The Gray Ghost Murders by Keith McCafferty

Author:Keith McCafferty
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin USA
Published: 2013-01-22T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

For Love of Fidelia

Martha Ettinger was walking up the hill from the creek, wearing hip boots. A fly rod poked in front of her, the tails of her plaid flannel shirt were tied in a knot, there was a wicker creel on her hip. Stranahan rolled down the window of the Land Cruiser and told her she looked like a Norman Rockwell painting.

“I didn’t know you fished, Martha.”

“I also know how to tell time,” she said. “You’re late. I’ll see you up at the house.”

When she met him on the porch, she opened the lid of the creel. Three brook trout with jade flanks patterned by creamy spots rested on a bed of ferns. The backs of their heads were starting to discolor where she had whacked them with a stone.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of the those fly fishermen who doesn’t believe in killing a trout to eat,” she said.

“I have nothing against eating trout, especially brookies.”

“Good answer, ’cause that’s what I’m frying up for lunch.”

“You’re not mad at me for being late?”

“You mean for the second time this week, and this time you being on the county nickel and all. No, I’m not going to let anything spoil my mood on my day off, especially not a man at such loose ends he feeds a mouse just so it keeps him company. You’re still feeding that critter, right?”

“Mickey,” Sean said. “Or maybe it’s Minnie. And I have a girlfriend now, a human one. At least I think I do.”

“Katie? She’s only making a play for you, that’s obvious as mud. You don’t watch out, she’ll put a collar around your neck and start telling you ‘Fetch.’”

“It isn’t Katie.”

Martha looked at him, raised her brow. Sean said nothing.

“Then don’t tell me. So what do you say we drink iced tea on the porch and bat this thing around?”

They talked about the congressman’s penchant for guns, his admiration for “The Most Dangerous Game.” Martha wasn’t familiar with the story. Neither could make Crawford as a murderer, even if he had painted a credible scenario for the way the men on Sphinx Mountain were killed.

“This thing about Polly Sorenson. Crawford makes a point of getting to know the one member of the club who’s seriously ill?” Stranahan made it a question, drank his tea as he watched Martha consider.

“Well, I don’t know what to say about that,” she said. “It ties in in the obvious way, the bodies on the Sphinx, those men having terminal illnesses. That’s why I wanted to talk to you this morning, to tell you we ID’d one of the victims.”

“Really? That’s good work.”

“It’s all thanks to Doc. The second body, the one you and Katie stumbled across, the guy had valley fever. It causes degenerative bone and nerve damage. Doc recognized the scars on the tissue and bones right away.” She sketched in the details of the disease and its prevalence among Hispanics.

“It sounds horrible,” Sean said.

“It is. There’s a very high suicide rate. Anyway, it turns out one of Doc’s supervisors in med school pioneered treatment for the disease.

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