Dead Man’s Fancy by Keith McCafferty Page A

of the ankle,” Hanson said.
    Martha pursed her lips. “If it was made by the horse, the injury would be curved, like a horseshoe. Right?”
    â€œYou’d think.”
    â€œLooks like he stepped in a coyote trap.”
    â€œThat’s what Wilkerson said, too. She said Julie had leghold traps of various sizes in the barn and they were going to see if one matched. If a trap was set by the elk carcass for the wolves and he accidentally stepped onto the pan, then you have a logical reason for him falling onto the antler.”
    â€œSo Wilkerson’s seen the body?”
    â€œShe was here just before you.”
    Ettinger drummed the fingers of her right hand on the edge of the table.
    Hanson shrugged. “She made an appointment. She went through channels.”
    â€œNot my channel.”
    â€œCan I give you a piece of advice?”
    â€œWhat? I can see you’re going to, anyway.”
    â€œDon’t be too hard on her for taking the initiative. This county’s grown twenty percent in the last three years. Bigger population, bigger department, bigger workload. You can’t micromanage like before. I know it irks you not to have your finger in the gravy, but you’ve got a good team with Walt taking on undersheriff duty and now Wilkerson, you couldn’t ask for better technical support. I’m right if you think about it.”
    Ettinger pulled off her blue latex gloves and dropped them in a wastebasket. “You’re right. I need to delegate more. It’s just, I don’t know, a couple nights ago up on the mountain, I felt like a fifth wheel with Jason Kent running SAR and Harold taking over the crime scene, if that’s what it turns out to be.”
    â€œDo I have to remind you who found the body?”
    Ettinger grunted, conceding the point. “It’s just that something happened up there, I don’t want to get into it, but it shouldn’t have. It
wouldn’t
have a few years ago. I lost control for a couple minutes.” She closed her eyes, could hear her scream echoing off the rock walls of Papoose Basin. “I seem to be full of doubts these days, not just professionally.”
    Hanson nodded. “Twenty years ago I went through something similar. It’s called a midlife crisis. If you’re like me, you’ll work through more than one of them. I seem to be at the onset of one right now.”
    â€œThanks for pointing that out to me.”
    â€œYou’re welcome. You know how I feel about you. I—”
    Ettinger held up her hand. “I know. You love me for all my warts and graces. I still think you stole that line from somebody.”
    Hanson shook his head. “I’m an original, Martha.”
    She was going to say something wry, something that would put Doc Hanson, the old walrus, in his place, when the chickadee on the clock said its name.
    â€”
    T he Fish, Wildlife & Parks barn was wishful thinking—not a barn at all, but a Quonset hut constructed of corrugated galvanized steel, hollow as the empty half of a tin can it resembled. Flick a BB against the wall and it echoed like a gunshot in a limestone canyon. Ettinger heard the voices before she entered, could see two figures at the far end of the building.
    â€œLet’s raise the ladder to ten feet and try the mule deer again.” It was Georgeanne Wilkerson, whose breathy, conspiratorial voice was hard to mistake. She tended to speak as if she were in cahoots with you, planning to rob the Bridger Federal Savings and Loan.
    â€œO . . . kaaaay.” Julie McGregor, the Region Three wolf and elk biologist, had adopted the same breathy expansion, full of mystery and derring-do.
    Ettinger set her hands on her hips and watched as McGregor took the two forelegs of a field-dressed mule deer buck while Wilkerson held onto the rear legs. They lifted the deer and began to ascend twin ladders that faced sides over the severed head of a bull