The Quiet Game

Crested Butte, Colorado, is a tiny village nestled nine thousand feet in the Rocky Mountains, twenty-five miles from Aspen as the crow flies, three hours by car. The easiest way to get there is to fly into Gunnison and drive north up the valley for half an hour. But to get to former special agent Dwight Stone's cabin, you must leave the pastel storefronts of Crested Butte's old town behind and drive northwest into the mountains on a forest service road, past the summer homes of the rich, until the road turns into a jeep trail that follows the Slate River upstream between Anthracite Mesa and Schuylkill Mountain. A few hundred yards north of an eight-foot vertical drop in the river, situated in the thick fir and spruce between the jeep track and the narrow blue-black span of the Slate, stands a small but well-built cabin, facing southwest to catch the sun.

Dwight Stone likes his solitude.

When I called Stone from the Gunnison airport and asked if I could speak to him about the Payton case, he politely declined. I did not tell him where I was calling from.

That was an hour ago.

Now Caitlin and Annie and I approach his front porch like a lost family asking for directions. I'm glad we brought coats. When we left Natchez it was ninety degrees. Here it's less than fifty, and there are dark clouds glowering over the summit of Gothic Mountain to the east.

Before I can knock, a tall, fit-looking man in his late sixties clumps around the side of the cabin wearing hip waders, a Black Watch flannel shirt, and carrying a fly rod.

"You folks lost?" he asks in a deep, resonant voice.

"That depends on where we are." I've already recognized the voice, but I say, "Are you former special agent Dwight Stone?"

Stone has the eyes of a combat veteran, and they narrow instantly, assessing threat. A man with a woman and a little girl can't seem like much danger, but I don't know what his anxieties are.

"You're on my property," he points out, quite reasonably. "Why don't you introduce yourself first?"

"Fair enough. I'm Penn Cage."

His eyes relax, but he sighs wearily. "You've wasted your time, son. Flying up here to get told no to your face instead of over the phone."

"I hoped you might soften up a little when you saw us."

He shakes his head, climbs onto the porch, and leans the fly rod against the cabin wall.

"I'm not a journalist. I have no interest in sensationalizing this story."

"You're a writer, aren't you?"

"Yes, but that's not why I'm looking into this case."

"Why are you?"

My gut feeling about Dwight Stone is that if you want to get anywhere with him, honesty is the best policy. "I could say it was to help the victim's family. Althea Payton and her mother-in-law. And I do want to help them. But I also have a selfish reason. I'm trying to nail a man who hurt my father a long time ago."

Stone studies me for several seconds. "Who would that be?"

"Leo Marston. Judge Leo Marston. He was the district attorney back-"

"I know who he was." Stone eyes Caitlin. "This your wife?"

"No, a friend. Caitlin Masters. But this is my daughter. Say hello, Annie."

Annie waves her right hand while clinging to Caitlin's leg with her left.

"You bring her along for the sympathy factor?"

"I brought her to keep her out of harm's way. I've already been shot at. Not many people want the Payton case reopened."

A flicker of something in Stone's eyes. "You convicted Arthur Lee Han-ratty, didn't you?"

"That's right."

"I saw you on CNN last night, at the Walls."

I nod but say nothing.

"That'll buy you a half hour of my time, Mr. Penn Cage. How about some coffee?"

"Coffee would be wonderful," Caitlin says, lifting Annie into her arms.

Stone takes a trout bag from his shoulder, then wipes his hands on his shirt and reaches for the cabin door. "I don't get much company up here, but I think maybe we could rustle up some hot chocolate too."

Annie breaks into a wide grin.

Stone settles Caitlin and me on a sand-colored leather sofa with Annie between us. Before us is a huge fieldstone fireplace, and Stone quickly builds a roaring blaze in it. The cabin is full of hunting and fishing gear, snowshoes hanging on the walls, rifles over the mantel, a fly-tying bench littered with bright feathers. A large double-paned window faces the Slate, which runs flat and smooth thirty yards from the cabin's back door. Only a large white propane tank mars the illusion of virgin wilderness, and when there's snow it's probably invisible.

After putting the trout in his sink, Stone brings us mugs of coffee and chocolate heated on an old woodstove, then sits opposite us in a rough handmade chair. His waders hang on a hook by the door, dripping into a brass bucket with the sound of men making use of a spittoon.

"You've got a nice place," I tell him. "No neighbors at all. How'd you manage that?"