Free Death Canyon by David Riley Bertsch Page B

Oftentimes, a fly that landed harshly on the water, drawing attention to itself, was more effective than a “traditional” presentation, where the fly landed softly and quietly.
    He looked through the bins of flies for something that was in low supply and that he enjoyed to tie. He was low on a dry fly pattern called a Fat Albert and scribbled that name down on a scrap of paper. Then he scrawled the word “dozen” in parentheses next to it. Jake kept inventory of the flies he tied so that he was never without one he needed. He grimaced when he looked at his own sloppy handwriting—the result of years of dictation recorders and secretarial assistance.
    The Fat Albert was a silly-looking thing. Tied with foam and bulky like its name implied, with rubber daddy-longlegs appendages hanging from the hook. It imitated no bug actually found in nature. It was intended to look too good for a hungry fish to pass up. An old mentor of Jake’s had once said that casting a dry fly to a hungry fish was like rolling a liquor bottle into a jail cell. This was especially the case with Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat trout.
    It was a strange result of spending too much time with his finned friends, but Jake could see why certain flies looked more edible than others to fish. The Fat Albert was a very edible-looking fly.
    Fly tying calmed Jake. It was demanding enough that his mind didn’t wander to the nether regions of anxiety, but still dull enough that it never seemed like work. He felt about fly tying what others felt about practicing yoga or listening to jazz. As he trimmed and tied and knotted, he turned up the radio in the small room.
    Ugh, political talk radio. The worst.
    Jake completed his second Fat Albert and placed it in the section labeled “foam dry flies,” in the third compartment from the back, with its brethren of similar flies. His mind wandered back to the three recent tragedies in Jackson Hole. If he were investigating these deaths in Philadelphia, how would he think the problem through?
    Back when it was his job to investigate such things for a living, he would start with some premise—the beginning of a narrative—and work from there. Some said his methods relied too much on inference and imagination, that he wrote a script in his own head and then forced the facts to fit the story.
    What his critics didn’t expect was that he actually had a knack for thinking like a criminal. His wary mind had prevented several would-be crimes: conspiracies, murders, and acts of terror.
    The Zoering-Blotzheim case was a shining example. Dr. Adalwullf “Shadow Wolf” Zoering was an eighty-eight-year-old scientist and Nazi who had lived illegally in the United States from 1990 to 2000. Jake and his unit began monitoring Zoering in the mid-nineties because the U.S. government suspected he was financially backing terrorist attacks against Israel and the United States.
    It was what the unit called a “hands off” mission. No contact, only surveillance.
    Zoering caught wind of the investigation and fled to France, where he quickly turned himself in and pled guilty to war crimes charges stemming from his participation in World War II concentration camps. He died in a Parisian prison eight days after sentencing.
    It didn’t quite add up to Jake.
    Regardless, he was ordered to fly to France and assist the French authorities with closing the case. Jake stopped in D.C. instead, missing his connecting flight to Paris. He was concerned by some questions: How did Zoering know we were after him? Why did the case wind down so quietly and conveniently?
    Jake spent that evening contacting everyone with knowledge of the Zoering investigation. Finally at midnight, a lead. The home phone number for Agent Carpenter, an FBI liaison, had been disconnected. His superiors reported that he had missed work for the last three days with the flu.
    Bingo . Jake spent the night investigating the