The Royal Wulff Murders by Keith McCafferty

nose in here, Walt.”
    Walt shook his head. “I can’t smell anything, but that don’t mean squat. I lived too long in the city to have much nose left.”
    Martha eased the door shut with a bump of her butt and smiled sourly as Walt poked the key into the trunk’s lock. She noted bright scratches on the bumper where it looked like someone had taken a key or the back of a knife and scraped off a couple of stickers.
    The hood yawned open with a pneumatic hiss. Spare tire, hydraulic jack not original to the car, tow rope, a coil of bright orange tube for sucking air from a full tire to inflate a flat. And a cardboard box of tools, well used.
    “Handyman,” Walt said. “This ain’t the ride of no CEO.”
    Martha put her hand on the carpet flooring.
    “Damp?”
    “Damn gloves make it hard to tell.” She rolled up a sleeve and pressed the underside of her wrist here and there. “Maybe against the side here. Yeah, I think so.”
    Martha shut the trunk, set her hands on her hips, and looked out across the water.
    “Okay, I’m going to think out loud for a minute,” she said. “We’ve got a campsite nobody’s been seen in for five days, a car that’s been stripped of ID, right down to scraping off the bumper stickers. We got a generic name on the camper registration and license plates that have a Bridger prefix, even though the registration card says the camper is from Dillon. So I’m thinking the plates could have been boosted and our guy got too cute. We’ll call the numbers in, see about that. In the meantime, assuming this is the victim’s car, and I think there’s a strong possibility, the question is—how does it get here when he’s twisting in the current twenty miles downriver?”
    “That’s easy, Marth,” Walt said. “The guy who killed him drives it up here, sets up a camp under a name he picked out of a hat so no one will make a connection to our floater. While we waste time figurin’ out what’s what, he takes a powder.”
    Martha grunted. “Doc Hanson says he drowned in still water ’cause there’s algae in his lungs. ’Cause there’s wicked microscopic bugs. So we’re looking at a river backwater or a lake. But instead of leaving the body where he kills him, our killer drags him out of the drink, stuffs the body into the trunk of the victim’s car, drives it to the river. Hauls the body out to the logjam, grunts it upstream to the head of the jam—the stick in the eye tells us that much—all this effort to make the case for accidental drowning look convincing. Then what? He changes plates, scrapes off the bumper stickers, removes any ID from the vehicle, drives it back here, throws up the tent—the camping gear must have already been in the car—and walks away.”
    She reconsidered. “No, I’m wrong about the order. He drives here first to set up camp. Remember how the host said he saw him wrestling with the tent at ten o’clock? That’s barely twilight this time of year, be too risky to dump a body in the river that early. Maybe he leaves the man where he was killed long enough to drive the car uphere and set up camp. Then, after nightfall, he drives back to the scene, wraps up the body, and puts it in the trunk. He dumps the man in the drink, drives back up here again, and abandons the vehicle. Walks away.”
    Walt pressed his lips together.
    “Walks away, Marth? This camp is nowhere and grizzly country to boot. What do you think about an accomplice? There could be a second car.”
    Martha nodded her head imperceptibly.
    “Yeah, maybe.” She paused. “I don’t know, though. Most murder is personal. No, I think he’s alone, he ditches the car, he walks away. He could be a local, has his own car parked a few miles away. Or maybe he’s staying in another campground or at the cabins at Slide Inn or up by the Grizzly Bar. It’s what, six-seven miles to Slide? Walkable.”
    “Somebody might have seen him if he walked the road.”
    “Late at night, there’s not much