Points West (A Butterscotch Jones Mystery Book 5) Read online

  I touched his arm, trying for compassion when mainly I felt alarm.

  “I’m so sorry! Was he a close friend?” Our voices were hushed in the presence of the dead but our words still had form, our exhalations fogging the air.

  Color flooded his cheeks and I realized that anger was replacing shock.

  “No. Brian didn’t have friends. In recent years he’s barely had colleagues. One doesn’t when one spends every waking hour rendering oneself odious. What he mainly had were bitter rivals and political minders.” I blinked, not expecting that Chuck would actually know the man and also dislike him so much. Chuck was very much a live-and-let-live kind of guy. “Look, Brian was all impulse in an unprocessed, unfettered state, and none of it was good impulses. In fact I think he was a traitor—a double agent. Maybe a triple one. I know he was crooked and took bribes.”

  “What kind of triple agent?” I asked.

  “Russian mafia, CIA—who knows. I think he was the one that told the Russians about the downed plane and he had something to do with the black box you found. I think he was finally caught in the act right around then by internal security and our side started using him to leak false information to other organizations ever since. Which is a dangerous thing to do. And since he was also unburdened with any charm or tact or scruples, I can’t say that I am surprised that someone has finally killed him.”

  Chuck had never, never been this forthcoming about his work. He had to be deeply disturbed by this man’s death, which only increased my unease.

  “A police officer! Here?” The Bones sounded horrified. I sympathized. A dead policeman was bad news. The residents of the Gulch are detached from the rest of society and prefer—no, require—that it remain this way. The death of a law enforcement officer made that difficult and worried people like us who leave no footprints—or fingerprints—behind. “You think one of your people killed him?”

  Doc sounded hopeful. Chuck shrugged.

  “Maybe. They had moral cause. Still, this doesn’t feel like something another officer or professional would do, no matter how angry. It’s too haphazard. Sloppy. Professionals don’t usually give in to impulse and this killing looks damn impulsive and poorly planned. And why the hell was he coming to the Gulch? His interest in this place should have ended when the box blew up.”

  “Damned if I know why he was here. He died without saying a word. What killed him exactly?” I asked Doc. “Can you tell?”

  “Bears?” Doc suggested with a grim smile. He has lousy bedside—and graveside—manners. “Seriously, near as I can tell without doing an autopsy, this man has had an overdose of blood thinners. Could be Coumadin or Warfarin, maybe Plavix, but I am betting it’s something nastier like rat poison. He was bleeding internally and that would only happen with a prescription medication if he massively overdosed. Of course, that bullet in his shoulder didn’t help either. He was losing blood internally and externally and his heart couldn’t cope.”

  “Bullet?” Chuck asked.

  Doc pulled back the dark shirt which had a small hole in it. It had already been partially rucked up when he examined the body so the hole wasn’t obvious. “The shirt is wet. Part blood but I think he packed the wound with snow.”

  “It’s a small hole,” Chuck said. He was putting aside anger and beginning to think like a cop again.

  “A through-and-through flesh wound. Twenty-two caliber, I’d say—a woman’s purse gun. And the shooter wasn’t that close when it happened or it would be worse than this scratch.”

  I nodded, not bothering to comment on the Bones’ gender biases. He knew his bullet wounds.

  “But there was no hole in the coat, was there?” I asked. The Bones shook his head. “So he got shot while he had his coat off. His brand new coat that still had the tags on it.”

  I was trying to add things up.

  “No hole in the coat,” Doc affirmed again. “But lots of blood on the lining. Another thing, either this guy was a diabetic who had begun taking insulin or he’d been using drugs.”

  “Drugs wouldn’t surprise me really, though I never saw any sign of that kind of thing at work. Brian was nasty, not inefficient or stupid like most addicts are.”

  Doc grunted.

  “I don’t think he’d been using long. He’s too healthy to be a long-term drug user. I wonder if that’s how a blood thinner was administered. That wouldn’t be at all standard, but damned effective if you want to kill someone.”

  “Why the hell would he have his coat off?” Chuck asked the ceiling. “It hasn’t been above twenty degrees all week.”

  “The coat was rather long. Maybe he was answering the call of nature and it was getting in the way,” I suggested.

  Chuck grunted agreement. I think our lips were freezing and it was getting difficult to speak clearly.

  “And though shot, he didn’t go back to Seven Forks for help. He just put on his coat and kept driving for the Gulch.” Chuck exhaled. “If we backtrack the trail I bet we find a corpse. Probably between here and Seven Forks. Probably closer to the Gulch, or he’d have gone back for medical assistance in Seven Forks.”

  “Unless he knew it was someone from Seven Forks who shot him,” Doc added.

  “The snowmobile was one of Anatoli’s, right?” I asked the Bones. Anatoli rented them as a sideline to smuggling prescription meds.

  “Yeah, but you can’t suspect him of shooting this guy. Anatoli never used a wussy gun in his life.”

  “I don’t suspect Anatoli.” I didn’t. The Russian was former mafia and would not have let Brian live long enough to reach the Gulch if he had set out to kill him. In fact the body would never have been found.

  Chuck picked up the corpse’s hand. It still moved but not easily. Rigor was wearing off but the body was freezing. He leaned over and sniffed. I was glad that he was wearing gloves. The gray body was giving me the creeps.

  “He’s fired a gun. Did he have a weapon on him?”

  “No,” the Bones said, and I shook my head.

  “At least I didn’t see one.”

  “So he probably dropped it somewhere on the trail and was too weak or too distracted to go back and look for it.”

  We all thought about this for a minute.

  “Was he married?” I asked, thinking ahead. A grieving widow and maybe orphans would make things so much worse. That was the kind of story that attracted the press.

  “No, but there were women—lots of them. Enough that the office gossiped.” Chuck frowned and began to look thoughtful.

  “Seriously?”

  “Not really,” Chuck answered with growing distaste. “And I think some were for hire. His last lady friend came to the office and accused him of seeing a prostitute.”

  “Ha! Therefore Hell hath enlarged herself!” the Bones said, ready to believe that a woman had shot him in a crime passionnel. It was the safest theory for us.

  “Uh-huh, and poison and a small handgun points to a woman scorned. Except he must have been shot after he left Seven Forks and I don’t think a hooker or ex-girlfriend would follow him that far. Not unless she was a psychotic Girl Guide. I mean, why not just shoot him at home?”

  “No.” Chuck agreed. “I don’t think this is a love-gone-wrong killing either. At least, it’s not just for that reason.”

  “When did you see him last?” I asked Chuck.

  “I think … Thursday afternoon.”

  “This is a long way from Winnipeg, so he must have flown in. Unless he drove to Seven Forks before the last storm, but that would mean he lead-footed it the whole way. We better talk to the Wings. Maybe we can figure out a timeline.” Hanging out with Chuck has taught me to think like a policeman.

  “I already did. He flew into Seven Forks with a pilot named Stoddard. Stoddard wouldn’t take him all the way to the Gulch. And there was a strange woman in Seven Forks who arrived a couple hours before Brian. The Wings flew her in yesterday morning. She gave the name of Jane Doe and never pulled her muffler off of her face or t
he hat off her head.”

  “The killer for sure,” the Bones predicted.

  “Maybe. Probably,” I said. “Stoddard brought him? He’s expensive. I wonder why he used him and not Danny.”

  “Probably because Brian had something to blackmail Stoddard with and could get a free ride. He did stuff like that all the time—free food, free clothes, free drugs.”

  “He sounds like a really repulsive man.”

  “Believe me, he was.”

  I shivered. It was getting really cold and I was tired of looking at the body of a very bad person.

  “So, do you want to report this? Or do we find a deep ravine to drop him in?” I asked.

  That Chuck paused to think about this option told me how far he had come from the upright officer I had met a year before.

  “Better to bury him. Or burn him. You don’t want animals feeding on his carcass. It might kill them too if he was poisoned like I think.” Doc grunted. “Another thing, I found this in his coat pocket.”

  I was half expecting some ampule of drugs, or maybe some bullets, but Doc held out a small pink stick. It was a portable memory drive for a computer. Chuck and I were all too familiar with them since the mess with my father.

  “Oh hell,” Chuck said, taking the two-inch-long piece of trouble.

  “Look, we can leave him out here for a couple of days. At this point it won’t make any difference,” Doc said. “You go find your other corpse and figure out what the hell he was doing in McIntyre’s Gulch. We can decide what to do with the body after we have all the facts.”

  “Okay,” Chuck agreed.

  Sometimes the Mountie still surprises me.

  Chapter 6

  Chuck was happy to make it back to Butterscotch’s cabin. It was small and plain, but it had a fire in the hearth and a dog—well, a wolf—on the rug in front of it. And there was a warm bed where they could grab a couple hours of much needed sleep before sunrise.

  He needed to do some thinking, of course. For starters, what the hell had Brian been doing in the Gulch? The fake name, buying a coat instead of packing or going home to get one. It looked like someone on the run. But he wasn’t a kamikaze, no suicidal missions for him. So either he hadn’t known that there was danger waiting here or….

  Or he had faced something even more dangerous back in the city that made the risk worthwhile.

  Once upon a time, Chuck would have marched into the office, stomping confidently and demanding explanations. But not anymore. These days a little soft-shoe was in order when approaching the brass. In fact, a lot of times it was wise to walk on tiptoes.

  Enough, he’d think more clearly after he had rested. Instead of speculating he would relax and enjoy the mellow lemon smell in the air that somehow reminded him of his mother.

  “Want some hot chocolate?” Butterscotch asked.

  Hot chocolate sounded perfect.

  “Yes, please.”

  Chuck sighed happily and the chair, which was very old, creaked in its joints as it settled with him. In every way that mattered, this was home. He really needed to work on Butterscotch so she would agree to share it with him. Yes, his career and his father were in Winnipeg. But the career had soured and his father had been sufficiently taken with Butterscotch and the Gulch that he might even want to come and live there himself, at least in the summer. With his wife gone, there wasn’t that much to keep him in Winnipeg.

  Yes, he really needed to work on Butterscotch.

  “Here you go. This will warm you up. I added a little something extra.” She pressed a cup into his hand.

  Butterscotch kept a small cache of brandy for him.

  Chuck sipped and marveled at the silence. Of course there were sounds—snowy clumps of melting ice falling onto the roof, heavy wind gusts that made the bare trees moan. Max snoring by the fire, which popped and sizzled happily.

  But there were no city noises. No sounds of traffic on the ground or planes overhead. There were no church bells tolling the hour, no sirens disturbing the peace. It was easy to believe that the Rapture had come and taken all the other people away.

  The idea was oddly appealing. It would just be him and Butterscotch—and Max—for the rest of their lives….

  “You’re dropping off,” Butterscotch said, laying a hand on his shoulders and then kneeling down to help him take his boots off. “Come to bed now. Everything will look clearer after you’ve had some sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  It had been a long day but Chuck felt happy as slumber pulled him away from the waking world. Bad as the situation with Brian potentially was, he was still with Butterscotch, so life was pretty good. And in the Gulch he didn’t dream, even with his brain full of undigested information that needed sorting out. It was great to sleep without subconscious commentary.

  * * *

  We ate a hearty breakfast. It doesn’t do to overload on fat and carbs, but we were going to be out in the cold and expending a lot of energy. That made sausage and French toast with berry jam a good choice.

  The lack of snow and wind was a real help in finding the trail. In the slanting light of early morning we were able to clearly see the tracks left by the snowmobile. It seemed that we wouldn’t need Max’s keen nose for tracking but he came with us anyway. I don’t go into the wilds without my dog. We blame the bears for a lot of things they don’t do, but they are there all the same and very dangerous. I watched them kill a man. He was a bad man who deserved to die, but still. No, I wouldn’t ever go into the woods without a rifle and Max as a guide.

  * * *

  “Hello, Big John,” Horace Goodhead said loudly into the phone. As was often the case, their connection was poor. He called anyway because he was growing fond of the girl he hoped his son would marry. “I don’t suppose Butterscotch is in the pub?”

  “Horace, is that you?” Big John shouted back.

  “Yes, it’s me.” Horace wiggled his toes in his slippers. He really needed to get dressed but some days there just didn’t seem to be any point.

  “Madainn mhath.” Horace knew this was Gaelic and assumed it meant good morning or something like that. “Nay, Butterscotch and your boy have left just this morning to go into the woods. We fear there is another victim of bear attack.”

  “Bear attack!” Bear attack sounded significant, like code for something else, though Horace couldn’t imagine what it could mean beyond, well, a bear attack. The rest of what Big John had said finally penetrated his bemusement.

  “Chuck’s with Butterscotch, is he?” His son hadn’t mentioned any plans to visit her when they talked yesterday.

  “Aye. He came as soon as he heard about the attack. They’ve gone hunting. Took her wolf with them too. It’s very worrisome, these bear attacks, and we need to get to the bottom of it before it attracts outside interest.”

  “I can imagine.” Bear attacks! And Chuck—his tidy, city-bred son—was out hunting them. An idea formed in Horace’s mind and he acted without reflecting. “I don’t suppose Danny Jones is in Winnipeg.”

  “As it happens, aye, he is.” Big John’s voice held a smile.

  “Would he perhaps like some company on his return trip?”

  “If it’s your company, he might. Let me give you the number for the airfield.”

  “I have it, thanks,” Horace said, feeling kind of giddy. He was going off to help his son hunt bears. It would be like Christmas part two—father and son working together again!

  “It may be that there will be another passenger with Danny. Because of the attack maybe,” Big John warned. Again this sounded significant, though Horace couldn’t imagine why the man wouldn’t just come out and say what was on his mind. Unless he had guests in the pub. With it being the only phone in the village one had to be discreet when others were nearby. Of course, he wouldn’t want to scare people, especially tourists, with talk of bear attacks, though he had mentioned that straight up. So it was probably something else. Something to do with the other passenger.

  Hor
ace’s brain began to run riot.

  What could there be about the passenger that might disturb other people? Maybe—maybe it had something to do with diseases in the bears. There had been some rabid skunks attacking people last fall outside of Toronto. Rabid raccoons too. They ran right up to people in the park and savaged their dogs. Did bears get rabies? He’d never heard of that, but it would explain these out of season attacks. At least, they had to be out of season because bears hibernated in the winter. Rabies! Or something even worse? AIDS? Ebola? Of course Big John wouldn’t want to start a panic if some special animal expert was coming to examine the bears.

  And Chuck was out there! With Butterscotch. His heart clutched, stuttered, and then resumed beating.

  “I’ve got to go, Big John, but I’ll be seeing you soon.”

  “I’ll have Judy make up a room for you,” Big John said and hung up the phone.

  Chapter 7

  We had no trouble following the trail to the scene of the crime. There was also no question that there had been violence done. The snow was disturbed, churned up in waves, some bloody, some very bloody. Thank goodness the air was cold or the smell would have been unbearable. As it was, the odor was still repulsive. We hadn’t expected this. A corpse with a bullet hole fit our scenario, not one in shreds.

  Max stood stiff, his hair bristling.

  “It’s like the Incredible Hulk and Godzilla had a fistfight,” Chuck said. “My God! Is that a hand?”

  “You’re almost right. It was bears. And wolves, but they came later.”

  “What? Oh—you mean it was really bears, not bears.”

  As I mentioned we use bears as an excuse for all kinds of suspicious deaths involving outsiders.

  “Yes. They’ve been at the body. Which is kind of odd. It’s a bit early for them to leave the den. I wonder what drew them out.” I looked at the hand at Chuck’s feet. It was still more or less in its glove. It was small and the glove was bright pink, so I was guessing the body had been a woman and not a male dwarf with bad fashion sense.