Chasing a Blond Moon(40)

“Not if somebody cleaned the site,” she said.

“Wouldn’t they take the anise bottles?”

Grinda didn’t have an answer, which was not unusual. You rarely got a neat package of evidence that all fit together.

After searching methodically and taking down the bottles to dust later for fingerprints, they found no human footprints in the area and sat down to rest and think. A hunter using dirty bait was smart enough to wear gloves in handling things to avoid leaving any prints, but this was Grinda’s case and she liked to follow the book. Service lit a cigarette.

“Nice picnic spot,” a voice said, startling them both.

They had not heard or seen Rosary Emmarpus approach. One second they were alone and the next she was standing not ten feet away.

She didn’t look anything like her grandfather, who was tall. She was short with frizzy black hair, wearing cut-off jeans and a sleeveless olive drab T-shirt. Her legs, arms, and neck and shoulders were literally covered with dozens of tattoos that ran together and made him dizzy to look at. She had a gold ring in a nostril, two more in her left eyebrow, and the countenance of a turtle sticking its head out of its shell.

“Hey, Elza,” the vet said.

“Morning, Rose. This is Grady Service,” she said, “our detective out of Marquette.”

The woman nodded.

“Any trouble finding us?” Grinda asked.

“I could smell his cancer stick a hundred yards back,” she said.

Service wet his fingers, extinguished the cigarette and put it in his pocket.

Rosary Emmarpus was so strange looking that he found it impossible not to stare.

The woman looked directly at him. “You’re sitting there wondering how such a freak got through vet school, right?”

Service shrugged.

“Animals don’t give a shit what people look like,” she said. “Neither did the people in Alaska, and I’m hoping it’s not going to be an issue here. Alaska’s okay, but the winters are too damned long and I hate flying with bush pilots to take care of clients. Anything else you want to know?”

He shook his head.

Emmarpus looked at the cedar limb. “That’s where the snare was,” she said with a nod.

“How do you know? You saw this in Alaska?” Grinda asked.

“Several times. Up there they used bottles of maple syrup to draw the animals in. The cable hangs down in a big loop. The baits are above it. The animal has to stand up in the loop and when it pulls the bait, there’s a trigger that tightens the cable. Then the bear is usually caught. Sometimes the snare gets the neck, sometimes the trunk of the body. The neck kills pretty quick. The body eventually kills because the animal struggles until it crushes its ribs or spine. Either way, it’s not pretty.”

“Professional poachers?” Service asked.

“They all poach for money up there,” the vet said. “Poachers are thieves and they all kill in any way that will work. The advantage of this gimmick is that it’s quiet.” She looked up in the tree. “They had the cable up there, right?”

Grinda nodded.

“You find the trigger?”

“Nothing.”

“They won’t be back,” Emmarpus said. “They seldom hit the same place twice, especially if somebody gets on to them.”

“How’s the animal?” Grinda asked.

“He’ll survive, but he’s not that big. The bigger the animal, the more valuable the parts. They’d found this one they would have been pissed.”

Service walked over to his truck to get a pack of cigarettes and as he reached for the door, he heard Rosary Emmarpus tell Grinda, “Great buns.”

Grinda said, “Not available.”

The peculiar little vet laughed. “That’s always the case. The good ones are always married or gay.”

The three of them were back at the trucks by 2 p.m. and the vet left them. Grinda said, “Gus told me about the prof at Tech—cyanide in figs, and bear galls in the same box?”

He shook his head. “It’s a beaut.”

“Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make sure your professor passed on,” she said.

She was right on in her assessment, but how did the murder connect to the other stuff going on in recent days and weeks?

Grinda reached into the bed of her truck and pulled out the remains of cable she had recovered last night. “I’m going to check around, see if anybody around here sells this kind of material,” she said. “If this stuff snapped, it might come from a defective spool and there could be reports of others. I also dusted for prints. Nothing.”

It was about ninety miles north to Houghton and Service drove at a steady sixty-five, having plenty of time for the meeting with Gus and Walter.