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

  “I wonder if this is the owner of that memory stick.”

  Chuck glanced at me but made no effort to answer. Nor did he pull out any of his ubiquitous bags and load up the hand as evidence. I recognized what he was doing. Chuck wouldn’t touch anything until he had reconstructed everything in his mind.

  “Want me to take pictures?” I asked.

  “No. You keep watch. I’ll do it as I go.” Chuck patted his pocket, making sure the camera was in place.

  * * *

  Chuck knew that he was a competent detective, a good one even, and he performed competently in his job. In the city. But for all his recent adventures in the wild, he found it much harder to do his job out there in the heart of darkness. The Mountie wasn’t fey, but he thought the echoes of the grunts and snarls of violence lingered in the frozen air and it was frightening enough to raise the small hairs on his neck.

  The Mountie shook his head. Such thoughts just wouldn’t do. He needed to concentrate on the evidence and not be distracted by fear of bears and wolves and blizzards. Max would warn them if any animals approached, and Butterscotch was carrying a shotgun that she was more than able to use if anything attacked them. He needed to forget the outside stuff and retreat into his mind, because it was with his brain and its gift for intuition—not microscopes and forensics—that he would understand what had happened here.

  “It’s okay,” Butterscotch said softly. “Do what you must. Max and I are keeping watch for you.”

  So great was his trust that Chuck let go of his worries and began to pay attention to the snow. He sorted out tracks and started to reconstruct what had happened.

  First he found the second set of snowmobile tracks and discovered the woman’s snowmobile just off the trail, half hidden in some bushes. It had been trashed, the seat ripped off completely and the gas tank punctured. But it hadn’t been dragged anywhere, so this was probably where the woman had waited, concealed by shrubbery. Maybe she had had food with her and that was why the bears attacked the snowmobile.

  He looked around and sighted on the largest tree. Men being men, that would be where Brian stopped to relieve himself. And likely where he was shot. A still target was easiest to shoot.

  He followed a second set of tracks toward the pine. Chuck pushed through the snow and peered at the tree’s trunk. From the look of the reddened bark, Brian had also leaned against it after he was injured. Fifty feet away from the hidden snowmobile was frozen proof that he had been answering the call of nature and that was why his coat had been taken off. Fifty feet was a long distance for an amateur but nothing for someone who was used to shooting at immobile targets at a range.

  “This is the usual route between McIntyre’s Gulch and Seven Forks? This is the way Brian would have had to come?”

  “With a snowmobile? Yes. Veer off this trail and you’ll fall in a ravine.”

  So it made sense that someone who knew the road would hide their snowmobile in one of the few stands of shrubs and then lie in wait there. Was she local and therefore knew the route from Seven Forks? Or had someone told her about the trail?

  The disturbed blood and damaged snow confused things. Bears certainly screwed up the crime scene. Chuck couldn’t tell what were older blood splatters from newer ones because of the snow freezing everything in place. Nor could he sort out Brian’s blood from the other victim’s. But he could follow tracks, calculate ballistics, and measure force applied, and he did this until he found the remains of a pink parka. It had a large, bloody hole in it and the sleeves were missing. The pocket was intact though and held closed with a zipper.

  “She liked pink,” Butterscotch said sadly and then returned her gaze to the woods. Max was quiet, scenting the air.

  Chuck opened the zipper carefully and extracted a badge. Jane Doe had another name. She was also Janet Dee. Her picture wasn’t particularly clear. He could see dark hair and eyes. She looked familiar but that was probably because she looked like half the women in Winnipeg. Under her name it said Immunology.

  “Immunology where? For what company? Hopefully not the government,” Chuck murmured, showing the badge to Butterscotch and then slipping it into his own pocket after she shook her head, indicating that the woman was a stranger. He dropped the bloody piece of coat.

  “That can’t be good though.”

  “No. Not good at all.”

  Holy Hell! What had Brian gotten himself into this time? Was this woman, Janet Dee who worked in Immunology, just another of his casual pickups?

  Or, as was more his style, had he set out to seduce her to get access to specific information? And what kind of information? Nasty viruses? Bioweapons? The formulas for the latest flu vaccines? Was this some other kind of industrial espionage? And for whom was he shopping? Himself? Another company? Another government? Their own? There were too many candidates for the role of puppet master here.

  Because it almost had to be something like that. Casual dates, even with pigs like Brian, didn’t usually lead to double wilderness homicides.

  “How about this for a scenario? Janet Dee had started dating Brian and then one day she discovered that something had been taken off her computer—probably something she shouldn’t have brought home from the office to work on after hours. She’d have guessed who had taken it right away and, not wanting anyone at her job to know that she had screwed up by bringing work home, she came looking for Brian on her own.

  “She confronted him, demanded the return of her property—most likely the pink memory stick. Brian likely refused—he was shot from the front so he was facing his killer.”

  Had he laughed at her? Goaded her?

  “And he pushed her too far. Some men are stupid that way,” Butterscotch agreed.

  Chuck, though he fought to remain dispassionate, felt a degree of worry and a huge amount of disgust. Brian’s theft had led to this mess. He didn’t want to think about that tiny hand—all that was left of this woman’s body. A stranger, maybe a not very moral person, but still a human. And one who had ended up in the belly of a bear so there would be no body to take home and bury.

  He knew how Brian had reacted to being shot, but those injection sites on his body were now worrisome. The best he could hope for was that Brian had taken up recreational drug use and they had caused some kind of killing rage. The worst….

  The evil, dumb bastard. Had he tried smuggling out some kind of potentially lucrative drug formula by injecting it into his own body? Was he that dumb as well as dishonest?

  “I wonder if he was an evil child.”

  “Probably.”

  But was that true? When had he acquired his moral taint? Had he been born a sociopath but hidden it until after he joined the police? Or had he been pushed into some immoral act by circumstance on the job and then been caught there for so long that he didn’t know the difference between right and wrong anymore? Either way, it didn’t truly matter. He had turned bad and kept on doing bad things without repenting.

  And the scary thought was that if he hadn’t died he would still be doing horrible things. Because sociopaths didn’t repent, and there was no act or sin that they wouldn’t forgive themselves, and his employers weren’t about to stop him as long as he was useful to them.

  Chuck sighed. He couldn’t do anything about that. What mattered now was figuring out why Brian was coming to the Gulch and how this Janet Dee had known about it in time to set a trap for him.

  “Only how did she know he was heading for the Gulch? Almost no one has heard of us,” Butterscotch murmured, following his thoughts as she so often did. “How did she know he would stop here? Or was it just luck that he got caught short and she acted on the opportunity?”

  “I don’t know.” What could Brian have possibly wanted in McIntyre’s Gulch? Sanctuary? That didn’t seem likely, but then neither did anything else. It would help if they knew whether Brian was aware that he was dying of poison before he started out.

  “We’re not going to find her alive, are we?” Chuck as
ked in a normal voice. He was grateful that Butterscotch was always so calm in the face of an emergency.

  “No, not with this much blood around and a limb torn off. And a giant hole in her chest. A search would be pointless unless you want to hunt up a purse or more clothing. Max could probably track that, though I don’t recommend it.” She was also matter-of-fact, though Chuck didn’t for one moment think that this was because she was indifferent. She had simply developed the survivor’s calm. It was a pity that she couldn’t join the police force because she would make a good detective.

  “If there is no chance of rescue then we need to get back. I have to find out what is on that memory stick.” And what might be harboring in Brian’s body. At this point he’d be delighted to find heroin or methamphetamines and that Janet Dee’s worst sin was cooking illegal drugs for her boyfriend.

  He needed a computer for another reason and wondered where he could get one. The first step was to anonymously Google Janet Dee. If she was anybody prominent in her field there would be some cyber footprints. If she were a nobody—just a secretary or something—there would be even more material, social networking sites, etc. If there was nothing on her…. Well, that would be a bad sign. Only the government could completely disappear people.

  “Big John has a computer. No Internet though. Maybe you can use your new phone? Or is that not safe?”

  “Right, my phone. Better not to. It can be tracked.” He never used it for anything except official business since they kept records of officers’ calls and online searches. “We should probably send a blood sample to be analyzed too, but by whom? If it isn’t too dangerous? I mean, what if he’s carrying some kind of disease?” A crack appeared in his calm. He wasn’t trained to deal with biological hazards.

  “Stop it. Doc didn’t see any sign of disease—just a poison that caused internal bleeding. Anyway, the body is frozen. No one touched the wound with bare hands, right? We’re okay then.” This she said with a bit more emphasis, trying to calm him but also convince herself that all was well.

  “Of course.” Good God! He hadn’t even considered the medical danger to everyone in the Gulch until now….

  But Butterscotch was right. It was unlikely to be anything like a superplague. After all, people didn’t bring home samples of superbugs for a one-night stand to steal. And it was unlikely that Brian would have been given any tours of top secret biological weapons labs, not with being watched so closely. So, probably he had thought he was stealing the new Viagra or something commercial.

  “Chuck, have you thought.…” Butterscotch stopped.

  “About turning the whole thing over to someone who is competent with computers and drugs? Yes—but who? I don’t trust anyone in my office. And I don’t know how I could explain the backup drive anyway. Not without bringing up Brian and having everything lead back to the Gulch.”

  Butterscotch nodded, but her brow was furrowed and Chuck knew she was thinking hard.

  “It’s beginning to snow,” she said after a moment. They were under a dense canopy of evergreens and no flakes had yet to penetrate, but Chuck didn’t doubt her pronouncement. “Since we don’t need to follow the trail anymore, let’s take a shortcut home. I think I know the way.”

  “Sounds good. I’ve had enough of the great outdoors.”

  Days were getting longer again but they were still not long enough to suit Chuck, who hated it when the sun went west and colors began to be muted and shadowy. All he wanted then was dinner and a warm fire. Suddenly he was feeling very cold and very much at a loss as to what to do. He hated this feeling and that it so often happened when he visited the Gulch and wandered outside Butterscotch’s cabin. Nothing was ever black and white.

  * * *

  “Danny!” Horace said jovially and offered his hand.

  “Mr. Goodhead!” the Wings replied with equal enthusiasm, shaking the offered fist. Then with an abrupt dimming of his smile he added, “This is Mr. Smith. He’ll be flying with us this afternoon. Mr. Smith, this is Horace Goodhead.”

  “How do you do?” Horace offered, but was left feeling somewhat daunted by the blank face whose eyes were covered with sunglasses. This Mr. Smith looked nothing like a zoologist, or a veterinarian or whatever he really was. Didn’t they all wear bush hats and carry medical kits? And he was pretty sure that they didn’t carry firearms in a shoulder holster.

  Probably it was just a tranquilizer gun but it made Horace uneasy.

  Of course, he’d never seen a government zoologist. Who knew what they were like?

  Horace almost rubbed his hands together. Damn! He had stumbled upon a real government conspiracy. He had always sneered at others who believed in stuff like that—but here it was. And he was right in the middle of it. Wouldn’t Chuck be surprised?

  “A pleasure,” Mr. Smith said after a long moment of scrutiny, sounding quite insincere. “Mr. Jones, the weather report says it is beginning to snow in Seven Forks. We should be leaving.”

  Horace started to say that they weren’t going to Seven Forks but then stopped. Maybe the zoologist was going to Seven Forks and they would be dropping him off first.

  “Don’t worry,” the Wings said, turning away and giving Horace a wink. “We’ll get to Seven Forks easily enough and you can get to the Gulch from there. Why, I’ve flown in way worse weather and so has Mr. Goodhead who is one hell of a pilot himself. You have nothing to worry about.”

  Horace didn’t understand why they weren’t taking the vet or whatever he was on to McIntyre’s Gulch, but he would play along with Danny. Though a law abiding citizen, Horace felt happy to dupe this unfriendly fellow.

  Horace climbed into the backseat, leaving the seat next to Danny for their strange, unfriendly passenger.

  “So what have you been up to, Mr. Goodhead? Did you make it to the airshow?” Danny asked as they got everything stowed away and he began a preflight check.

  Horace didn’t think he should say anything about studying up on sticky bombs and anti-personnel incendiary devices. Sometimes people got the wrong idea when you mentioned explosives.

  “I’ve been reading up on the Tiger Moth and Operation Banquet. It’s all very fascinating.” Horace launched into an enthusiastic description of this World War II RAF operation. He made it as boring and technical as possible. Horace didn’t like the zoologist and saw no reason to entertain him by talking about neutral subjects just to be polite.

  Danny glanced back once they were airborne. His eyes were laughing. In fact, just for an instant, he looked a little crazy.

  “That’s real interesting, Mr. Goodhead.” The plane gave a small shudder. “Damn. I sure hope we don’t hit any pockets of turbulence. You never know what kind of wind conditions we’ll encounter this time of year. Why I’ve been in some storms that left my liver upside down for a week!”

  Horace began to feel uneasy. His last flight with Danny had been terrifying. He didn’t like the zoologist and wouldn’t mind if he had a little scare, but hoped that this one would be less eventful than Christmas. Losing an engine once in a lifetime was enough for anyone.

  Chapter 8

  The shortcut proved to be a bad idea as shortcuts so often are. It got us away from the bear and wolf tracks, but took us into an area I was not familiar with. An area with ravines—shallow and deep—that we seemed destined to fall in. Max, being lighter, could apparently find the ice-bridges across these annoying little chasms. Chuck and I just fell through. Had the snow been less deep, we would have been injured. As it was we were just exhausted and cold from all the scrambling.

  It was down in one of these little valleys, the deepest we’d fallen in so far, that we discovered an interesting rock. By discovered, I mean that Chuck fell on it, shrieked an obscenity, and knocked most of the snow away so I could see it.

  Now, I don’t advertise this to the others in the Gulch, but I have a fascination for lost cities, dead cultures, and mummies. Maybe because I live in a lost city, one whose history will never be written and whic
h will baffle anthropologists when they find the remains a millennium on.

  My favorite lost city story is El Dorado, but the ones I have read the most about—because there is more to read—are about the lost settlements of the Vikings.

  Most of us who have studied the modern anthropological curricula know that five centuries before Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, the Vikings had arrived in the new world and spent some time exploring the east coast of the Americas. If the various science magazines are to be believed, the Basques and Irish had visited too, though they did not build any settlements that anyone knows of.

  Many of the historians and archaeologists agree that the Viking settlements were all on the coast—in Greenland, Iceland, and Hudson Bay. But there was another one mentioned, one that hasn’t been found, called Vinland. Most scientists think Vinland was somewhere on the U.S. seaboard, but we have always had legends and stories among the local tribes that blond foreigners had worked their way inland and then disappeared.

  Could this stone be an artifact of an undiscovered Viking settlement? Could it be Vinland?

  No, probably not. No grapes grew here. But that damned rock in front of us sure looked like a Viking rune stone. I was delighted and dismayed in equal measure.

  “Oh no, now what do we do?” I asked, commenting on the potential archaeological find that might attract unwanted scientists if it ever became known, and not on the growing crackling up on the hill, the meaning of which escaped me for the moment. I slapped at my face as the tongue of ice overhead drooled slush onto my head.

  Chuck didn’t understand about rune stones though and understandably spun around to look up the mountain’s slope, which was getting noisier by the minute.

  “Uh-oh. Butterscotch.…”

  I was slower on the uptake since I was distracted, but still got turned around in time to see the mass of white coming at us.

  “We’re dead,” Chuck said as the air began to vibrate with a sound that was as much felt as heard.