Jack Pine, page 16
“Jack!”
The man breathed heavy and whipsawed to the woman. She crossed her arms and pushed past him.
“This is my wife, Cathy, she was with me when I saw the…”
“How do you do, Deputy?”
Her handshake was firm.
“So you think you saw something in the lake?”
“No!” The man waved his arms wildly. “I’m the one that saw it, and I know I saw something!” The man jabbed his finger down. “There’s a skeleton in a boat right there. My fishing rod went overboard and I was leaning down to get it when I saw it.”
The woman gestured toward the lake.
“We would have reported it earlier, Deputy, but we didn’t see a ranger until yesterday and maybe it was just the way the light…”
The man thrust himself forward, almost falling into the lake.
“I saw a body, all right!”
“You think you saw a skeleton, Jack. My husband has quite an imagination.”
The man’s face reddened.
“I saw it!”
Reuger thumbed his hat back and turned to the inky water in shadow.
“Well, only one way to settle it.” He sailed his hat onto the rocks. “Let’s have a look then.”
He unbuckled his gun belt and laid the gun next to the radio and wallet and vest and handcuffs.
“Shouldn’t be too cold there, Deputy,” Bill Henderson shouted.
“Been in colder,” Reuger called back, walking down the slope of the lake and wading though swamp grass and seaweed that tickled his stomach.
“It’s right there,” the man shouted. “Right in front of you!”
Something clipped his knees. Reuger reached down feeling the gunnels of a boat then hollow chicken wire then oar locks. He felt a branch long and skinny and slipped his hands over a bumpy stem to a hard basketball. His chin dipped in the water as he hooked two holes up to his knuckles. The chills moved up his arms and he wanted to recoil his hands from the creature beneath him.
“What have you, Deputy?”
Bill Henderson was hunched down like a football player. Reuger broke his hands down over shoulder blades then the knotted sticks of fingers. The bones felt like porcelain branches underwater. The flesh was gone. The body had been down there a while. He could tell by the gunnels of the boat it was older, and he felt where the stern was broken away. The soggy clothes pulled at his hands, and several times he felt as if he might be sucked below.
“This is it,” he shouted, louder than he wanted to.
Bill Henderson licked his lips and squinted.
You really think so, Deputy?”
Reuger looked up then stood in the water.
“Put that down!”
The man held the Colt by the stock like someone convicted. Reuger watched him open his mouth.
“Put the gun down slowly.”
His wife ran toward him and fell.
“Jack, you ass!” she shouted from the ground. “Put that gun down!”
Jack dropped the Colt and Reuger watched it hit the granite.
“I’m sorry.” The man’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. “I just was looking. I had never seen a gun like that before…I’ll pick it up.”
“Leave it,” Reuger commanded.
The woman shook her head. “Jack, you fool!”
“Oh, bite me,” he shouted, flipping her the bird.
Reuger waded back and leaned down to the boat. He felt the cloth again, the spidering bones of the rib cage then thick cables lapping the torso. So that was how the man stayed in the boat, he thought. The lakes were all down. The rainfall had been scant, and the boat may have drifted into shallower water. Whoever put him in the boat intended him to stay there for a long time.
“Boat here, maybe seventeen foot,” he called out. “I think this fellow is tied in.”
Bill Henderson cuffed his mouth.
“He’s tied in?”
Reuger nodded, following the cable across the boat.
Some sort of wire cable…I think it might be loose enough without the flesh,” he said, down to the inky green water.
“Can you get him free, Deputy?”
“Maybe.” He pulled on the cables and felt the waterlogged wood give way. “If I can get these cables off—” he shouted, falling back when the cable tore out of the wood.
“I told you there was a body there,” the man shouted. “Ha!”
“Jack, you fat fool…”
The man chased his wife, jousting his finger as she backed away.
“You’re just mad because for once I was right! Everything you do is the right way, paddle this way, pitch the tent this way, carry the canoe this way!”
The man ran toward his wife.
“Jack, please! You’re making a scene!”
“Cook this way! Make a fire this way! Well you know what, Cathy!” He held his hands to the sky and bellowed out. “This is my way, so FUCK YOU!”
“Long trip then,” Reuger said to Bill Henderson, reaching under the arms of the skeleton.
Bill stared at the green pooling water and lifted his head.
“Need some help there, Deputy?”
“Ohhhh, I think I got her.”
Reuger slipped the boots under the cables and pulled upward. The skull rose like plaster in ink as he pulled the legs free. A red-checked shirt and faded jeans slowly developed as water caressed the cloth in waves. The skull turned over in the current with the mouth gaping teeth and seaweed.
“Yep, that’s got her,” Reuger called, pulling the skeleton behind like a string of garbage.
The woman turned with her hand to her mouth. The man watched the grinning skull gulping water with a finger trailing like a rudder. Reuger walked toward him.
“Fuck…that’s sick!”
Reuger hefted the heavy-clothed bones by the rib cage and climbed to where the rock leveled. He heard something behind him and turned as the skull fell off and hit the slab of graywacke like a football helmet, then rolled down the slope and splashed into the water.
“There she goes, Deputy!” Bill Henderson shook his head, watching the skull sail out onto the dark green plane. “Wants to take another swim, I guess.”
Reuger dropped the torso, and one foot detached. He waded back into the lake but the current floated the grinning skull head out into the bay. Water flowed in the mouth and out the ears as the skull gulped happily along. The two people stood transfixed as the skull seemed to be propelled from below. Reuger cursed and turned back to shore.
“Throw me that paddle there, Bill.”
Bill Henderson handed him the canoe paddle, and Reuger waded back out until the water was up to his waist. The skull seemed to have a mind of its own. He reached out and clipped the skull head with the paddle. The skull spun around and he swung again. The three people stared at the man swinging the paddle. Swack! He smacked the skull again. Swack! The eyes turned toward shore. Swack! He skiffed the bone head around. Swack! Swack! Reuger reached out and grabbed the skull like a bowling ball and slogged back to shore.
Bill Henderson’s blue eyes twinkled.
“Sure seemed to have a mind of its own there, Deputy.”
“Oh, ya,” Reuger muttered, plopping the head on the shoulders and picking up the foot then dragging the skeleton further up the rock slab.
The skull bumped hollowly with seaweed sprouting eye sockets and the mouth like colored pasta. Reuger lay the skeleton down and put the foot by the lower femur. He stood and surveyed the remains. Bill Henderson licked his lips and shook his head. The two men stared at the grinning skull leaking water still from the ear holes.
“Well, Deputy…” He turned. “I wonder how long he’s been down there?”
Reuger hunched down with water squishing from his boots. He pulled at the suspenders and felt the cloth of the heavy wool shirt. He ran his eyes down the body and saw it was a big man. Reuger estimated he was over six-foot-four, and he remembered Al Knudsen from the year before. He was a man with flashing dark eyes and a black beard. He had disappeared in the winter while checking his traps.
“Ohhh, I’d say he’s been down there a while,” he murmured. “This skeleton is clean and the clothes have begun to disintegrate,” he said pointing to where the shirt had torn like tissue.
A crayfish spidered out of the collar and ran down the leg. Reuger kicked it away with his boot.
“Oh, shit,” the man groaned.
He had crept up behind them, and now they listened to him wretch in the weeds. The woman stood with her back to them. Reuger slipped his hands through all the pockets and smelled the sour scent of dead algae. He noticed the man’s clothes again and the waterlogged construction boots.
“By those clothes and suspenders and work boots…”
“A logger,” Reuger nodded slowly.
Bill Henderson breathed heavy.
“Jest what I was thinking, Deputy.”
The forest ranger clicked his tongue and swore softly at the mouth of fillings winking light.
“So… guess he was up here camping?”
“I don’t think so,” Reuger murmured turning the skull slowly to the side.
“Think he was from around here, Deputy?”
He palmed the skull then pivoted the head like a melon. Reuger smoothed the cranium with his hand and felt his finger slip a nickel-sized hole just above the neck. He turned the skull around until it faced the rock. Reuger tapped the drilled hole with his forefinger and pulled a round from his gun belt. The .44 shell slipped perfectly through. He looked up at Bill Henderson.
“Oh, ya.”
31
HE LOOKED AT his watch. The trees had become black wiry ghosts. Shit. This was a long time to stand in the woods. He looked at the kitchen window again. The square of yellow light bled through the pines. He lifted the rifle and sited up the window again. He had no scope, just an aiming pin.
He dropped the rifle down and pulled a cigar out of his top pocket. The match flared against pale green needles close to his face. He smoked slowly and saw a moon over the cabin. Fucking Reuger was taking his time about coming home. Things were getting crazier, that was for sure.
He smoked with the gun cocked under his arm and waited. He just needed a few more nudges, and then he would understand. What will be, will be. You couldn’t change things. Important issues were at stake here. Still, things seemed pretty fucked up. He sighed and stared at the window again. So he found Knudsen. What the fuck.
He pulled on the big cigar and shook his head in the dark. Things were unraveling fast. They were all getting nervous now, and he had to do the shitwork. He had to stand in the woods with a Winchester and wait for him. They should have put him deeper. Stupid motherfuckers. So now he had to risk his neck again. He shook his head again. What the fuck?
The woods breathed around him. He stared at the trees. It was all about the trees. It was all about the land at one time, and now it was about the trees. He felt the tobacco numbing his brain and tried to relax. What will be, will be.
32
THEY LAY IN the bed in the small cabin with the lake breeze passing through the window. There was something so natural about all of it. There was something very right about it. Patricia sheeted the covers back up and lay on his chest. She lifted her head.
“Tell me what you did before you were a deputy sheriff.”
Reuger opened his eyes and could see his hat on the bedpost.
“Are you awake?”
“Yes,” he murmured.
“Then tell me what you did before you were a deputy sheriff.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and felt her thighs around his leg. The scent of warm bodies puffed from beneath the sheets. The bed was wet, and he moved from the spot.
“Logged trees for Ben Johnson.”
Patricia stared at the knotholes in the ceiling and saw a face then a comet in the wood. Curtains rose over the window with light filtering down. A moon perhaps just outside the small cabin window in the forest.
“What was that like?”
“Hmmmm…” He shifted beneath her with his chest rising. “Hard work from morning until night, and then you slept like a dead man.”
She kept her ear to his chest, hearing the organ groaning deep within. She bit his skin, watching the play of light on his blond mustache.
“Why didn’t you keep doing that?”
“Seven years of hard labor is enough.”
He felt her head lift from his chest.
“But you must have liked it to do it that long.”
“It was good hard work and you ate well and then at night you slept well.”
“And your father was a lumberjack?”
“Yes. A tree broke his back.”
“How…”
Patricia sat up with hair falling on her shoulder like a waterfall. They stared at each other in the small cove of light. He watched her in that changing light. She was so alive and here now.
“My father was a cutter and used a chain saw.” Reuger sat up slowly against the headboard and smoothed the sheet over his dark stomach. “It was windy and the trees were old. You don’t want to cut on a windy day.”
“Why’s that?”
Reuger raised his hand. “You need to know which way the tree will go, but if it’s windy, then a tree can fall a way you don’t expect.”
Patricia lay back down on his stomach. “And your father cut on a windy day.” She paused. “So why would he do that?”
“He was working for Johnson Timber,” he nodded slowly. “You do what you’re told.”
Reuger paused.
“Somebody said he was alive for a while with the weight of a sixty-five foot white pine lying on him. When I was a boy, I used to have nightmares where I woke gasping for air.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes.
She turned to him with his mustache golden and his hair waving back from his forehead. He grew in her hand and she closed her palm around him. He kissed her neck then slid down to the hard nipples as the cover fell back behind him. Reuger stopped with her legs apart. She was staring at him.
“What?”
“It’s nothing. Go on,” she whispered hungrily.
He slid his hand down her stomach.
“Tom Jorde’s innocent, Reuger.”
He stared at her.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about it.”
“I know, forget it,” she said kissing his neck and reaching for him again. “I just wanted you to know that.”
Reuger stared at her coolly then rolled off.
“What?”
“Your timing could be better,” he muttered, feeling as if someone had just walked in the room.
Patricia swallowed and sat up, fluffing back her hair.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered reaching again. “I’m sorry, it was just bothering me. When you told me Ben Johnson caused your father’s death…”
“I didn’t say that,” he said with an edge coming into his voice. “I said he worked for Ben Johnson.”
Patricia turned away then looked down at the covers.
“You and I know what’s going on. Tom Jorde is being framed.”
He looked at her a long moment and felt himself stiffen. He had a set of interior rules that had to be satisfied before he came to a conclusion.
Reuger thought about Irene’s stricken face and the smell that filled the enclosed cockpit of the plane. When they landed, he pulled the skeleton out, and he and Gus stuffed him into a body bag and drove to town.
“So yer think it was Knudsen then?”
Reuger turned from the road and saw Gus’s pale blue eyes.
“We’ll see what Floyd comes up with, that boat was from Wilderness Lodge.”
“Medical examiner,” Gus nodded, cleaning his pipe with a pocketknife. “You think maybe Jorde done this one too, shot him and tied him into that boat, then.” Gus shook his head, hair flying back in the wind. “But if it ain’t Jorde and that’s Knudsen, don’t it mean…” He turned and stared at the two flat glimmering points under the hat. “Jest a thought,” he shrugged. “But sure seems like somebody trying to keep somethin’ a secret here.”
Reuger looked at the woman beside him.
“I follow the evidence, Patricia, and bring in the man. It’s not my job to decide guilt or innocence here. You should know that.”
Her eyes hardened. She was sitting up Indian style with the dark mound between her legs.
“I’ve been a lawyer long enough to know a case that’s fucked,” she said in a low voice.
He shook his head slowly. “My job is to follow the evidence.”
“What are you, a robot?” Patricia’s eyes flitted back and forth. “You don’t think for yourself?”
“I can’t help it if my decisions aren’t popular with the tourists.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means most people see logging as bad and don’t look much beyond.” Reuger gestured to her. “You’re an environmental lawyer and…”
“I see a town run by one man who has everybody doing his dirty work,” Patricia snapped. “You won’t even admit he was responsible for your father’s death!”
“I shouldn’t have told you that,” he said.
“Why not?” she shouted, her eyes flashing. “So I wouldn’t know you’re afraid of him!”
He stared at her. Patricia shrugged, looking away, pulling back her hair.
“I think we both know what side you’re on now,” she said dully.
Reuger pulled back the covers and picked up his pants and boots.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up. The lawyer in me…”
“I keep forgetting that’s what you are,” he murmured, standing up and tucking in his shirt.
She sat back. “Oh! So that’s what this is?”
“Think what you want,” he shrugged.
He felt her eyes following him as he picked up his boots.
“You have a thing about lawyers, then?”
“Whatever, Patricia,” he muttered, roping up his gun belt.
“I’m sorry what I do offends you.”
Reuger clipped the radio and stared at her. She pulled the covers up and covered her body.
“What!”
