huh. Which one?”

  Lew didn’t answer the question. He watched her, body bent slightly forward from the hip, right arm high and in front, left arm stripping line. There was a time, when he was a young man, that Osborne had hoped to be an artist, sculpting, drawing. Reality changed his mind, the reality of making a living. But he never lost his love for the grace of line, how it could search and define in lovely ways.

  That could explain one of the things he had grown to love about Lew: the extraordinary economy of motion in her cast. Watching her body arc against the water, shadowed in gold by the setting sun, he was mesmerized. The woman was a study in opposites: Feet planted on land, she was rock solid, but put her in water, hand her a fly rod, and she became a creature of air and elegance, a spinner of gossamer threads.

  “I’m sorry, Doc. What did you say?” Lew reeled in a ten-inch brookie.

  “I asked which game preserve Kendrickson runs.”

  “Wildwood. It’s just this side of Mincoqua, off Horse-head Lake. He told me he wants to convert it from a game preserve to a game farm and become a supplier to hobby farmers. Said he hates the hunting side of the business. And he’s adding buffalo, which he plans to butcher and sell to restaurants.”

  A sudden pull hit Osborne’s line. “Lew!” This time he braced himself, happy that he had stripped in enough line so he could meet the force with an even pull. The rod tip bent. “Lew! I got one.”

  “Set the hook…. Good, Doc. Play out some line…. Good, great. Let it go, let it go … now!”

  The trout danced hard, pulling his line through the riffles and darting behind a boulder where he might shake off the hook, but Osborne stayed with the fish. He could tell it was good-sized. His heart pounded with excitement. Finally, he lifted the glistening beauty from the water and slipped a hand under to hold it gently for a brief time. He slipped the hook out, then cupped the fish in both hands.

  Lew had waded over to coach. Now she pulled a camera from her vest pocket. “Kneel and look up at me, Doc. That’s a beautiful brown … at least fourteen inches. Smile.”

  Osborne grinned up, happy as a four-year-old with his first bluegill. “This is the biggest trout I’ve ever caught, Lew,” he said as he guided the silvery fish back into the rushing stream.

  Only later would he remember that Hank’s catch the day before was almost twice the size. But even that couldn’t diminish his joy. And grudgingly, he had to admit he now understood why Hank had barged in so rudely.

  Twelve trout later—eight caught by Lew, including a twenty-two-inch brown she’d been after for two years, and four by Osborne—they were back at the truck str
ipping off their waders and boots. It was past nine, a darkening sky well on its way.

  “A spec-tac-ular night,” said Lew as she handed him an ice-cold ginger ale. She popped open a Leinenkugel’s for herself.

  “Yep,” she said, “an absolutely spectacular night for trout, Doc. Life just doesn’t get much better than this.” She raised her beer can for a toast.

  She took a long swig. “What a day.”

  “You can say that again. And tomorrow promises more of the same,” said Doc. They looked at each other, tired but happy to be alive.

  “So if you can pick up Gina Palmer at the airport for me,” said Lew, confirming a plan she had presented earlier, “and bring her over to the office, I’ll meet Phil Herre at his daughter’s apartment at seven in the morning.”

  “Sandy worked at the phone company, didn’t she?” asked Osborne.

  “No. That’s what’s so interesting. She left six months ago. Her parents had just helped her buy a new computer so she could start her own bookkeeping business. According to her folks, she’s been on the road from here to Rhinelander and beyond, meeting with potential customers. She wanted to specialize in the small business community, and she had a lot of good leads as a result of her five years with the phone company.”

  “So …” Osborne took a swig from his ginger ale and swatted a mosquito simultaneously. “A lot of leads, I guess, huh?”

  “Too many. Who knows how many people she talked to last week alone. But Phil said she was keeping notes on all her meetings in the computer. We’re going over those tomorrow.”

  “Gina Palmer said she’ll be bringing photos of Ashley’s ex-boyfriend,” said Osborne, “the one she’s convinced is hiding up here somewhere.”

  “Thank goodness. I have no idea where to start with that one,” said Lew. “We’ve only got ten thousand fortyish and nice-looking men between here and Minneapolis.”

  “Not to mention Isle Royale.”

  “Or Milwaukee.”

  “How did I get so busy, Doc?” Lew grinned at him. “I might have to cancel my Thursday breakfast with Hank.”