Both Ends of the Night Page 25

  “Oh my God!”

  A man’s body lay prone on the earthen floor only inches from my feet. He wore jeans and a parka and hiking boots. His legs were splayed, his arms at his sides, and the blond hair at the back of his skull was clotted with what looked to be blood.

  I squatted down and shone the light closer. Bullet wound, large and ragged, probably an exit wound. I put my hand on his shoulder and tried to turn him over.

  He was frozen solid.

  I set the flash down and grasped him with both hands, tipped him on his side and let him thump over on his back.

  Duncan Stirling.

  “Jesus!” I exclaimed. My breath was hot, my voice loud in this cold, silent place of death.

  Stirling had been shot once in the forehead—a clean kill that had left only a small wound. His eyes were open, and in death they were much as I imagined they’d been in life: dark, empty craters leading deep into nothingness.

  He had been here all along—dead.

  And only one other person had been here all along—alive.

  I was halfway through the minefield of junk in front of the cabin, on my way to wake Hy and tell him what I’d found, when I heard the plane again.

  I scanned the sky from the east, where it had flared into a near blinding display of color, to the south. The blue ski-plane was descending behind the treeline, probably toward the logging road where we’d landed in the 172.

  Who? Anyone who knew Stirling would put down at the strip, and strangers wouldn’t attempt a landing on unfamiliar terrain in the snow. Unless someone had spotted the Cessna and notified Search and Rescue? But wouldn’t they use a helicopter?

  The pilot had throttled back, but now I heard a burst of power. Looking to land, deciding against it. Full throttle, clean up the plane, climb out. Maybe go around, try again—

  Oh no, not this time! No second chance.

  Ripping and tearing and even from here I can tell limbs are being sheared from trees and I can hear the shriek of the stall horn as if I were in the cockpit.… The crash, how could anything hit the ground that hard?

  I veered to the right and began running toward the crash site, icy air lacerating my lungs with every frantic breath.

  I stood panting from my long run and staring in horror at the wreckage. The ski-plane had plowed through the trees at the far end of the logging road and lay crumpled on its passenger side on the road itself. Its right wing was sheared off, its left pointed skyward, and the pilot’s door had sprung open against the strut.

  I took a tentative step toward it. Hisses and pops came from the heap of mangled metal, and something was dripping. Fuel. Extreme danger of explosion and fire, but if someone was trapped alive in there…

  After a moment I went close enough that I could see through the shattered windscreen. No one on the pilot’s side; he or she had been thrown clear. There was a body in the passenger seat, but that side had been so badly crushed that whoever it was couldn’t possibly be alive.

  More hisses and pops. I backed off and circled the wreckage, looking for the pilot. In the snow I picked up a trail of footsteps that meandered toward the trees beyond where Hy and I had concealed the 172 under a clump of jack pine. It now appeared that rather than being thrown clear on impact, the pilot had climbed from the cockpit and was wandering in the woods, dazed and disoriented. Before I searched any farther, I’d get on the radio to Arrowhead’s unicom, ask them to send medical help and notify the FAA.

  The Cessna’s key stuck in the door lock. Frozen? I jiggled it, applied more pressure. It turned. I opened the door and without climbing in, hit the master switch; the electrical system whined—

  Footsteps crunching behind me, coming fast. Hy had heard the crash and rushed here too. “Thank God,” I called to him as I reached for the radio’s switch. “The pilot’s somewhere in—”

  He grabbed me by the shoulders, pulled me back.

  It wasn’t Hy.

  I grasped the yoke with both hands and kicked backward with my right foot, turning my head to get a look at him. All I saw before my left foot slipped on the ice and went out from under me was that he wore a black ski mask.

  He yanked harder, but I clung to the yoke, my upper body pressed against the side of the seat. He moved in until he had me pinned there, then tried to pry my fingers free with big gloved hands.

  I brought my left leg up onto the strut and lunged forward, trying to bite him. My teeth collided painfully with the yoke. He’d almost gotten one of my hands free when I gained enough leverage on the strut to kick my right leg back and up as hard as I could.

  My attacker howled in pain and let go of my fingers. As he reeled backward, I reached across the instrument panel and put on full flaps. I twisted, prepared to do him further damage. The flaps rumbled down as he was coming up; they whacked him on the back of his head. He pitched forward, his body slamming into the wheel pant.

  As the man lay moaning on the shattered fiberglass of the wheel cover, I heard Hy calling to me from a distance. About time, I thought—and then felt ashamed of my stress-induced reaction. “Over here,” I yelled, taking my .38 out and training it on my attacker.

  Hy came running along the logging road and, when he saw what was happening, drew his own gun and covered while I stripped the prone man’s ski mask off. When I saw his face, I reeled back in shock. He wasn’t who I’d thought he was.

  “Who the hell’s that?” Hy asked.

  “Winthrop Reade—David Stirling’s substitute son and undoubtedly second in line to inherit his controlling interest in Stirling Aviation. The man who has most reason to want Dunc dead.”

  “Jesus,” Hy said as we watched the second medevac chopper clear the trees, “with all the questions we’re going to have to answer and the statements we’re going to have to sign, we’ll be lucky to get home by Christmas.”

  “What can we tell anybody, really? Ash Walker came here to plead with a dangerous federal fugitive to leave him and his new family alone, found the man long gone, and got stranded. When he didn’t return on schedule, we came to rescue him.”

  “And Win Reade?”

  “We know nothing about him. And you can be sure he won’t tell anyone about the arrangement he and David Stirling made with me.” I turned and walked toward the Cessna, sore from my struggle with Reade and worrying with my tongue at what I feared was a cracked front tooth.

  Hy followed. “How’s Reade going to explain what he was doing here?”

  “Who knows? But his kind always comes up with something.” I stepped up and sat on the pilot’s seat, turned toward him. “And as for his reason for attacking me, he’ll probably claim he was in a deranged state brought on by the crash.”

  Hy leaned in and put his arms around me. “You going to be okay?”

  “I’m okay now, but it’s nice to have you hold me.”

  He smoothed my hair with his gloved hand, then pulled my cap lower. “You know,” he said after a moment, “Reade must’ve been having you followed ever since you left Arkansas. Whoever he hired saw us check our bags through to Chisholm-Hibbing at SFO, and Reade and the poor bastard who died in the crash were there before we arrived. Easy for somebody we didn’t know to overhear when I asked for a weather briefing for Arrowhead before we left Iron Range Aviation.”

  “And he and Reade probably waited out last night’s storm chatting with the folks at Arrowhead about the people from Minnetonka who came in asking after their irresponsible friend John and the hermit.”

  “Who was the guy who died, anyway?”

  “I heard Reade identify him as one of the company’s security men, but I’ll bet he was a pro brought along to kill Dunc. People like Reade never do their own dirty work, even if they like to watch it done.”

  Hy pulled away from me, looked me in the eyes. “Everybody’s expendable to people like Reade, McCone. Look at how the plane crashed: There’s a crosswind from the south to this road; he would’ve been turning his left wing into it. Yet they came down on the right
side.”

  “He applied opposite aileron to save himself.”

  Grim and disgusted, Hy nodded. In a crash situation any good pilot—any decent human being—does all he or she can to ensure that the passengers survive.

  For a while we were silent, looking at the wreckage that would remain here till the NTSB investigators could examine it. Then he said, “Reade must be one hell of an arrogant guy to think he could land a ski-plane in that kind of crosswind. I doubt he’d had much opportunity to practice in Arkansas.”

  “Arrogance and stupidity bring them all down—literally.”

  “You know, there’s still no closure here. Dunc Stirling’s free and out there someplace, and has gotten away with murder.”

  I bit my lip.

  “What?”

  “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

  We stood in the shed over Duncan Stirling’s frozen body.

  Hy said, “Single shot, probably with Dunc’s own rifle, the one Ash had with him in the hangar. Neat and efficient. An execution.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. It happened in the cabin. Dunc might’ve surprised him while he was searching it. There might’ve been some sort of confrontation.”

  “Sure.”

  “Look, I know you don’t like Walker. I don’t either. Frankly, he’s not a very likable man. But there’s a good side to him; you know that as well as I do. For one thing, he couldn’t bring himself to sleep in the cabin where he’d killed Dunc.”

  “Maybe he preferred the kerosene heater in the hangar; burns cleaner than a woodstove and doesn’t require as much tending.”

  “Come on, Ripinsky. Why d’you think he had to take a drink—maybe several—when he came back for supplies?”

  “You mean that glass on the table?”

  “Yes. Think about it.”

  “Okay, maybe he feels remorse—”

  “The same as you or I would.”

  He didn’t reply, his eyes on the body.

  “Do you really think we’d have acted any differently if we’d confronted Stirling?”

  More silence.

  “Zach needs his father, Ripinsky.”

  “… Okay. What do you want to do?”

  “Finished.” Hy let go of Dunc Stirling’s arms, and the body thudded onto its back in a thick stand of birches some hundred yards from the cabin.

  I glanced at the sky; it was rapidly becoming overcast again. “The storm that chopper pilot warned us about is moving in tonight. It’s supposed to be a major one, the first of a series; they may not find him till the spring thaws—if ever.”

  He took the Enfield from where he had it slung over his shoulder and laid it down next to the body.

  I said, “We’d better be going. It’ll be hard enough to take off on that road, without a storm to contend with.”

  “Don’t you worry about that, McCone.” He came over and put an arm around my shoulders. “This old warhorse can handle it. I’m a hell of a lot better pilot than Reade ever was.”

  For a moment we stood looking down at the body. Then Hy said, “Duncan Stirling: criminal, fugitive, and recluse—dead by misadventure.”

  “Amen.”

  “And case closed.”

  I didn’t reply to that. Hy was tired and not thinking clearly. I wondered how long it would be before he realized that Stirling hadn’t killed Matty—and that nobody else involved had had reason to.

  Three Years Ago

  “Pull up to the hold line, McCone, and wait a minute.”

  “What’re you doing? Put that seat belt back on!”

  “Uh-uh. Two perfect takeoffs and landings today. It’s time for you to solo.”

  “You are not getting out of this plane!”

  “Oh, yes, I am. And you are going to fly a perfect pattern—all on your own.”

  “Matty—”

  “Pick me up here when you get back, and we’ll take a run out to the coast, see if there’re any whales hanging around today.”

  “Matty!”

  “Just do it, McCone. You don’t need me anymore. It’s time to let go.”

  PART FIVE

  December 7–25

  Twenty-four

  I couldn’t sleep.

  I was lying in my own bed, and Hy had drifted off at least two hours ago, but I couldn’t sleep. I tried to focus on my list of Christmas gifts, on the fact that I badly needed to make a hair appointment, on all the paperwork that had piled up at the office. Hell, I even thought about it being Pearl Harbor Day. But scenes from Minnesota kept pushing the safe and mundane aside: walking along the eerie light-filled aisle of white birches; Ash Walker stepping from the shadows behind the Maule; Dunc Stirling’s frozen corpse; the mangled blue ski-plane; Winthrop Reade’s stunned face…

  Both Hy and I had been operating on our very last reserves of energy for the past day and a half, and consequently he had yet to discover the logical flaw in our assumptions about the murder of not only Matty but Andie Walker, Cutter, and Matthews as well. So far I had allowed him to remain unaware, but the problem gnawed at me, disturbing my sleep and my waking hours, and I knew I’d have to discuss it with him before long.

  Quite simply put, Duncan Stirling hadn’t committed any of those murders. It was clear to me that he’d gone to ground immediately upon being released on bond and had no further contact with anyone from his former life. He couldn’t have known where Ash Walker was, much less that he was living with Matty, and I doubted he’d nursed a desire for vengeance throughout all those years in the wilderness. Besides, the timing of Matty’s death was wrong; in all likelihood Walker had shot Stirling days before the air show.

  That left Winthrop Reade the obvious suspect—except that he’d had no motive to kill either woman. Reade wanted Dunc Stirling out of the way so he could assume his place as David Stirling’s heir, but there was no reason for him to have anyone else killed. I’d toyed with other possible suspects: Calder Franklin, because he’d perhaps been involved in the drugs-and-arms operation and needed to silence Walker and his women. But that didn’t wash; Franklin had long ago proven himself unconnected to what went on at the aircraft company and had, in fact, suspected Reade was having me followed and tried to warn me by phone the afternoon before Hy and I left for Minnesota. The attorney had informed me of that in a brief but heated conversation earlier this evening; his last words to me were “If only you’d listened to me, that fiasco up in Minnesota could’ve been avoided. A lot of damage control is going to have to be done before Win begins his senatorial campaign.” Finally, desperate to believe the case was actually closed, I’d even taken a good hard look at Ash Walker as a suspect, but much as I didn’t like the man, I’d had to conclude that I was constructing a ridiculous scenario.

  The case seemed destined to be one that would nag at me for many years to come.

  As I’d predicted, Winthrop Reade had facilely explained away his presence at Stirling’s hideaway: He’d remembered the Minnesota property and had flown there with one of the company’s security men as a bodyguard, on the off chance that was where Dunc had fled. His plan, he claimed, was to persuade him to give himself up in order that he might be reunited with his dying father. The authorities bought his story, and I agreed to drop assault charges against him. Purposeless and potentially dangerous to pursue it.

  During the day and a half that Hy and I answered questions and made statements, both to the local jurisdiction and the FBI, the predicted series of blizzards arrived. For a while they had to close the Twin Cities airport, but our flight to SFO was one of the first to leave once they reopened it, and we made sure to be on board.

  At the airport we had a late lunch with Zach, Hank, and Habiba, who were waiting for their delayed flight to Minneapolis. As the boy’s attorney, Hank had volunteered to accompany him east for a reunion with his father and to stay on with him until Ash Walker was well enough to travel—a matter of days, the doctor had told me. At the last minute Habiba begged to go along, and Hank agreed. He wanted, he sa
id, to foster the growing friendship between the two kids; Habiba was a strong, steady little girl, and Zach would be able to lean on her during the painful adjustments both before and after his homecoming. Even though Wes and Karla Payne planned to put the farmhouse to rights, it would surely seem vast, empty, and without a center when Zach and Ash returned.

  With such memories and thoughts of the future preying on my mind, was it any wonder I couldn’t sleep?

  Finally I reached for my cassette player, back in its usual place on the nightstand. I’d dragged it with me all over the country and never used it once, but tonight it would ease me into oblivion. I couldn’t remember which tape was in it, but I guessed the one with the sappy music and sea sounds that I listened to when I was homesick for Touchstone. I slipped the earphones on, fumbled for the play button, and lay back.

  A woman’s voice came on: “Off-the-record interview with Quentin Ramsey—”

  What was this? More to the point, who was this?

  “… former controller of Stirling Aviation—”

  Iona Fowler, the Arkansas reporter who had told me all her research tapes about the Stirling case had been destroyed by fire. I clicked the player back on, listened to the date and other explanatory material.

  Okay, it was Fowler and this was a tape from before the indictments were handed down. But how—

  Oh, right. The night after I’d visited her, someone had followed me during my walk around Post Office Square in Fayetteville. And later I’d noticed that a number of things in my hotel room—including the stack of tapes next to the player on the bedside table—had been disturbed. It hadn’t been someone sent by David Stirling and Winthrop Reade or Calder Franklin; it had been Fowler, and she’d probably deputized her live-in friend to keep tabs on me while she contrived to get into my room and leave me this gift of evidence.

  Too bad I hadn’t felt the need to play my soothing tapes until now. If Fowler had gone to that much trouble, the contents of this one must be very interesting. I pressed the play button again.