Jack Pine, page 10
Heat warmed Carter’s back like sun breaking through trees. He pushed the chain saw deeper into the wood as the chain sparked against the spike then snapped free and slashed his neck open neatly before landing in the fireweed. His jugular vein pumped blood on the pine like red paint on bread. Carter fell to his knees with the smoking saw. The blood on his chest felt like bathwater.
The ground rushed up as the skidder’s gas tank exploded into a yellow and orange donut of fire before combusting into thick black smoke. Carter kept his hands to his neck and felt the tips of his boots get hot. His watched his skidder burn. Black roiling smoke billowed from tires with the steel bands glowing red. He looked at the tree line and saw a man raising his arm. He saw the cab where his shotgun lay under the seat and the man in the tree line again. The man raising his arm again, fired.
18
REUGER WAS WALKING toward a tall angular man smoking like a general in the morning sun. Jim Carpenter and Ben Johnson stood off by their trucks. The man was all curves and elbows and jaw with a shiny gun belt and holster. His uniform was green with military starch, and the only things missing were the ribbons and medals he kept in a drawer. He approached Sheriff Riechardt with the last swallow of coffee still in his mouth. The sheriff looked at his watch, then stubbed the cigarette and palmed his mouth full of sunflower seeds.
“Spiked his tree,” he muttered, walking toward a blanket draped over work boots.
Reuger stared at the smoldering skidder as Riechardt lifted a green-and-white blanket of bears and wolves to a man with his mouth open and eyes glazed. His beard was dark and feathered in around the gash in his throat. The wound opened over a candy red Adam’s apple and pink epiglottis. The blood had coated the bristles on the man’s chin then flowed down his shirt and filled his top pocket then hardened into a glaze. His suspenders were shellacked to his shirt.
“Shot in the left side of the head,” the sheriff nodded, pointing to the red hole above the ear. Phsit! A sunflower seed hit the blanket. “Crime lab will be up here first thing in the morning.” Phsit! Phsit!
Sawdust peppered the man’s black bristly hair, and Reuger fought the urge to brush it out. Carter Grisom was just a little younger than Foster Jones. He was an independent logger with chain saws and a skidder that were at least twenty years old. He had been logging as long as Foster. Reuger saw the knurled hands coated with oil and clutching at the air. Seeds rained behind him. Phsit! Phsit! Phsit!
“Skidder burned here probably after he hit that spike,” Riechardt said curtly.
Reuger kneeled down and ran his hand over the surrounding fireweed. He looked up at the sheriff.
“This where he was found?”
Riechardt palmed more seeds from his pocket and nodded.
“Jim Carpenter found him here,” the sheriff nodded again. “Came back here after some hiker reported seeing smoke.” He dropped the blanket and puckered seeds in the high weeds. “So there’s a link here between the two loggers now.” Riechardt spat another seed. “So much for your suicide.”
Reuger studied the flattened weeds pulled toward Carter. He had tried to move after he fell to the ground. The wood was mostly jack pine. It was just like Foster. He was a man just staying ahead of the bank. Reuger lifted the blanket again to the hands reaching as if they still wanted to hold the chain saw.
“Next of kin?”
Phsit…a split seed popped to the left. Riechardt stood behind him with his hands on his belt. He smoothed his thin mustache and shook his head, running a finger along a ruler-straight part.
“Don’t think he has anyone in town here, Reuger. You know these old shaders usually die alone and broke.”
“I’ll run them down,” he muttered walking to the tree.
The spike was long and silver. It was a tried-and-true way of stopping logging, a fierce weapon for the radical environmentalist. Reuger leaned closer and saw chattered edges where the chainsaw had lost the quick battle with the harder metal before flying loose. The spike had been driven in from above then gummed closed with bits of bark and tree sap. He saw where Carter Grissom was pushing the saw into the wood when the chain snapped free and slashed his neck. Reuger saw the rush of hot blood filling his throat as his jugular pumped blood on the pine, then the ground rushing up as the skidder gas tank exploded. The doomed man dragged himself along until a shot rang out.
Reuger turned to the blackened skidder throwing up dying tendrils into the cooling air like some old buffalo and smelled the burned wood as a warm breeze crossed the valley. He noticed a fire-blackened lantern hooked on a low branch. Gus walked up with eyes glassy and haunted.
“Pretty tore up,” he nodded. “Known Carter as long as Foster there.”
“I called an ambulance to meet you on the Fernberg here, Reuger.” The sheriff chewed quickly then spat two more seeds. “I wasn’t sure if you hadn’t gone back to the Boundary Waters on a fishing trip to chase Indians.”
Reuger turned around and eyed the man in the pressed uniform. He knew the fact he didn’t take a seaplane up to the Boundary Waters racked him off. Everything with Riechardt was procedure and by the book.
“It wasn’t a fishing trip, Sheriff.”
He palmed more seeds and spat three to the side.
Phsit. “Ya, well, I don’t give a fuck what it was. You aren’t John Wayne here, so let’s quit fucking around and get on these here murders. Obviously have a pattern here, and if you want to go looking for someone then the proper procedure is a seaplane with flare gear, not this Lone Ranger and Tonto shit here.”
The sheriff took off his glasses and showed fifty-eight years of craggy lines. Seeds propelled into the dying light like photons.
“I don’t pay my deputies here to be up there on camping trips when I need them down here. Now, I want you to talk to Jorde, Reuger.” He pointed to the blanket. “This is his work here.”
Reuger walked the ground, looking at the logs, then walked back to the logging road where Ben Johnson and Jim Carpenter stood with the sky in the east becoming bright. “That how you found him, Jim?”
He cleared his throat with his watch catching on his oversized belt buckle. His eyes were back behind his glasses, but Reuger could see he was unnerved.
“Ya, come out to see if the forest here was on fire after the people in cabin three said they saw smoke. Drove on back here and saw smoke above the trees and when I got back here, saw his skidder burning there.”
“Burning or smoking?”
“Ya, maybe it was smoking. Radioed the sheriff here.” He licked his lips again. “Got out of the truck and saw Carter lying there dead, all chewed up and such, so I went and got one of Diane’s blankets and put it over him.”
“That all?”
“Yep.”
They turned to the man with the construction boots sticking out of the blanket.
“Those bastards will stop at nothing,” Ben Johnson growled with his eyes small under his Stetson. “You know it was that Jorde now. Has his fucking fingerprints all over this one. Clear to me what’s going on here,” he nodded grimly. “The sonofabitch is killing loggers because he can’t buy off any more judges.”
The sheriff walked over and spat a seed. His eyes narrowed in.
“Environmental issue here, Reuger. I want you to go hang Jorde upside down there until he confesses to these two crimes or reveals who did it!”
Reuger let the sheriff posture for Ben Johnson, then nodded slowly.
“Let me see what the evidence…”
“Cut the crap, there, Reuger. I’ve got your evidence.”
“Sheriff Riechardt, this is Hector, come in.”
He stabled the receiver on his shoulder.
“Go ahead.”
“I have that registration number for you… or I have that name… ya, the computer was down and…”
“Give it to me, you fool!”
“Ya, registered to a Tom Jorde, T-o-m J-o-r-d-e…Ya, like I say…”
The sheriff let go of the receiver on his shoulder.
“There you go, Reuger.”
Reuger felt the irritation between his eyes and stared at the man spitting sunflower seeds. He wondered when he was going to tell him about the gun. Riechardt was playing his game, sounding him out until he could play his card for Ben Johnson. He knew that, but still it pissed him off.
“Where’s the gun?”
A seed hit his shoe. Riechardt turned and gestured to his SUV.
“Sorry. Front seat of my truck there. Found it ten feet from the body.” A seed spiraled over his shoulder like a dove. He stepped closer. “You have your fucking evidence, now go hang his ass upside down.”
The sheriff turned and walked stiffly toward his jeep with Ben Johnson.
“Bruce won’t give me a felony warrant without a witness,” Reuger said dully.
Riechardt climbed into his jeep and leaned out the window.
“Then get one!”
The sheriff spun away with Ben Johnson’s truck following. Exhaust angulated in the damp air. Reuger watched until the last taillight faded into the trees, then he turned back to the man under the blanket.
“I’ll be danged!” Gus shook his head slowly. “Didn’t think the sheriff coulda got his nose any further up Johnson Timber’s ass, but I guess I was wrong, by God! Maybe he gives him them seeds, Reuger. Never seen a man spit so much shit from his mouth.”
Reuger turned from the road then walked over the crackling seeds clinging to fireweed and peppering the blanket like bits of snow. He hunched down and stared at the man under the blanket, then at the spike rutting the tree like a silver dagger. Reuger dropped the blanket and stood.
Jim Carpenter looked at him.
“Do you need a hand?”
“Much obliged,” he said. “C’mon Gus, let’s get Carter out of here.”
19
A COLD MOON hung over Center Island. Reuger sat with his hat low and guided the puttering outboard through the rocks with the Winchester on his lap. He watched the fire belch sparks, dancing on the oily smooth water like flames on syrup. The fire yellowed the clap rock and graywacke and driftwood along the shore. He saw someone next to the fire and handed the Colt to Gus.
“Think that’s our man, then?”
“Not taking any chances.”
He weaved around the boulders in the shallows, gliding toward the fire laid into a leaning teepee. Flames crackled fast like a tumbler of BBs.
“Keep an eye out, Gus. That boy didn’t build that fire.”
He nodded, holding up the Colt.
“Don’t yer worry.”
They cleared the boulders and slid onto the gravel. Reuger saw Patricia Helpner’s son Kurt standing with his hands behind his back as Gus swung out and splashed ashore. An hour before she had come up to the lodge and said her son was missing. Now the boy walked toward Gus and waved shyly.
“Hi!”
Gus grabbed him by the shoulder.
“You all right, boy?”
He shrugged. “Yeah… I’m fine.”
Reuger swished the shallows past the fire with the rifle. He walked the tree line with his finger in the trigger guard then circled back. Kurt’s large brown eyes shone excitedly. Reuger stared at the flames devouring the driftwood like paper. He turned to the boy.
“Who built the fire, Kurt?”
He spread his arms wide.
“A real Indian!”
Reuger pushed his hat off his forehead. “Where’d he go?”
Kurt pointed toward the northern end of the lake.
“He paddled off just like you see in the movies. He was real fast too and had a big knife and a gun and…”
The fire popped and a spark arced into the water and sizzled.
“Maybe we should move off toward the boat here,” Gus nodded, glancing toward the trees. “Git out of arrow range.”
They backed up to the boat nudging the sand from a lapping surf. Reuger turned by the bow with the Winchester in his right hand. The day already seemed a distant memory. They had taken Carter to the morgue then scoured the crime scene then covered the area, asking canoeists and hikers whether they had seen anything unusual. Of course no one saw a thing, and they had ended up at the lodge bar exhausted. That was when Patricia burst in with the kind of fear in her eyes that could only mean a missing child.
“Want to tell me what happened here, Kurt?”
The boy shrugged again. “Me and Tim and that Cliff guy and the girl from the other cabin went looking for this Indian and found him! He was real nice guy even after those jerks left me here.”
Reuger rolled his tongue against the inside of his mouth. He looked at the trees again and then at the boy. Tim Carpenter had already confessed to leaving the boy on the island. Apparently they panicked and somehow Kurt became lost and Cliff managed to get them off the island but left Kurt behind.
“How’d he find you?”
Kurt glanced to where the lodge was a small, lit house across the lake. “Those guys had taken off with the canoes, and there he was. He said they had left and he would make a fire for me and stay until someone came looking.” Kurt peered up. “I think he hoped it would be you.”
“And why’s that?”
He squinted, one half of his face in the firelight.
“Because he gave me a message for you.”
Gus turned from watching the island and looked at the boy then Reuger.
“If that don’t beat all.”
“Let me get this right.” Kurt rubbed his forehead. “He said to meet him at the south side of Second Sister at three a.m. Oh, yeah, and to come by yourself.”
Kurt swung his hands self-consciously.
“Anything else?”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “He just talked about how badly the Indians got screwed over and how white people stole all their land and logged it out and didn’t pay them anything for it. Hey,” he looked up shyly, “did you ever hear of a book called Bury a Heart at the Knee?”
“You mean Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee?”
“Yeah, that’s it!’ Kurt nodded. “He said I should read that book.”
Reuger held his watch to the fire and yawned. The wood had burned down, and the droopy silver trees emerged like ghosts behind a dark stage. He turned to the north end of the lake where the Boundary Waters began.
“I’ll drop you and the boy off.”
“Ya, now Reuger.” Gus spat in the water. “I don’t think that’s such a hot idea here.”
Kurt pointed down the beach and pointed.
“He left a canoe in those bushes. He hid it there after the jerks left me here.”
“I’ll take that,” Reuger nodded. “Won’t be as noisy as a boat. Take him back to his mother, Gus,” he said, holstering the Colt.
“Now, like I say,” Gus began, shaking his head. “I don’t think that’s such a hot idea after he tried to spear us.”
Reuger nodded to the boat.
“You’ll be the first person I call if I get in trouble.”
“You ain’t back by six, and I’m bringing in the Mounties,” he muttered climbing into the boat with Kurt and starting the motor.
Kurt hopped in and Reuger pushed the boat into the oily darkness.
“Kurt, you and I are going walleye fishing tomorrow evening.”
The boy silhouetted the water.
“I thought we were going in the morning?”
“They’ll bite at dusk just the same.”
20
THE SECOND SISTER emerged just before two a.m. It was a small island resembling islands in the Pacific where the government blew up atomic bombs and life returned years later, strangely mutated. He had been paddling steady for three hours and was tired. He dipped the paddle again, leaving a foamy tail behind like an afterthought.
Reuger glided into tree shadow with rocks scarring the bottom and pulled the canoe further up on the rocky beach. He picked up the Winchester and began walking the tree line. A chorus of night birds and crickets breathed low. He smelled the sour scent of a dead fish and rounded the island to moonlight calcimined on the bottom of a canoe.
“Ya. Over here.”
The voice in the trees was heavy and dark. Reuger kept his finger on the trigger of the Winchester and felt the vibration of the trees, the lake, and the earth. A figure stretched from the pines with hair braced to shoulders from a camouflaged cap. Reuger kept the rifle waist level and walked slowly toward the large man staring out at the silver lake. Tommy Tobin brought his hand across the land with the impassive face of a Buddha.
“You know, the Ojibwa once had all of this, but we lost it all when they come up with their barges and took the trees and stripped the land. My ancestors couldn’t understand these people who destroy everything around them like fucking locusts.” His eyes flickered under the brim of his hat. “They couldn’t figure out why people want to take all the trees and leave the land to burn under the sun and starve the animals and leave the old men and women crying because they couldn’t fucking leave.” He shook his head. “But the Indians they trusted them a lot of times when they shouldn’t have, you know. They give them a blanket or a horse or a gun for millions of acres, and the Indians give it to them. They give them these worthless treaties, and you might as well go make a treaty with the wolf because he’ll at least look in your eyes before he tears your throat out.” He turned. “You ever read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee?”
Reuger nodded slowly. “A long time ago.”
“Ya,” he said, tilting his head. “You should read it again, you know. That book tells it like it was. Worst thing was the way the Indians turned on each other, you know.” He shook his head. “Did it all the time you know, the Pawnees would attack the Arapahos and the Cheyenne and for what? Some guns or whiskey. You know, if the Indians could just quit selling each other out then they could fucking do something.” He glanced over, his eyes glimmering chips of polished coal. “That’s what my grandfather always said, anyway.”
Reuger gestured to the north.
“You ought to work on your aim with a bow and arrow.”
