that authorities stayed tight-lipped.
I recalled that she and her lover had been trysting in a cabin she owned up in Phosphor County, roughly sixty miles northward of here. They'd both been shot at close range.
There'd been a backdrop of bitter political controversy, involving an outfit called the Dodd Mining Company starting operations in the area. Most of the local residents were thrilled at this infusion of lifeblood to their stagnant economy.
But opposition had also been fierce-and Astrid, a fervent environmentalist, had spearheaded it.
Of course, there was suspicion that she'd been murdered out of hatred over that, or to get her out of the way, but nothing along those lines was ever established. Ironically, though, the company abandoned the project soon afterward, and the Dodd Silver Mine became known as the Dead Silver Mine, or just Dead Silver.
I was feeling restless, like my place was uncomfortably small. Maybe it was because of my somber line of thought. I got the pistol and walked outside into the last of the twilight. Except for the always restless treetops and the barking of a distant neighbor's dog anxious for dinner, this was about as quiet as a place could get. The air was damp, sharp, and laced with the fine piney smell of smoke from my stove. I could just see the lights of Helena, a bright cluster that thinned out to pinpoints over the surrounding miles of ranch land and forest.
As a journalist in California, I'd gotten almost inured to brutal crime. But here on my own turf, it felt much closer.
I'd known Astrid from a distance when we were growing up. She was a year older than me, and I was a relatively invisible kid; my contact with her hadn't ever gone beyond an awkward smile and 'hi.' But I'd been far more aware of her than that, and so had pretty much everybody else.
For openers, she was a very attractive blond-not a Barbie type, but athletic, vibrant, and a track star and straight-A student besides. She loved attention and she brimmed with self-confidence. There didn't seem to be any question in her mind that if she wanted something, she should get it, and if she decided something, she was right. Besides her looks and talents, she came from a prominent ranching family, the Seiberts. Modern Montana and feudal Europe might have been separated by hundreds of years, thousands of miles, and a vast gulf of technology, but they had one thing in common-big landowners tended to be aristocrats, and vice versa.
According to the teenage grapevine, Astrid had brought the same attitude to romance. If she liked a boy, she didn't hesitate to let him know it in the most time-honored and convincing way. But she'd be equally quick to dump him and move on to the next one who caught her fancy. By the end of high school, she had already junked a string of young hearts and left them abandoned along the road.
Clearly, getting married hadn't ended her amorous penchant. She'd been trysting with a lover at the time of her death-a powerful motive for murder, at the hands of a jealous husband. Physically, Professor Callister was capable of the crime; he'd been a hardy woodsman and hunter.
Back inside, I poured another drink, then picked up the phone and called Madbird. I'd told Renee I wanted to bring him in on this, if he was willing-that his experience and way of thinking would bring insights I'd never see on my own, and that I trusted him more than I did myself-and she was fine with it.
When he answered, his gravelly voice had an edge that startled me. He was always a little gruff, but not like this.
'I was going to run something by you, but maybe this isn't a good time,' I said.
'It ain't you-I'm just pissed off. Me and Hannah'-his longtime live-in girlfriend-'got some stuff to give Darcy for her new apartment, and she was supposed to come by and decide what she wants. We drug it all out and cleaned it up, and she never fucking showed or called.'
'Ouch.'
'I should of known better. She's pulled shit like this before.'
It sounded like the cumulative strain of worry and annoyance was getting to Madbird, and that didn't happen easily.
'So I'm glad for a excuse to quit thinking about it,' he said. 'What's going on?'
I gave him a quick description of the chaos in Renee's carriage house.
'Pack rats, hey?' he said, with his tone back toward normal. 'I had a old Ford Bronco a while back. One night, three o'clock in the morning, my dogs start going apeshit. I look out the window, the rig's on fire. Turns out one of them fucking rats chewed up the wiring harness. Melted the dashboard out.'
'I wish they'd done the same thing to that carriage house,' I said. 'This job's going to be ugly, and I'm not asking you to work on it-I'd just appreciate you thinking about what I told you. Let me know if you have any notions.'
'Right off, the way it sounds, I wouldn't bet you're going to do any good,' he said.
'I hear you.'
'I remember them murders. Ten, twelve years ago?'
'Right around then.'
'I suppose you ain't doing it for the money.'
I'd been thinking about my reasons, enumerating them. I was drawn to Renee and wanted to help her through this trouble. I'd respected her father, and I'd even admired Astrid for her brash allure. The damage they'd all suffered made my heart ache. And I was pissed that someone might have gotten away with the crime. I knew it was naive to imagine I could make a difference, but as long as I admitted that, I felt free to try.
'It comes with a story,' I said, and gave him another quick rundown-this time about the photos.
Roughly ten seconds passed in silence.
'Well, Sunday morning, I can't show up too early,' Madbird finally warned. 'I got to go be a altar boy.'
'Huh. I thought you'd moved on to hearing confessions.'
'Only from women. I got a special clientele. That's in the afternoon, so I'm gonna have to take off early, too.'
'A lot of people would be surprised to find out you're so devoted to caring for lost souls.'
'Hey, call me Mother Mag-dah-kee.' That was his real, Indian name. It meant 'bird of prey.'
I smiled. 'I'll see you when I see you.'
7
I was left with a Saturday evening to kill. Earlier today, I'd figured I'd grab some dinner downtown, but after I left Renee's it had slipped my mind. I foraged through the refrigerator and found the chunk that was left of the weekly pot roast. I usually cooked one every Sunday and lived on it for lunch sandwiches, chili, stew, and other spinoffs. This one came from an elk Madbird had shot last fall, and was about as good as meat could get. I decided to make my own style of Stroganoff. I stirred a splash of red wine, a lot of garlic, and dashes of this and that into the oniony drippings, and put the pan on the stove to warm. With sour cream added at the last, poured over sourdough toast, it would be redneck gourmet.
Then I turned on the computer I'd bought myself last Christmas-my major concession, to date, to the twenty-first century. I'd learned basic skills during my journalism stint, but I'd phased out of that a decade ago, and I had a lot of catching up to do. It was a no-frills Compaq desktop, but at first I'd felt like a Neanderthal piloting an F-16, and I still spent a fair amount of time trying to extricate myself from blunders I didn't have a clue how I'd made. But by now I could get around reasonably well on the Internet, which was my main interest. It wasn't much of a substitute for a warm and breathing companion, but an agreeable time-passer for a solitary night, and it spurred me to dig into matters I was curious about but otherwise wouldn't take the time to pursue.
I spent the next couple of hours, with a break to savor my elk concoction, trying to refresh my memory about Astrid Callister's murder. I didn't really learn anything new. The online archives of Montana newspapers didn't go back that far, and I wasn't able to find much on the national archiving services I tried. There were a few breaking stories on the crime itself, but nothing about the follow-up investigation. I decided I'd stop by the Independent Record when I got a chance; probably they'd have their older records on microfiche.
I'd fallen into that near-trance state of being like a lab animal trained to press a bar for a pellet of food or a jolt of pleasure to the brain. I kept clicking my finger, dancing the arrow across the screen, hoping for my own little reward in the form of a morsel of intriguing information.
