“When’s the hunt?”
“It starts in another ten days,” Persaud said. “November first is when the season begins. I doubt Junior will take his eyes off Horace between now and then, no matter how far that trek takes him.”
“You knew that Horace would be here today?” I said.
“He likes that bluff across the way,” she said. “Seems to come back to it all the time.”
“Till he hears the first rifle shot,” Junior said. “Then he’s in the wind. So I like him to get used to the sight of me over here, with no sound at all. He’s gotten to trust me after all these years. Me and Frank, we’ve gotten to know Horace real good.”
I wanted to signal a warning to Horace. He looked so majestic, standing tall on the silent peak.
“This is the spot where the accident happened,” Persaud said, breaking the spell of the moment with a reality check. “Right where I’m standing.”
“You wouldn’t let any of the men use their guns?” Prescott asked Karl Jansen, who had been along with Battaglia that day.
“That’s right,” he said. “Neither would Frank. The season hadn’t opened. Wouldn’t have been fair.”
But any day now it would become “fair” to put one through Horace’s heart.
“The other man—the Arabian fellow—thought he could get one of those rams from over here with a bow and arrow?” I asked.
“Don’t know nobody except Junior and Frank who could have done that,” Jansen said. “But the fool was stubborn. Frank told him it wasn’t yet bow season either, but he brought the damn thing along claiming he might use it on some other animal. Then he saw Horace and just picked up the bow and aimed.”
“Not at Frank, though, did he?” I said.
“Course not,” the older Jansen said. “It was your boss who got mad at him.”
“Battaglia?” Prescott asked. “What’d he say?”
“It wasn’t anything so much as what he said. It’s what he did,” Jansen went on. “The DA grabbed the Arab by his arm and tried to turn him away from the herd.”
“So Paul didn’t want to kill animals after all,” I said, triumphant about Battaglia’s moral compass, but still in the dark about his reasons for trekking out here.
“Can’t speak to that,” Jansen said. “He didn’t mean to kill Frank either, but that’s where the arrow went.”
“You mean, because Paul Battaglia pulled on the man’s arm, that’s the reason the arrow hit your nephew?” Prescott said.
“Paul must have been saving Horace,” I said.
“I’d correct that, Alex,” Chidra Persaud said. “The truth is that Paul was saving Horace for himself.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your boss had booked a return visit here to the preserve,” she said. “He was coming back on November first, for the hunt. He told me he was bringing a high roller who’d pay even more to kill the trophy ram.”
“Who?” I asked. “What’s the name of the man he was bringing?”
“He didn’t tell me the name. He told me not to worry, that it would be worth my while,” Persaud said. “That this hunter could buy Montana without blinking.”
“But who—?” I said, looking at Prescott.
Chidra started to retrace her steps. “When you two figure it out, do let me know. Otherwise, I’ll have two spots to fill before the season starts.”
I stood at the highest point for a few minutes longer, letting Persaud and Prescott walk slowly downhill with Junior.
Karl Jansen waited beside me, taking in the view with what seemed as much appreciation as I had for it, though he had seen it thousands of times before.
“You must have been curious about who Mr. Battaglia was bringing out here for the big hunt,” I said to Jansen. “That high roller must mean a lot to you—to your family.”
“Money’s money, Miss Alex. Didn’t much matter who it was to me.”
I grabbed onto the side of a boulder to steady myself as I took some baby steps down the side of the mountain. I figured I could play to his emotions.
“I bet Frank cared,” I said. “I bet Frank wanted to know who was going to get Horace. He and your son have such a connection to that animal.”
“Watch your footing,” Jansen said. “You got to think like a billy goat when you’re walking down these slopes.”
“Even if Chidra wasn’t along for your hunt that Saturday, I knew my boss well enough to know that he would have been bragging to you, bragging to Frank, about how he was bringing someone fancy with him when the season opened.”
“Lordy, that man could brag all right,” Jansen said, stopping to offer me his gnarled, weathered hand as the hill steepened. “Boasted all day about his cases and his career and his fancy friends. You got that right about him.”
“I won’t give you up, Mr. Jansen,” I said, taking his hand and resting my other one on his shoulder. “Chidra doesn’t have to know, I promise you. It would make me feel a lot better if I could know who he wanted to shoot with. It’s just—well—just kind of personal for me.”
“I’d help you if I could, young lady.”
Jansen dropped my hand when I got level with him. He turned his back to me and kept on walking down.
“I thought I could tell his wife something that would ease her pain a bit,” I said, pressing the family angle. “I was sure he’d have boasted about his hunting companion, but I guess I’m wrong.”
“Like I told you, Mr. Battaglia wasn’t short on bragging,” Jansen said. “But all he’d tell us was that the man he wanted to bring wouldn’t spook the sheep.”
“That’s what he said? I wonder why.”
“Your boss told us he was bringing a ghost. And a ghost wouldn’t spook no sheep.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
“Did you hear me, Alex?” Prescott asked me, sitting at the dining table in the lodge.
“Sorry. I spaced out. What did you say?”
I was trying to concentrate on Prescott’s conversation, but my mind was on ghosts. Deirdre Wright, the development department worker at the Bronx Zoo, had called George Kwan a ghost. Mike had raised the connection between Kwan and the Asian gang that had terrorized Chinatown in the eighties—the Ghost Shadows. Why was Battaglia using that particular word to describe his hunting partner?
“That must have tortured Battaglia, is what I said,” Prescott went on. “Even though Frank’s death was an accident, he had to blame himself for pulling the guy’s arm when he had a loaded bow in his hands.”
It was almost one o’clock by the time we finished our descent and got back to the main lodge. We had finished lunch an hour later and were waiting for Chidra Persaud to sit down with us to give us information from the office at the preserve.
“You knew him better than that,” I said. “Paul didn’t blame himself for anything. Ever.”
“I guess. Frank shouldn’t have been standing where he was, the Arabian prince shouldn’t have picked up a bow and arrow—”
“Horace shouldn’t have been so tempting a target. Like that,” I said. “But why did Chidra want to bring us out here? What does that do for her?”