After agreeing to let us keep the files for the time being, Wolanski walked us to his front door.
“I still can’t believe she was murdered,” he said.
“What happened to the mother after Raya’s death?” I asked.
Wolanski shrugged. “No idea. I never followed up. I don’t even know if she’s still alive.”
“And no other family?”
“Raya was an only child. There was a nephew of Esta’s who came to stay with her on and off for a few years. I heard that Esta had a sister back east somewhere. Sorry I can’t tell you more.”
“What about Raya’s friend?” Mac asked. “Jill Martin. Do you know if she’s still in the area?”
“She is. She left the railroad and took over her husband’s taxidermy business. Ever After Taxidermy in Thornton. One of my friends took his elk there.”
Mac offered Wolanski her hand. “Thanks for everything. You’ve been a great help.”
We shook all around. Wolanski followed us outside. The day was warm but gloomy, with a high, thin scrim of clouds and pale shadows on the ground. When Clyde made use of one of the bushes in his front yard, Wolanski waved it off. He bade us farewell at the truck and trudged back toward his front door. His step was considerably heavier than it had been when we arrived.
I let Clyde in the back, then paused with my hand on the driver’s door.
“We’ve just lost our main suspect,” I said to Mac.
Her composure remained in place. Only the black eye suggested any weakness. Weakness being a relative term. She didn’t look like liver paté.
“We didn’t lose him,” she said. “He’s just pointing us in a different direction.”
“The dead speak,” I murmured. Sometimes more than we might wish.
“Exactly. Look at the volumes Raya has just shared with us.” She slapped the roof of the truck. “Come on, let’s go see what we can learn from Jill Martin. Then we can track down Esta Quinn, if she’s still around. I feel like the answer is just around the corner. And with the answer comes Lucy.”
We got in the truck and I pulled away from the curb, merging with the traffic heading south. Toward Thornton. And hopefully some answers.
CHAPTER 21
The wisdom of war comes, over time, to resemble the wisdom of life. Stay calm. Aim well. Don’t get attached to anything.
And always know who your enemies are.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
“Of course I remember Raya,” Jill Martin said. “She and I were best friends from third grade. Right up until the night she died.”
We were in the back room of Ever After Taxidermy, standing around a bobcat sprawled facedown on the table. All of us watched the cat like we were waiting for it to get back up. With its legs spread-eagled and its head propped to the side, the dead animal looked like it had gone down after an uppercut in a drunken brawl.
Jill lifted her gaze and frowned at us. “But I’m not going to talk about that night.”
I’d left Clyde in his air-conditioned carrier, figuring this place would give him the willies. It gave me the willies. The dead watched us from every corner of the room. Deer and pronghorn and coyotes, and even a bear eternally trapped midgrowl. A large walk-in freezer suggested there were plenty more slated to join them.
My eyes kept returning to an enormous timber wolf near the front window. I was thinking about the animal on the TIR tape. Cohen had sent the tape to a wildlife expert, and the biologist said he thought we were looking at a hybrid animal—a wolf dog. He couldn’t venture a guess as to what species or subspecies of dog or wolf had gone into the mix. But his expert opinion was that the animal was “damn big.”
“We’re sorry to dredge up bad memories,” Mac said. “I’m sure it’s painful. But Raya’s death might be relevant to another case we’re working.”
“How could that be? Wrong place, wrong time. End of story.”
“We only need to ask you a few questions about that night,” I added. “Then we’ll get out of your way.”
Jill made a sound that might have been a derisive snort or even a sob and selected a whip-thin knife from a block on the table. She was fifty or so, her gray-streaked hair cut short, her freckled face lively and intelligent. Her rolled-up sleeves revealed strong forearms and hands ropy with tendons, the fingers knotted and callused. Her brisk motions conveyed a don’t-mess-with-me vibe that I imagined kept a lot of people at arm’s length.
She’d greeted us pleasantly when we first walked into her business. But as soon as we mentioned Raya Quinn’s name, her eyes had gone round and wide, her hands had shot out to grip the counter, and she’d stared down at the cash register as if gathering herself. When her head came back up, a faint line of sweat glowed along her upper lip, and a look of worry had crept into her eyes beneath the calm efficiency. She asked for our credentials and verified them with phone calls before she finally waved us to the back of the store where she was working.
“That was almost thirty years ago,” she said. She set down the knife and snapped on latex gloves from a box on a nearby workbench. “How can Raya’s death be relevant to anything now?”
“It’s just background for another case,” Mac said soothingly.
Jill’s eyes swept over my uniform. “Is it about the railroads?”
“I’m afraid we can’t discuss it.”
“Uh-huh.”
Mac and I waited.
Jill sighed. “Look. There was a time when I felt intimidated by people like you. But not anymore. So if this is just some cover-your-ass maneuver by the railroads and the Feds and”—she sucked in air—“you somehow think Raya’s death can help you with that, then both of you turn around right now and skedaddle your asses out of here.”
She sounded so distressed I had to stifle the urge to hug her. “It’s nothing like that.”
Jill picked up the knife again. It was small, but her hand trembled as if even that slight weight was too much at the moment. “What is it like, then?”
“I’m sorry that we aren’t at liberty to discuss our case,” Mac said. “But we do need your help. And”—her eyes met mine across the table—“it might help Raya, too.”
Tears shone unexpectedly in Jill’s eyes. She swiped them away with her forearm, leaving a wet trail on her skin. “What do you know about Raya?”
“Not enough,” I said gently. “That’s why we’re here.”
She looked at us both through narrowed eyes, as if deciding whether we measured up to some invisible standard. But then she shook her head. We hadn’t passed. “I told you. I’ve got nothing to say. Maybe you should talk to the sheriff’s deputy who handled it. Rick Wolanski.”
“We already did. He told us Raya’s death was ruled an accident.” I decided to try and goad her into defending her friend, to get her angry enough to speak out. “But he also told us that it was most likely suicide.”
It worked. Jill seemed to regain her energy. She inserted the knife at the base of the bobcat’s tail and began to slice along its spine. I watched, fascinated and horrified. I wasn’t good at dead bodies anymore, whatever the species.