Deadly Reckoning

  “I don’t know, a couple, I guess.”

  “Kev said all along there were three guys boarded that plane on Sunday morning.” Chance felt badly that he wondered if Kev was seeing double. “So, how did they get to the airport?”

  “Maybe they all flew in together,” Tyler said. “Kev wouldn’t necessarily have seen them if they came in early. He comes in late half the time when I’m not around to ride his ass. Maybe they walked over to the Copper Baron and stayed there for the night. Then walked back over in the morning. You check over there?”

  The Copper Baron Hotel sat directly across the highway from the airport, a five-minute walk at most. The commercial crews always stayed there, some fly-throughs too. “Reporter from the Standard printed the dead guy’s prison mug shot from the prison press release off the Wire Service. Nobody at the front desk recognized him from the photo.”

  Noah Gilderson had been quick to think of that idea, even if it hadn’t gotten him anywhere. At least it had eliminated one possibility.

  “Could be that one of them is local,” Chance said. “If they drove to the airport, then they left a car here unless they somehow managed to retrieve it after the crash. Did you notice a vehicle parked overnight?”

  “I was out at the lake all weekend.” Tyler’s family owned a cabin on Georgetown Lake where he and his latest girlfriend, Rachel, spent every spare moment. Tyler had long ago mastered the art of relaxation.

  Chance and Tyler walked over to the window that overlooked the parking lot and silently surveyed its two pickups and Chance’s Rover. “Yours, mine, and Kev’s,” Tyler said. Then he added, “Somebody could have dropped them off.”

  “Maybe.” If that was the case, somebody in Butte was harboring material witnesses in a murder case, no petty crime. “If they did drive here, then how would they get back here to get their vehicle after the crash.”

  “What difference does it make anyway?” Tyler said, in a mildly irritated voice. “All you’re doing is putting together a story for the paper. You don’t have to know every detail, do you?” He turned away from the window and walked into the office.

  The dismissive note in Tyler’s voice hit home. What difference did it make? The truth was, the crash had unnerved Chance, especially the fact that the pilot had disappeared. The pilots he knew were serious, safety-conscious people. They certainly wouldn’t abandon a plane they’d wrecked, let alone someone who was critically injured, even an ex-con.

  “Maybe somebody picked up their car for them,” Tyler added as an afterthought.

  “Or maybe they had someone drive them out here, and maybe somebody saw them pick up the car,” Chance said in a probing tone.

  “Well, it wasn’t me.” Tyler plopped down at the desk back behind the counter shuffling through an in-basket of file folders. Then he stopped and looked at Chance. “Which is why you asked about who else came in,” Tyler said and sighed. He reached for a black binder that showed a record of fuel sales. “A guy from California came in on Monday in one of those new Beechcrafts. He wanted to go down to Melrose to look at some property. We set him up with a rental car.”

  “Is that it? Nobody else was with him?”

  “I think I heard Kev say some young guy hopped a ride with him. I’m not sure.”

  “A rabbinical student,” a voice from behind them said.

  Chance turned around to see Morris Untermann standing in the lobby by the door to the tarmac. He and three other dentists in town owned a Cessna they kept tied down at Fitz’s.

  “Hey, Mo. Long time no see,” Chance said.

  “That’s because you missed your appointment to have your teeth cleaned,” Mo said and shook his hands in the air in mock distress. “I can’t be held responsible.”

  Chance smiled. Dr. Untermann had a light touch with the drill, but he was still a dentist. Chance always dragged his feet when it came to visits, even routine ones. “You talked to this rabbinical student?”

  “Sure I talk to him. I see him at synagogue.”

  “Where’s he live? I’d like to ask him a few questions.”

  “He lives in L.A,” Mo said with a smile. The dentist and his wife had moved to Butte from Brooklyn twenty-five years before. His accent had softened, but his appreciation for an occasional sarcasm had not.

  Chance’s heart sank.

  “But he comes to Butte once a month for services. That’s why he was on the airplane. This time the lucky schmuck hopped a ride with some rich guy from Santa Monica.”

  “Did he go back with him?” Chance asked, ready to be disappointed.

  “Nah, he doesn’t fly back ’til Sunday.”

  * * *

  When Jake Brinig was in town, the rabbinical student who provided religious guidance to the B’nai Israel Congregation stayed in a home in Butte’s “Mediterranean Block.” On the west side of Broadway and Granite between Washington and Idaho Streets, the area’s houses, many nearly a hundred years old, had almost all been renovated. One of Chance’s favorite neighborhoods, it demonstrated so well what a facelift could do to the rest of the city.

  Jake’s host owned the gray stucco Victorian home with a red and white decorative façade, which reminded Chance of a wedding cake. Its renovation had just begun when he had returned to Butte after his divorce. He had watched with admiration the progress of the restoration of the down-on-its-luck home to its former glory.

  “I wouldn’t have even noticed the car,” Jake said while he and Chance sat on a metal glider on the porch under the house’s arched entrance, “except that we followed it right out of the airport and onto Harrison Avenue for a few miles.”

  Brinig’s stylish horn-rimmed glasses clashed with his short-sleeved, white dress shirt and brown suit pants. He hardly seemed old enough to be leading a congregation. Chance knew no Jews in Butte besides Mo Untermann, who he could not imagine seeking Jake Brinig’s advice on much of anything. But Brinig had an eye for detail, and that was what Chance needed. “When exactly was this?”

  “Monday, around noon. I came in early this month. I’m officiating at a funeral tomorrow. One of my Yeshiva teachers has a brother who’s a plastic surgeon in Los Angeles, and owns his own jet. He gave me a lift,” Jake said with a smile. “They all think I’m crazy for coming out here.”

  Chance knew little about B’Nai Israel, Butte’s congregation, except that its synagogue had been renovated recently for its one-hundredth anniversary. The congregation had sunk a lot of money into the project and done it right. The gold domed building was in tiptop shape. “So why do you?”

  “My great grandfather owned a clothing store here in the twenties. Can you believe that? On Main Street. They moved back east after World War II.”

  Chance smiled. He always thought the Jewish community had to have been a lot bigger to support a building like the synagogue. Like the Finn, Croatian and Serbian communities that had shrunk once the mines started to close in the early 1950s, others moved away too. Not that many Jews worked in the mines. Like Jake’s great-grandpa, they were the retailers and professional people whose services were needed in any bustling metropolis. “Butte family ties go far and wide.”

  No doubt people in L.A. couldn’t imagine what the Mo Untermanns of the world saw in a place like Butte now. But then they didn’t know that Mo worked four days a week and went fly-fishing without fail on the fifth. “What do you think of Butte?”

  “I enjoy the history of the place, but I couldn’t live here,” said Jake. “Don’t get me wrong. I like the congregation, but the town’s too small and too slow,” he said with a sheepish grin.

  “I understand,” Chance said. “It takes a certain kind of person to survive here. Whether you’re born here or transplanted, you get this feeling about the town, and you just can’t leave. It defies explanation.”

  “That what happened to you?”

  “Well, my mother was born here, and I visited a lot when I was a kid. In the end, I couldn’t find another place I’d rather be. I guess it gets in you
r blood.”

  Jake smiled in a way that made Chance think he was envious. Feeling unexpectedly self-conscious, Chance broached the real reason he had come to talk to Jake. “When you left the airport on Monday morning, did you happen to notice the cars parked in the lot? Usually there are two pickups in the lot, one white, one red. Did you see any others?”

  “Just the one we followed out of the lot when we left,” Jake said nonchalantly.

  Chance perked up. It was a long shot but it was possible the car that had transported the men in the plane had also ridden in that car. “Did you recognize the model of the car? Anything distinguishing about it?”

  “Maroon Ford Bronco. A guy in our building has one, not that you’d need an SUV in L.A., of course. It had one of those special Montana license plates.”

  Chance smiled and pulled out his notebook.

  “I probably wouldn’t have noticed, but Mr. Samuels, who gave me a ride, didn’t know his way around that well so he drove pretty slowly at first. Plus, it being a holiday, traffic was nonexistent. The place felt like a ghost town.” He paused for a moment as if trying to visualize the car. “Oh, it had one of those ribbon magnets. You know, support the troops.”

  Chance couldn’t write fast enough. “Wait,” he said. “Let’s go back to the license plate.” There were easily twenty or thirty different specialty license plates in Montana—those that said Support the Griz, or the Bobcats or one of the other colleges. Rocky Mountain Elk foundation plates, all different ones. “Do you remember which particular plate it was?”

  “It’s that one with the sunset and the trees. Support the parks, something like that.”

  Chance made a note to check the state’s web site. But he was pretty sure Jake was describing the Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Foundation’s license plate. Hoyt Rawlins? Chance thought for a moment. No, that couldn’t be. Rawlins and other Montana game wardens drove those lime-green, heavy-duty, club cab trucks with government vehicle license plates. They even drove them to and from home so they could take off in the middle of the night if somebody called with a tip about a poacher.

  “You say you followed this car for some time. I don’t suppose you remember which way it was headed? Did it turn somewhere?”

  Jake’s quick smile made Chance’s day as if he was proud that he could find his way around town. “We came up Harrison Avenue from what you call the Flat and turned onto Dewey, followed it all the way up to Montana Street. The Bronco turned left just before the Town Pump at the light. I forget the name of that street.”

  “Platinum Street,” Chance said. The car was headed in the direction of the west side and the college. “How about a description of the driver.”

  Jake stopped with a quizzical look on his face. Apparently, he had been more interested in the car than the person driving it. He stopped and put his hand to his forehead as if he were trying to halt the lighting quick details of his mind and go back to the picture he needed.

  “Man or a woman, young or old?” Chance asked, trying to narrow the possibilities.

  Jake shook his head. “I didn’t notice.”

  Chance was surprised. The kid had paid more attention to the car than the person in it. Though in truth, that’s probably what Chance would have done.

  “Why the interest in this car?” Jake asked. “What kind of story are you working on?”

  Chance explained about the Cessna’s crash landing, which seemed to amuse Jake.

  “That sounds like a stunt for Evel Days,” he said with a smile. “Did you ask the guys at the airfield?”

  The kid was right about Evel Days. Every dare devil outfit in the West showed up at the end of July to honor the memory of Evel Knievel, arguably Butte’s most famous, or infamous, favorite son. As yet, they had not attracted any aerial acts, unless you could count the stunt guy who had jumped off the Finlen Hotel roof. Chance wasn’t about to make any suggestions.

  “They were the ones who told me about you. Or at least Mo Untermann did.”

  Chance’s cell phone rang, and he stood up to answer it. The call was from Nick Philippoussis.

  “Right,” Jake said and ran his hands through his thick, dark hair. “Mr. Untermann.” His words trailed off, as if he were wondering what Mr. Untermann might think of the conversation that had just taken place. Then he added quickly, “What’s your phone number? If I see the car again, I could call you.”

  But Chance did not hear Jake. What he heard was Nick saying, “The call just came in from Missoula. Your barnstormer definitely did not die of natural causes.”

  Chapter 11

  Tuesday evening marked the first night out in Butte in a while for both Mesa and Nana. Fine dining had not been one of Butte’s strong points since about 1950, unless of course you were looking for a thick, juicy steak. The Derby, serving one of the best ribeyes in town, was one of her grandmother’s favorites while Mesa had not eaten at the steakhouse since she was in college, not that she ate much steak anywhere.

  Like most Butte restaurants, the Derby was attached to a bar and casino, and the bells and whistles of one-armed bandits had greeted them at the front door. Mesa surveyed the patrons, wondering who she might run into, as she followed her grandmother and their escorts into the dining room to a booth in the dining room.

  Shane Northey glanced at Mesa over his menu, and then nodded toward their respective grandparents who were conferring about the early-bird specials over a single menu. Shane stifled a grin as did Mesa.

  The last time she had eaten dinner with anyone’s grandparents, they had been the banker’s. It was Valentine’s Day, seven months ago, and they had gone to Pigall’s, a five-star French restaurant in Cincinnati, famous for its snooty waiters.

  All that evening she had felt she was auditioning for membership in the family. The banker’s grandfather still actively ran the family’s banking business. His patrician attitude would not have made him popular in Montana.

  When Mesa spoke French to the waiter, the grandfather had been suitably impressed. Later she had silently cursed herself for showing off. All things considered, she decided she was much happier dining in Butte.

  Nana did her best to showcase Shane’s suitability. She kept asking him to talk about the legislature and how the governor had encouraged him to run for office.

  “I met him at the Weed Whackers’ Ball in Wise River last summer,” Shane said after his blush subsided. “He probably said the same thing to half a dozen other people there.”

  Mesa doubted that. The way Shane talked about his work for the Big Hole River Foundation, she could tell he had mastered the delicate balancing act needed to talk to Montana ranchers about environmental concerns and its world-class trout stream. He had skills a legislator needed in this state. “Don’t be so modest,” Mesa teased.

  “Seriously, all I did was pet his Border collie,” Shane said. “Next thing you know, he’s telling me Helena needs some younger blood.”

  Soon Mesa found herself having a meaningful, two-way conversation with a man about a serious subject. They talked about environmental regulations and the equally important and sometimes conflicting need to bring new companies and more jobs to Montana. They talked about art and music. He played bass guitar in a jazz trio. She had just begun to think Nana had the right idea about Shane when she saw Hardy Jacobs pass through the restaurant and into the casino.

  * * *

  On his way into the Copper Baron Hotel, Chance had called Adrienne. He had never been one to call women. His ex-wife had said it was one of his passive-aggressive traits. He seemed to call when she didn’t want him to.

  Maybe that was why he found himself calling Adrienne more often. She never expected him to do anything.

  “You’re lucky. I was just about to turn my phone off,” she said when she answered on the third ring. She frequently turned the phone off when she painted.

  “Had dinner yet?” he asked. She never seemed to eat unless he did. She appeared to exist on herbal tea and an occasional bowl o
f soup.

  She chuckled. “Is this an invitation?”

  “Always, and open-ended, although not at this particular moment.” Then he explained where he was.

  “I need you to clear something up for me,” he said, sounding more serious than he meant to.

  “Not another medical question?” she said.

  He could imagine her leaning against a windowsill chewing on the end of a paintbrush, her usual curious self, inquisitive without being intrusive. He gave her the details of the state medical examiner’s report that had been faxed to the coroner’s office just before quitting time. Nick had read him the pertinent sections over the phone.

  Lowell Austin had died of spinal shock, caused by a puncture wound between the second and third cervical vertebrae. “He had some cuts and scrapes from the impact,” Nick had said. “The entry wound must have been hidden by his hairline. I watched the doc going over that body, and they didn’t see anything that unusual while I was there.”

  “That’s gruesome,” Adrienne said. “And certainly not something the average person would be able to do, except maybe by sheer accident. The neck is the boniest part of your body. If you’re trying to sever somebody’s spinal cord, which is what must have happened, you need to know where to poke.”

  Chance thought about this and felt that queasy sensation of the day before returning. “Somebody who knows what they’re doing, you mean like a hired killer?”

  “Or some trained medical person, God forbid,” she said in a quiet voice. She had become serious too. “The victim would become like a puppet with its strings cut. They would be paralyzed almost immediately, unable to move, or talk or breathe. The mercy would be that death would come quickly, which answers your question about why so little blood.”

  “Right,” Chance said and wondered for the first time just how interested he was in this story. Whoever had killed Lowell Austin had done so in a stealthful way, designed to discourage any attention. He was no longer sure if he wanted to be on that someone’s trail.

  “I could give you a hands-on demonstration about the cervical vertebrae in question, “Adrienne said, “if you’d like to stop by later.”

  Happy for the moment of distraction, Chance said he would, and then he went into Shoestring Annie’s.