"Capron, Bill - Color Blind Detective - Dead White Wulff" - читать интересную книгу автора (Capron Bill)

DEAD WHITE WULFF - A Continuing Adventure of the Color-Blind Detective
By
Bill Capron

When someone says rods and cones, most people think of fishing and ice cream. For me rods and cones are the central focal point of my being, or more correctly, their lack thereof. In some ways it's like being black, it infuses everything I do, every place I go. When someone says they love the changing colors of the leaves, the green of the grass, the red of the cardinal, I am flooded with a sense of differentness, something that makes me abnormal in a normal colored world. Black, white and gray, all I need to function well in my world, or any world. From where I stand, color seems more like a defect of sight, clouding out the very purpose of the eye, to see what's going on.

Still, a person didn't need to be color-blind to see what was happening at streamside on that chilly June morning in southwest Washington. I was knee deep in Canyon Creek, stalking the rainbow trout, so named because its sides bore the layered grays of the rainbow. The season was just a few days old, and the stream was high with snow melt from Mt. St. Helens, and would be until mid-July. Although the stream had been stocked five miles up, those fish had not made their way to the lower stretch yet, so I was fishing last year's survivors and a small number of native fish that made their way up from Yale Reservoir to feed in the cold fast waters. It was nearing noon and I'd had a great morning, catching and releasing twenty trout, two over fifteen inches. I used a fly of my own invention, a white-gray elk-hair caddis with squared off sponge wings, visible in the whitest water, and it wouldn't sink. I like to be able to see the fish take the fly. The excitement is in the strike, the flash of the tail, the boil of the water, bringing the fish in is almost anticlimactic. Still, my friends would tell me it wasn't a dry caddis time of day or year, but I believe that trout are at the bottom of the food chain for a reason. So I use whatever fishing wiles I have to convince them that caddis is the fly de jour. I was fifteen the last time I was skunked on a stream with a caddis. I don't ever expect it to happen again.

When you're fishing in high water, you have to keep an eye out for debris in the current. I was once hit in the back of the legs by a log and thrown into a pool where all that money I'd saved on swimming lessons almost cost me my life. So I was on the look-out when I saw the shape roll through the stretch of white water above me. I moved myself out of the current and kept casting until it entered my field of vision. I splashed out hip deep and pulled the body to the shore. His waders were filled with water, but drowning wasn't the problem, it was the bullet hole in the head that'd done him in. There wasn't any blood, the water had washed the wound clean, leaving a gray slightly lighter than his skin. There were black grains stuck in his skin around the hole, so the gun hadn't been more than a foot away, and it must have been a jacketed slug since the exit wound hadn't taken the back of his head off.

I turned his body on its back, then touched the white winged royal wulff stuck in his lip. It was a poorly tied fly, not like some amateur, but intentionally bad workmanship, like some kind of affront to the dead fisherman. I used my handkerchief to pull the fly box out of his jacket, then popped it open. The fly in his lip didn't come from the box which contained the ultimate examples of a tier's art, an assortment of sizes and types arranged by shades of black, white and gray in showman fashion, almost too beautiful to spend on a fish.

There was a clap of thunder overhead, rain would not be far behind. I slogged against the current to find where he'd been killed before all the clues were washed away. It was only a half mile up, under the bridge on an easy stream access. He'd looked to be in his late sixties, not in the shape for the more strenuous accesses downstream. His rig was resting half in the water, a fine Winston rod with a hand-tooled Stratos reel. I pulled in the line, he was fishing with dark gray nymphs. There was a half eaten Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate bar in the rocks. His full-sized Dodge four wheel truck was parked with the doors locked. There were no other footprints in the muddy soil, but the tops of the rocks crossing the stream were marked with wet mud. I took the same route over the rushing water, then climbed a precariously steep path up to the road. The tire marks were more than a foot wide, from one of those jacked-up four-wheeling SUVs. There were two sets of foot prints, one from a man with sized twelve or larger felt bottomed boots, still substantially smaller than my sixteen, the other a woman in street shoes.

I made my way back to the body and looked for his wallet. It was in his fishing jacket, dry in a plastic baggy. I left it there, since that might be more tampering than the police would condone. Gripping the dark gray and white fly in his mouth, I pulled down on the dead man's lower lip, there was still black chocolate between his teeth. I scurried up the hill accompanied by thunder, but still no rain.
* * * *
I drove to the local store at the tee in the road, a last outpost in the middle of nowhere, or what used to be nowhere, but Clark County was growing and even nowhere was getting pretty crowded. Farms were being sold and grand homes raised in their stead. It was just the way it was, there were never fewer people, fewer homes, fewer cars, fewer fishermen. I didn't like it, but I'm not one of those people who think they should blockade the state once I'm in. Still, it's tough sharing sometimes, and a resource like Canyon Creek would soon become a recreational haven no longer extending its welcoming silence to fishermen.

With all the people came crime, and cops. I don't know how close the nearest county cop was, what with the new community policing, they might be as close as Amboy. I dialed 9-1-1 and told the dispatcher my story. She said two officers were out my way dealing with an accidental shooting in Yacolt and would be there in fifteen minutes.

I walked back into the gas station/store which over the last decade had grown in little leaps each year in response to the increasing traffic north to fishing, hunting and general recreation on the reservoirs of the North Fork Lewis, as well as increasing local traffic. It was one step up from convenience store and one giant leap short of a super market, but in its small community it was the prime gathering place for local teenagers. They sat outside with their cokes, a couple at the end smoking a joint, and inside six of them were gathered around a video game, their vulgar language a sharp contrast to my boyhood experience. The owner, a balding giant of a man, boomed aggressively, "Pipe it down back there," and there was silence. I bought a coffee and doughnut, then went outside, dropped the tailgate of my truck and sat to wait for the cops. A sign on the store said, "Logging dollars at work."

Tum Tum Mountain was off to my left, dominating the sky with its Weyerhaeuser delivered Mohawk haircut, a sign of man's greed to some, but a justifiable use of valuable renewable resources to me. This was logging country and over the last twenty years a lot of trees had been taken, ending a long drought from the Yacolt fire in 1906 that burned everything from Yacolt to twenty miles north in Cougar, long before Yale Reservoir became a man made fire break. Two extended cab trucks of loggers skidded to a stop in the dirt park and ride on the other side of the street. They tossed their saws and lunchboxes into their old trucks and cars, rednecks all, much more romantic from a distance than in real life, just like most of us. Their vehicles tore out of the lot leaving a dissipating memory of their presence in the dust, home to wives and children, some waiting in anticipation, some in fear, most not giving it any thought. I'd worked as a logger once, for twenty-two days while I was on summer break from college. The work was too hard to just be called tough, and I had to get out. Some of these men had done if for forty years. They'd earned my wonder if not my respect.

The siren cut through the countryside like the noise pollution it was and all heads turned. The store clerk came out as the black and white skidded to a stop behind my truck. Both officers were in light gray uniforms, and that was about as close as they got to sharing anything. He was driving, maybe thirty-five, pot belly, blotchy face with a big veined nose and thick dark gray lips, uniform wrinkled and dirty. Very unappealing. Now next to him was another story. She was in her late twenties or a little older, five-two, coal black hair with almost transparent gray eyes. Her nose turned up a bit, and her lips wore an enigmatic smile that seemed to be apologizing for her partner before he said anything.

The very first words out of his mouth, I kid you not, were, "I'm Sergeant Willis, and I'm in charge here."

I didn't blink but instead kept my eyes on the obvious brains of the outfit. She rolled her eyes, but held her tongue. I raised my hand and said, "Officer, I'm the one who phoned 9-1-1."

"So, what's your name." I gave it to him and he threw over his shoulder, "Jackson, check this guy in the computer." She sat down and started working.

I said, "Maybe we should get to the crime scene before it starts raining, officer?"

He gave me an official stare, "When I'm ready. When I'm ready." Without turning his head he asked, "Anything on this guy?"

Jackson yelled, "Yeah, he's a private detective, licensed in Oregon and Washington. I think he has a good idea. We should get to the scene right now."

The fat cop ignored her, "So what are you doing here, mister dee-tective?"

I got a little sarcastic, "I was fishing. What does it look like?" I spread my vest and shrugged my shoulders.

He started to move towards me. "Don't get snippy with me, jerk."

I got in his face, "I'm a witness, officer, so you watch your lip, or I'm not going to tell you a thing." I cut off his interruption with, "I'll get back on the phone and tell them I need a cop without an asshole for a mouth. You don't think so, you just push my buttons one more time, jerkwater and we'll wait for a real cop."

He was speechless, but what could he do? He'd offended a willing witness, then tried to brow beat him, all in one short minute, and now he had nowhere else to go. Jackson took the steam out of the moment. She told me, "Lead the way, we'll be right behind you."

Willis gave me a hard stare, then got behind the wheel. He backed up and gave me just enough room to pull out, then tailgated me the three miles to the stream. The half mile hike down the canyon left him huffing and puffing, and the dirty knees marked two falls on the slippery trail. I sat back while he examined the body. Jackson took notes as he spoke. He wouldn't condescend to ask me what I might think, deciding instead to interrogate me as a suspect.