But this much I knew now: I was after an amateur.
I made a direct line to the meat counter at the rear of the market in Phillips, where I had a five-minute conversation with the butcher. By the time I exited through the automatic door, I knew the name of the person who had tried and failed to murder my wolf.
37
Being a vintage vehicle, my Scout didn’t have a dashboard thermometer, but I could tell from the squishiness of the road and the fog drifting through the trees that the snow was melting in the mountains.
Isaac Stoll’s wrecked carriage had been removed from the field. The Amish had even repaired the fence with new rails. The only reminders of the recent violence were the scars in the earth.
Outside the farmhouse, a buggy was drawn up, along with a handful of automobiles owned, no doubt, by well-wishers from the community who had come to offer support to their Amish neighbors. Indigo Mazur had angled her Subaru Baja outside the barn, where the Stoll family stabled its horse and donkey.
I glanced through the open door and breathed in the scent of hay. The wooden floorboards were cleaner than the “washed” plates in my dish rack at home. I heard the breathing of a horse somewhere in the dark and the swishing of its tail.
“Hello?” I called.
“Good morning,” came Samuel’s small voice.
His sisters were with him, along with three other girls. The girls hung back, but the big-eyed boy seemed glad to see me.
“How is your uncle Isaac doing?”
“He is in the hospital.”
I had hoped for a more detailed description of his condition, but it made sense that Samuel’s parents hadn’t disclosed the extent of his uncle’s injuries, especially if there was a prospect of paralysis or traumatic brain injury.
“How about the horse? Her name is Tilda, right?”
“She has a strained shoulder and cuts and bruises. Mamm made a poultice. We can give her apples, but not too many because they make her stomach sour.”
“I see that Indigo is here.”
“And Zane!” said one of the older girls, a preteen.
The young farmer appeared out of the shadows with straw in his hair as if he’d been playing hide-and-seek with the children. “Hello.”
“I thought you were inside with the adults.”
He pulled a thread of straw from his hair. “What’s an adult?”
“I stopped by your yurt on my way in, but neither you nor Indigo were there.”
“She’s inside with the Amish and some concerned people from the community. They’re discussing how to deal with Peaslee, now that he’s free on bail. Indigo wants the Stolls to take out a restraining order.”
“I actually came here looking for you.”
“Me?”
“I have one last question before I let this matter go about the wolf. How about we go for a walk together?”
“OK.”
A fox sparrow was scratching at the leaves under the big maple that towered over the dooryard. As on the other maples around the farm, a bucket hung from the trunk to collect sap. The warm spell would cause it to run better now.
“How is Isaac Stoll really doing? It didn’t sound like the Stolls are sharing the details with the kids.”
“Ike has a concussion and bruised bones in his back. And a broken arm, of course. I guess there were multiple fractures. Is that the question you wanted to ask?”
“You’re a vegan, aren’t you, Zane?”
He came to a halt. “You know I am.”
“So why did the butcher at Edmunds’ Market tell me you were in there last week buying three whole hams?”
The color drained completely from his bearded face.
“To donate them, maybe? Like to a food bank?”
“Which food bank?”
He contemplated his boots. “The one in Farmington.”
“They must have really appreciated such a generous gift. I’m sure they’ll remember your coming in clearly. But I have to ask, why would you, as a vegan, choose to support the animal industrial complex that way? I thought you had ethical issues about pigs being bioengineered, raised in confinement on factory farms, and then slaughtered with a bolt to the head?”
The gory image I had evoked brought a flush of anger to his face. “Not all of them die when they’re ‘stunned.’ A lot of them die later in the scalding tanks. There’s a video online. You should watch it the next time you think of eating a hot dog. You really should watch that video.”
The foraging fox sparrow had been joined by two gray squirrels, whose drey, or nest of leaves, I’d noticed in the higher reaches of the maple.
“Zane, why were you putting out hams around Mary’s property? Before you answer, I am going to suggest a reason. It was to draw Shadow in close, wasn’t it?”
“I didn’t shoot him.”
“I know you didn’t.”
His eyelids began to flutter. He opened, then closed his mouth so that his lips disappeared.
What Zane Wilson hadn’t noticed was that, in our seemingly directionless stroll, I had been leading him to his girlfriend’s vehicle. I slowly moved my head so that he would follow my gaze down into the tail bed of the Baja.
A Spider-Bite X2 crossbow bolt lay on a small mat of straw.
He snapped his head up in alarm. “Indigo said she—”
“Got rid of the other arrows?”
Zane wasn’t the brightest guy, but he was bright enough to know he’d given himself away.
“Here’s what I think happened, Zane. I may have a few details wrong, but I am fairly confident about the big picture. After Shadow killed the Stolls’ donkey Little Amos, Indigo got very, very mad. You yourself said she has a big temper for a small woman. So, being worked up, and with the killer wolf still presumably in the area, she went looking for a weapon. Not a rifle because she knows how much you disapprove of guns. Instead she bought a crossbow, arrows, and broadheads from the local sporting goods store, Fairbanks Firearms in Farmington. Then she started practicing with them on your property, probably
