In Harm's Way

“Okay.” Jerry never failed to remind his son he’d been a special agent for the FBI and that Walt had missed his own chance to serve a higher calling. He was also fond of reminding his son that he read the local Ketchum paper, tracked the stories involving Walt’s department, and liked to rub it in when those jobs involved clearing a band of sheep from the highway or serving motorcade duty for a rock star on a weekend ski trip.

“He’s trying to keep things low profile, very low profile, because of the personalities involved. Doesn’t want so much as the record of a phone call. You get the point.”

“I do.” Walt dealt with plenty of the rich and famous-more than his father knew.

“He could call you on your cell number or maybe your home. He’d rather not call the shop. I mentioned that I knew you used that Internet thing-”

“Skype.”

“That’s the one. Said he could do it that way if you wanted.”

“Did he say what it’s about?”

“It’s a homicide. He’s a homicide dick. Boldt. We’ve talked about him before.”

“We have,” Walt said. In the world of homicide, Lou Boldt was a living legend-able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. He had a career clearance rate of eighty percent when the nearest competition was in the mid-sixties. He’d not only caught the Cross Killer, but the serial killer’s copycat. Just the idea of speaking with Lou Boldt excited him-being involved with a case of Boldt’s would be rare air.

“I’d be happy to speak with him,” Walt said.

“Thought that was how you’d feel, but didn’t want to put words into your mouth.”

That’s a first.

“I’m pretty sure I know the homicide,” Jerry Fleming said. “Just guessing, but there’s one been in the Intelligencer off and on for a week now. Makes sense that Boldt would have caught it. Woman assaulted. Beaten to death. Nothing sexual-at least not that’s been reported. Reason it stays in the papers is both because of the beating she took-it was really bad, Walt-and because she had a history of dating people in professional sports.”

“A call girl?”

“That’s almost how it reads, but no, I don’t think so. I’m sure Boldt can tell you. Dating, as in living with a guy for a few months. Basketball, football. Didn’t seem to matter. She liked ’em big and strong. Liked the cameras and nightclubs. Papers rumored an affair with one of the team owners, but backed off it pretty quickly. She obviously got around. And then she gets herself pulverized, and of course everyone’s thinking it’s one of the jocks. That kind of testosterone-charged hammering those bucks can deliver.”

“But me?” Walt asked.

“I don’t know. I was asked if you’d take the call. If you’d keep it quiet. And I told him how I was sure you would but I’d ask.”

“Absolutely,” Walt said.

“That’s all I needed.”

“How are you?” Walt asked.

“I’ll give him the green light and you can take it from there. Maybe this Skype thing keeps it the quietest.”

“He can call me tonight. I’ll leave it up. But how are you, Dad? How’s it going?”

“He’s an important man over here. You know that, right?”

“I know that,” Walt said. He wasn’t going to ask again; his father knew as much.

“Let me know if I can help out with it,” Jerry said.

The line clicked.

“Dad?” Walt looked at the face of his phone: Disco

No kidding, he was thinking, as he pocketed the phone.

Walt knocked and let himself in through the front door. A camera’s flash caught his eye and he moved in that direction through a living room atop a spongy carpet. The Asian furniture contrasted with big canvases of contemporary art. He headed toward the strobing light with his father’s description of the assault in his mind, half-expecting to see a bloodied body beaten to a pulp on the kitchen floor though his conscious mind knew better-it had been called in as a bear attack. He was there to sign off on that assessment for the sake of any future insurance inquiry. Springtime brought the brown bears out of hibernation. They came down to the valley floor looking for water and were typically seduced by the aroma of garbage cans. Once in a great while one would find its way into a garage or, even more rarely, a kitchen like this one and shred the place.

Walt whistled, seeing the extent of the damage.

Fiona glanced in his direction, but her eyes hardened and she went right back to her photography. He wanted to sort out their problems, but kept to business, heading over to deputy Tommy Brandon, who was on the phone.

Brandon hung up immediately. He wore XXL everything, a ten-hour beard that would have taken Walt six days to grow, and a smugness that came with being the go-to guy his whole life. Walt wasn’t sure when Brandon’s affair with his wife had begun, only that because of it Brandon owed him something beyond the apology he’d never gotten. Gail owed him attorneys’ fees, by his way of thinking, but he’d never see anything. She owed their twin eleven-year-old daughters much more, but that would have to wait until the girls were older and realized the depth and degree of their mother’s selfishness. For now, business as usual.

“So?” he asked Brandon.

“Picnic time at the Berkholders’,” Brandon answered.

The kitchen cabinets hung open, their contents strewn across the countertops: cookies, coffee grounds, tea bags, crackers, broken jars, tomato sauce, jams, pickles-an extraordinary mess. The refrigerator hung partially open, with a slushy pile of leftovers, vegetables, and meats at its feet, as if it had vomited its contents onto the reclaimed barn wood flooring. The freezer oozed frozen lemonade, orange juice, and ice cream in a colorful creamy waterfall that caught each glass shelf.

Walt was no stranger to bear raids. His father ridiculed him for his responding to them as part of his job.

“Did you get the claw marks on-”

“Yes!” Fiona snapped, still refusing to look directly at him. “On the cabinets and the butcher block, both.”

“The spill beneath the fridge?”

“Got it,” she answered.

“Just for the record,” Walt said, “I lobbied her hard. I thought I’d made-”

“Not hard enough,” Fiona said.

Bewildered by the exchange, Brandon tried to slip away but Walt caught him.

“Access?” Walt asked his deputy.

Brandon led Walt down a short hallway to a four-car garage.

“Musta been left open, though the owner claims otherwise. Looks like the thing checked out the dog door”-the frame of the dog door had imploded into the hallway-“and maybe the door came open in the process. We found it like this.”

Walt studied the door jamb, especially its metal hardware, and then did the same on the broken dog door. He looked into the whistle-clean garage-about the size of the first floor of his house-and its ship-deck-gray paint. He descended the three steps and went down on one knee, getting the light right.

“If she hasn’t done so already,” he said, “have Fiona get shots of the door hardware and some angles of the garage floor.”

“Will do. But why does the insurance care about the garage floor?” Brandon asked.

“You ever been to one of these before?” Walt said.

“Sure.”

“Open your eyes and use-”

“Your head,” Brandon finished for him, quoting a Walt-ism.

“Exactly.”

Brandon studied the door hardware and didn’t have the courage to ask what he was supposed to be looking for.

“Fur,” Walt said without looking back as he kept to the very edge of the garage floor. “Animal hair. A tight space like that dog door, we should have seen some caught in the screws or hinges.”

He worked steadily toward the garage doors.

“Yeah, okay…” He sounded confused.

“When was the last time you saw a bear pass over strawberry jam, broken glass jar or not?”

“Ah…”

“And since when doesn’t a bear claw a door trying to get it open? It claws the cabinet-in the middle of the cabinet-but not the door?”