Free The Royal Wulff Murders by Keith McCafferty Page A

voice.
    “Nice cat,” said Hess. He squatted down and clucked to the cat.
    “Well,” the man said, scratching a stubble of salt-and-pepper beard that seemed incongruous with the flame thatch that flourished on his chest. “D-24’s been quiet. I take a drive around, once in the morning to catch the late arrivals, make honest men of them”—he rubbed his fingers together to indicate payment—“and again about eight in the p.m. Haven’t seen anyone there now in, I don’t know, five-six days.”
    “Is there a car?” Hess asked.
    “Last I looked.”
    “You get worried when a camp seems to be abandoned?”
    “Well…”
    “Just a little?”
    “Sure. I suppose.”
    Martha frowned at Hess.
    “What’s the name on the register?” she asked the host.
    He looked down the list. “Bill Johnson. Dillon, Montana. No street address. Occupants, one. Filled out the register Tuesday night, paid up through the weekend. Subaru, Montana plates, Bridger prefix. Sound like your fella?”
    “This Johnson, what’s he look like?” Ettinger said.
    The gaunt man shook his head.
    “Came in after dark. I usually take a stroll around the loops about ten, you know; the doctor says it’s good for my heart long as I don’t push it. There was a fella setting up a tent. I got the double vision half the time so I seen two of him, but I wouldn’t recognize him if he knocked on this door. I just collected the money in the envelope. He paid cash, I suppose that’s unusual. One night, two nights, no. But six nights, nine bucks per, that’s fifty-four dollars. And left me a tipat that. Three twenties.” He raised a pair of eyebrows as thick as scrub brushes.
    “You have the ticket?”
    “I’d have to dig for it.”
    “We’ll check out the campsite while you do.”
    “One thing I remember,” he said, “he was dang sure comic; didn’t seem to know what end of the tent was what.”
    S ite D-24 was secluded in the pines on the lip of a high bank. A small girl, her ringlets of blond hair catching the last of the sunlight, was dancing on the picnic table. She jumped down at the Cherokee’s approach and dashed along a faint path toward the only other campsite within view, where she disappeared behind the flap of a khaki tent trailer.
    Martha and Walt clambered out and took in the camp. A Subaru sedan with a paint-peeled hood was parked in the gravel tongue; a small dome tent was staked down by the table where the girl had been dancing.
    “Why don’t you take a walk next door, Walt, see what that girl was doing here. And see if anyone’s noticed anything or seen anyone while you’re at it,” Martha called after him.
    “Okee-doke.”
    Martha stood with her hands on her hips, looking down a valley of lupine and Indian paintbrush toward Quake Lake, its shoreline in purple shadow. The bare bones of lodgepole pine trees stuck up like porcupine quills from the surface where the Madison had flooded after the earthquake.
    She felt the fine hairs on her forearms erect with goose bumps.
    “This place gives me the willies,” she said under her breath.
    She told herself to calm down. She had moments like this when she felt scared and inadequate, like she was still a child. She would become dissociated from her body, wonder who this woman was whowore the uniform and packed a pistol on her hip. From habit, she placed her left hand against the side of her neck and felt her pulse beat against her fingers. Strong and steady.
    Refocusing, her eyes glanced from the tent to the picnic table, from the fire ring to the car. The car and the table were coated with a fine pollen. The girl’s shoes had beaten a tattoo on the middle boards of the table. The fire ring contained a few chunks of charcoal; a depression in the middle of the ring showed where someone had doused the fire. Everything had a long disused look. She peered at the windshield of the car. On the dash was a green card that might be the stub of a camping permit, but the refraction of a