Ice and Stone

Book 35: A Sharon McCone Mystery

by Marcia Muller

Genres: Women's Fiction; Private Investigators; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Private investigator Sharon McCone goes undercover to investigate the murders of two indigenous women in remote Northern California in this gripping, atmospheric mystery in the New York Times bestselling series.

When two women are brutally murdered in northern California, their deaths are the latest atrocities in a surge of violence targeting indigenous women in the area. Despite all evidence to the contrary, local officials rule the deaths isolated incidents, and they soon join the ranks of other unsolved homicides, quickly forgotten by law enforcement.

Private Investigator Sharon McCone knows better, and so does the organization known as Crimes Against Indigenous Sisters, who hires Sharon to go undercover in Eiwok county, a tiny region on the mountainous Oregon border, to uncover the murderer.

In an isolated cabin in the freezing, treacherous woods, Sharon must unravel a mystery that is rooted in ignorance, profound hatred, and vengeance — before another victim is claimed.

Release date: August 10, 2021

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 272

Sample

4:13 p.m.

From its rim at the side of Fisher’s Mill Road, the deadfall looked treacherous: sand-colored boulders, felled trees, tangled dead branches, moraines of rock and sediment spilling down to the river below. I hefted my cumbersome backpack, looked dubiously at the walking stick that my guide, Allie Foxx, had provided to help me keep my balance.

Yeah, sure—I’ll probably still end up on my ass.

Allie was already halfway down the slope. She made a hurry-up sign to me. I closed my eyes and started off.

Closing my eyes was not the smartest thing I’d ever done: my work boots skittered over a patch of stones, a branch whopped me on the forehead, and I came to rest leaning against a birdlimed outcropping.

When I looked down the slope, I saw Allie had turned her back. She was probably hiding laughter. Her tribe, the Meruk, I’d read, did not believe in ridiculing others.

Well, I had to admit I must look ridiculous: clumsy in my overstuffed cold-weather clothing, red faced and sweating in spite of the icy wind. But dedicated—oh yes.

I’d been hired the previous week by the Eureka-based Crimes against Indigenous Sisters organization to investigate why two Native women had been murdered in Meruk County over the past three months as well as look into many prior disappearances. The cases were not localized: Indigenous women have long been victims of mysterious crimes in areas from Arizona to the far reaches of Canada, from the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific. But Meruk and its surrounding counties—Del Norte, Tehama, Siskiyou, and Modoc—had experienced an ominous uptick in such crimes, and CAIS wanted to know why. So did I.

I straightened, set my backpack more firmly on my shoulders, and started off again. This time the going was easier and, except for a couple of near falls, I made it upright to where Allie was now waiting on the bank of the Little White River. To her left the water flowed free from under an ancient arched stone bridge, but to her right the river became choked by more downed trees, dead grasses, and boulders. I slid toward her on a pebbled patch of ice.

She smiled, her white teeth a sharp contrast to her brown, weathered skin. “We’ll make a cross-country tracker of you yet, Sharon.”

“Cross-country catastrophe is more like it.”

“Nah, you just need a little more practice.” Her expression became serious. “This cell phone is for you. As I mentioned before, none work here except those signed up with the local provider, and, at that, the reception is spotty. You may have to go into the village to make any calls.”

“Thanks. I take it Internet service is just as bad.”

“Worse, I’m afraid. You won’t have a vehicle for a couple of days, but the village is walkable, and I’ve arranged with my brother who has a car dealership in the county seat to have a Jeep delivered to you. The shack is fully stocked, and anything you need, just give a call. You have your keys?”

“Yes. And my instructions and my lists.”

“Sorry to sound like an overprotective mama, but I was one for a lot of years. Be careful on that ledge under the bridge, it’s slippery. Once you’re on the other side, you turn left—”

“Yes, Mom.”

“And in an emergency, you’ll—”

“I know.”

“Okay. This is where I leave you. The killer, or killers, might recognize me, given the publicity the organization’s been getting. I’ll put as much distance between us as possible.” She squeezed my arm, turned, and walked quickly uphill.

I was on my own.

The narrow ledge under the bridge was slippery, but I had the walking stick for balance. Even through my thick boots I could feel the iciness of the water, and sharp stones poked against their soles. The arching bridge wall felt clammy and smelled of mold. Rustling sounds accompanied my passage, and I thought of bats.

And then I was out on the far side. The light was fading, so I flicked on my small flash before proceeding. I scrambled left up the mud-slick slope, past a jumbled pile of rocks and there—

There it was.

The old abandoned shack belonging to the Sisters was built of redwood that had weathered to a dull silver gray. Its windows were nailed shut with many sheets of plywood and crisscrossing timbers; tattered black shingles lay loose on its roof, some littering the ground. The single door was secured by a rusted chain and an odd-looking padlock. It seemed as if no one had entered it in decades.

But I knew better.

The padlock was difficult, even though Allie had given me a demonstration when she’d handed me the key. One prong of the key had to be inserted at an angle, another pushed up from below. When I pulled, nothing happened; I removed and reinserted the key, pressed harder, pulled again. There was a faint click, and the staple released. I removed the padlock and the chain, pulled the door open, and stepped inside.

Under other circumstances I would have expected dust, cobwebs, and stale odors, but instead a pleasant, flowery scent came to my nostrils. Air freshener. I shone my light around the single room. Two lanterns sat on the big braided rug. I fumbled in my pocket for matches, lit one.

The light from the lantern was dim; I was pleased with that, even though Allie had told me that every chink between the old boards had been caulked to prevent telltale leakage. I set my pack down and looked around.

The structure had been built in the mid-1980s by a man who had inherited the land and hoped to turn it into a retreat for recovering alcoholics, but the extremes of weather and difficulty of hauling in construction supplies had defeated him, and he’d died—sadly, an alcoholic himself—in the early 2000s, willing the property to the Sisters, who had befriended him and nursed him in his final illness. They’d maintained the cabin as well as they could, but they’d been working against great odds. And now it seemed they’d worked hard at reclaiming it for me.

To my right, under the windows, was a bunk topped with an air mattress, a sleeping bag, and a big, fluffy pillow; to the left a tiny bathroom with a chemical toilet and small sink had been partitioned off from the rest of the room. Two jugs of water, foodstuffs, and other supplies were stowed beneath a wide shelf.

I eyed the comfortable-looking bunk. I was exhausted. Early that morning I’d flown my Cessna 170B from its base at Oakland Airport’s North Field to a tiny paved strip at Bluefork over in Modoc County. The strip belonged to Hal Bascomb, one of my husband Hy’s flying buddies, who had been sworn to secrecy about my presence in the area and had provided the loan of one of his three dilapidated Quonset hut hangars to shelter the plane. After we stowed the plane, Hal gave me a hand up into his Jeep. He looked good: sun browned and golden haired in spite of the time of year. Long ago he and Hy had worked together on some dodgy jobs in Southeast Asia, and they had been friends ever since. Now Hal claimed he was taking it easy, that running the strip in Bluefork was his retirement. But I could see that same steely look in his eyes that I occasionally glimpsed in Hy’s. People in certain pursuits never quite retire.

Allie had met us on the outskirts of the nearby village of Aspendale in her Land Rover, and after a short drive she and I had arrived in Saint Germaine. An unincorporated and fairly unpopulated area, named after a long-abandoned monastery on the far side of the river, Saint Germaine was where the fatal attacks on two Indigenous women had occurred over the last three months. I’d have to—

Table that until tomorrow, McCone. You’re too tired to think clearly now. Put on your sweats, crawl into that bunk, and get some sleep.

2:27 a.m.

One of the windows above the bunk was propped open about five inches, but in a way that wouldn’t be visible from outside. Before I’d wrapped myself in the sleeping bag and blankets—so new they still had the store tags attached—I’d arranged my super-sensitive sound-activated tape recorder on the sill. In case anyone—or anything—came around, it would alert me and record their actions. The promise of snow was in the air, and sheets of ice groaned where they’d formed at the bend of the river. I’d drifted off to the sound of loose stones clattering in strong current.

Louder noises broke my sleep. I pushed up on one elbow, brushed my hair off my face. Heavy footsteps and men’s voices, two of them, coming down the hill. I checked my watch, then the recorder, to make sure it was working. Took my .38 Special from where I’d wedged it between the air mattress and its frame, lay back against the pillows, and waited.

The footsteps came around the cabin and stopped. One of the men gasped, and I could hear him breathing laboriously. The other said, “Christ, Gene, you’re gonna have a coronary if you don’t lose some of that flab.”

“Screw you.” Gene gasped again; it took him a moment to get the hacking under control.

“Well, listen to yourself,” the other said.

“Son of a bitch tells us to leave the ranch in weather like this, he’s trying to kill us. What’s with him, anyway?”

“Probably more of his fancy guests coming.”

“What’s that to do with us?”

“Don’t know. He pays good, though.”

“Not good enough for us to pay for a room in one of those fleabag motels.”

“It’s good money for these parts, though.”

“For these parts, but nowhere near city rates.”

“So take yourself off to a city, get a bigger-paying job, and then try to live on it at city prices.”

“I done all right in the cities back in the day. I bet if I went down to Sacramento, San Francisco—”

“You’d starve.”

“Look, I worked in L.A. once—”

“Yeah, once. When you was a lot younger. And thinner. A lot better lookin’ too.”

“Come on, Vic. You’re not in such great shape yourself. If you were, we might’ve gotten lucky today.”

“What does being in shape have to do with it? We never even seen so much as a goddamn deer.”

“All right, all right.”

“Man, I’m not looking forward to sleeping on the cold ground. Why don’t we break into the shack?”

I tensed, glanced at the shack’s door. Had I secured it properly? I cradled the .38 to my chest, waited.

“Nah, it’s too much trouble. Besides, it belongs to one of the tribes. We don’t want any hassle with their police—or the feds.”

“Jesus Christ, I’m so sick of Injuns. All the names they got for ’em too. ‘Native Americans.’ ‘Redskins.’ ‘Indians.’ What’s it matter?”

“Well, if you was one it might matter to you.”

“But I’m not. I’m a one hundred percent red-blooded American boy.”

“Red blooded?”

“Well, fuck you!”

Rustling noises, as if the men were laying out sleeping bags.

Long silence, then Gene’s voice asked, “You want some of this? It’s pretty good whiskey.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Kinda takes the sting outta the cold, don’t it?”

“Does. Look, Gene, I don’t know about you, but what I’m gonna do now is crawl into my sleeping bag. Come dawn we’re outta here, be at the ranch by eight.”

“Probably have to work the whole damn day.”

“So what? We get paid tomorrow.”

“Get paid, go buy us a couple more bottles, maybe play a little blackjack at the casino, then back to work again next day. What a life!”

“It ain’t so bad. Not lately, you got to admit that. Wouldn’t be better anywhere else, that’s for sure, even if you had someplace to go.”

“I got places I could go.”

“Sure you do. Just keep on telling yourself that.”

Silence, then, except for the sounds of the men settling into their sleeping bags. I curled up, breathing in small intakes and exhalations.

“Vic?”

“What now?”

“The old man—he’s crazy, ain’t he?”

“Hell, I don’t know.”

“He must be. I mean—”

“Shut up, Gene.”

“I mean—”

“Shut up!”

Gene snorted, shifted around, then fell silent.

A little time passed. Then Vic said in a plaintive tone, “Hey, I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Huh?”

“About you having no place to go. Even after that mess with the girl over in Reno, you could—”

“Leave it, man. She was nothing but a tramp, and she left town good and quick. Besides, I asked you never to talk about Reno. Stuff is what it is. Just let it be.”

Silence again.

Two minutes more, and then:

Gene: It’s goddamn cold here. Maybe we shoulda gone up to the other place. At least we could’ve slept inside there.

Vic: Too far away. And even colder and windier. You got any of that antifreeze left?

Gene: Got some, yeah.

Vic: You sharing?

Gene: Do I have a choice?

Drinking sounds, followed by a loud belch. After a few minutes, Gene said, “You asleep?”

“I will be, if you ever shut up.”

“But—”

“I said if you ever shut up!”

Silence, except for the drone of an airplane in the distance. Small jet, I thought, as I pulled my covers higher. I was still on edge but feeling reasonably safe, so I passed the time thinking about what little I’d learned from the men’s conversation. An old man on a nearby ranch had sent them away. Who was he? And what did the men do at the ranch? Couldn’t be anything important; they didn’t sound like the brightest bulbs in the box. Maybe they were security guards. Long ago I’d worked in the field; I knew what security guards sounded like, and these two fit my recollections. But why would someone need guards in this godforsaken outpost?

A hundred scenarios would dance in my dreams if I couldn’t tamp down my imagination, and I’d wake exhausted. I closed my eyes, tried to quiet my thoughts. It didn’t help much, and when I did drop off and dream, I saw shadowy extraterrestrials with tentacles and huge eyes on stalks creeping down the ridge toward the shack.

I swatted one on the nose, and they went away.

6:49 a.m.

Groans, grunts, and mumbles. The men were getting up.

Gene: Shit! My back hurts.

Vic: Keep thinking about the dough we’re gonna collect.

Gene: Yeah, I can use it for my spine surgery.

Vic: Why are you always so negative?

Gene: Just my nature, I guess.

Vic: Well, screw your nature. Let’s get outta here, get to the ranch. I’m hungry.

Gene: You’re always hungry.

Vic: You’re the one with the gut.

7:17 a.m.

After I was sure the men wouldn’t return, I got up, pulled on jeans, boots, and a wool shirt, and went outside. The snow that I’d expected had come at some point, but it must have been a brief flurry, leaving only a light dusting on the rocky ground. I could see vague outlines of where the men had been lying. I went over and studied the area.

An empty pint bottle of Four Star, a cheap blended whiskey. A pile of used tissues. . .