Jack Pine, page 20
Reuger searched the trees. Stump wood exploded and two more spouts jumped from the ground. The shots died back into the silence. He squinted into the forest again then looked at the glassy blood on Gary’s shoulder.
“All right…stay there, Gary.”
“Ya, well, I don’t think I’m going to run a fucking marathon, you know,” he mumbled into his arm.
“Gus!”
Gus lay on his back with the Winchester.
“I’m going for the woods and need you to cover me.”
“Yer think yer can make it with them firing at us?”
“You just reach up there and empty your shells.”
“I’ll do it but don’t know what I’ll hit…”
“Ya, you guys want to stop your discussion group there while I’m fucking bleeding to death here?” Gary muttered into his arm.
“All right,” Reuger nodded. “Count of three…one… two…three!”
Gus wheeled and fired as Reuger dove into the trees then grappled shells from his vest. He slammed the loads into the slide of the shotgun and started through the forest. Sharp branches whipped his arms and face with the shotgun slippery in his hand.
Reuger clambered up a ridge heaving breath, running through high weeds falling down into a swale then through a wet glade dampening his arms and pants. He clambered up another ridge and was knocked back. The shotgun flew from his hands and he fell back and tasted dirt. He stopped rolling and struggled up to the dark hole of a barrel.
Al Hanes shook his head slowly.
“Always where you’re not supposed to fucking be.”
Reuger saw the trigger squeeze before the short, whiffing, bang! Then something dark flew toward him and he was rolling down the ridge in the iron scent of blood.
43
GUS PICKED UP the Winchester and blew sawdust out of the loading sleeve then cocked the rifle. Two men trudged like convicts in the gray light with one man slightly ahead of the other. Gary Chatoee saw them and said nothing as Gus pressed the rifle to his cheek, then brought it down. He lowered the gun to his waist.
“Called in the seaplane, should be here in an hour or two,” Reuger called walking up behind Tommy Tobin.
Gus shook his head slowly.
“Almost shot yer there.”
“Glad you didn’t,” Reuger said, coming to a halt.
Gary Chatoee stared at him.
“What the hell happened to you?”
Reuger looked down at his vest of blood from pocket to waist. Blood matted the hair of his forearms and reached down to one hand like crust.
“Al Hanes bled all over me,” he said slowly. “He’s dead up there in the forest.”
Gus’s face drained of color, his mouth ogling for air.
“Yer mean to say, the foreman of Johnson Timber, Al Hanes, was pumpin’ them bullets?”
That’s right,” he nodded. “He was waiting for us.”
Gary Chatoee glared at Tommy Tobin and touched his own shirt covered in blood. “You put this here, then?”
“Al put that bullet there,” Reuger nodded. “He was dressed from head to foot in hunting gear.”
“How about that blood on yer vest?” Gus asked, pointing with the Winchester. “How’d yer get that close?”
Reuger gestured to the forest.
“I came up over a ridge, Al knocked me back, and I lost the shotgun. He was going to finish the job when Tommy shot him from behind and we went down the ridge together.”
Gus pointed to Tommy Tobin. “He done that?”
Reuger sat on a stump and lapped the shotgun, one boot over his knee. Heat rolled the cut pine and sawdust like the inside of a barn. He remembered pushing up the man with so much blood he wasn’t sure whether it was his own. He panicked under the weight until Tommy pulled him off and threw Al Hanes to the side like so much beef.
“You want to tell us what’s been going on, Tommy?”
“God, ya, I like to know what in damnation been going on too,” Gus grumbled, propping the Winchester against a stump and sitting.
Tommy stood with his hooked nose flattened against his cheeks like a fighter. Hair caved his neck as he squinted against the glare with the rifle crooked in his arm. His army coat was covered in dried mud. No jack pine beetles, no wind, no droning plane, loons, wolves, nothing. Gus spat. Once.
“Ya ain’t deaf, are yer?” he nearly shouted.
Tommy shrugged.
Reuger stood up with the Winchester in his right hand.
“Why’d you run, Tommy?”
He stood like a man in a courtroom. Crickets flipped backwards over the stumps and logs and sawdust. His eyes hardened, and Reuger saw nothing at all, then his eyes blinked slowly.
“What are you doing up here?”
Tommy rolled his big shoulders.
“That Al Hanes.” He gestured the rifle. “He come to Center Island and say he had some work for me up here. But I didn’t trust him, you know, so I come up to see what he’s going to do.” Tommy looked up, eyes dull like an iron frying pan. “So I stay hidden until I heard him start shooting at you. Then I tracked him. I watched him, and I could hear you coming, and I knew he could too.” Tommy paused. “I saw him raise his rifle and wait, and I knew he had you…” Tommy nodded slowly and raised his rifle. “So I drew a bead on him, you know, and when I saw you come out…I shot him.”
Reuger felt chills down in his stomach and his bowels felt weak. Al Hanes was going to kill him, but this man had stopped all that. This man had saved his life twice.
“You reload your own, Tommy?”
“Nope,” he said shaking his head.
“Let me have your rifle there.”
Tommy handed the Winchester with the barrel to the sky. Reuger levered the shells into his hand. He flipped the .44 magnum loads around in his hand; the percussion caps gleaming like diamonds in coal. He felt his soul shrink. The percussion caps matched the shell he found behind his cabin. It matched the one he found in the fire by the old logging camp. “Do you have any more ammo?”
He pulled out his hand and clutched loose cartridges. He palmed them to Reuger. They were .30.30 rounds and .44 magnum loads, all reloads. Reuger jumped the shells in his hand and there was a .22. Reuger held up the smaller cartridge and saw the silver cap.
“I need you to turn around here and put your hands on your head for me.”
Gus held both rifles while Tommy turned and touched his head. Reuger pulled his handcuffs off his belt and reached up.
“You’re under arrest for the rape of Dana Reynolds,” he said in a low voice.
The handcuffs clicked tight. Reuger turned him around and took the Winchester from Gus. Tommy stared down, his eyes like lanterns up on a dark mountain.
“Maybe I should have let you get shot, you know.”
Reuger didn’t turn from his gaze and felt wooden.
“I can’t let this one go, Tommy. You’re too far in.”
“No,” he nodded. “But you let the other one go, don’t you?”
Gary opened his eyes with his back against the stump.
“Ya, you fucked up this time, Tommy.”
44
THE LAKE WAS corrugated with ripples and small white triangles. Reuger sat in the copilot’s seat with Tommy and Gary in the second seat and Gus in the back. He stared down at ovals of glass and bushy trees as they glided toward the gray finger of the dock. Thunderheads passed the plane, and Reuger smelled rain. He turned and looked at Gary and remembered their conversation in the woods.
“So what do you think?”
“Ya, he did it. I think he’s lying about everything,” he nodded while they were waiting for the plane to land. “It’s his destiny you know. It’s the path Tommy has followed all his life. You can’t change these things.” Gary nodded slowly. “He knows that too.”
“I wonder where he got those reloads.”
“He bought some ammo from me at the store, but I don’t carry any reloads.”
Reuger saw the sheriff and two deputies looking up from the pier. He glanced at Tommy crammed into the plane, staring at the uniformed men. They floated through the clouds toward the green surface with his stomach leaving like a Ferris wheel’s descent. Water became a solid mass then rippling green, then the plane jerked back and skied the surface. Irene Peters turned off the engine as water slopped over the pontoons. The two deputies grabbed the wings and secured the plane.
“All right, now let’s get the wounded man out here,” Riechardt commanded while paramedics lowered Gary to a stretcher.
Tommy stepped out from the pilot side door and squinted. Reuger took him by the arm and heard thunder over the lake. The sheriff waited on the dock with his hands on his gun belt. He spat a seed into the still water.
“Ready to receive the prisoner, Reuger.”
He raised his hand.
“I can handle it, Sheriff.”
The sheriff stepped forward.
“I said I’m ready to receive the prisoner.”
Reuger felt Tommy stiffen as the two deputies fingered their revolvers. Thunder rumbled the lake again. The sheriff glanced at the deputies, and they pulled their pistols.
“Now, give me the prisoner, Reuger!”
Riechardt grabbed Tommy and spun him around.
“Hands on the plane and spread your feet!” The sheriff kicked his boots wide and patted down his coat. “What do we have here?”
He pulled out a silver bracelet with two small diamonds in the center.
“This is that girl’s bracelet here,” he nodded. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Al Hanes and the rape of Dana Reynolds. Turn your head around!”
“Reuger…”
Tommy said it under his breath. He said it the way an animal might grunt when trapped. Reuger saw the fear in his eyes.
“Shut up!”
Rain spotted the planks and, lightning touched down on Center Island. Sheets of wind gusted and wavered the wings of the plane.
“You’re going away for a long time, boy.”
“Reuger…”
“He’s not going to help you, boy,” Riechardt sneered. “He’s done his duty here,” the sheriff nodded as the deputies struggled with the handcuffs. “You’d go to the chair if this state had the death penalty.”
The rain came down heavily and jumped in the water and darkened the planks on the dock. They all stood silently, and then Tommy turned, and Reuger saw his eyes when the snow hissed down.
He had his forefinger on the trigger of the .38 with the hammer back. The cold steel in his hand. He was about to put it in his mouth.
“Go away.”
“Nope.”
The shaggy head of snow draping down black silk. Reuger stared at him, a man at the gates of the abyss.
“Why do you give a fuck?”
Tommy shrugged, holding the cold joint like a cross.
“I don’t know…but maybe you’ll do something for me one day, you know.”
Tommy turned suddenly and whipped the free handcuff across the deputies’ faces. He lashed the men twice as they fell back to the dock. He turned and ran down the planks of the dock as the deputies recovered and pulled their pistols. Reuger watched the men crouch into the firing position with Tommy running like a figure in a slow motion movie. He stepped forward and swung his Winchester down, cluttering their guns to the dock then into the water.
The sheriff unsnapped his holster and pulled his Smith & Wesson.
“Goddammit, Reuger…”
Reuger clamped the gun down and they struggled like two men dancing cheek to cheek.
“Let go, you son of a bitch!”
He shouldered the sheriff back and tore the gun from his hand. He threw the pistol into the corrugated lake. Riechart’s face turned red. “You just made one fuck of a mistake, mister!”
The sheriff grabbed the shotgun from Gus’s hand and brought the nineteen-inch barrel up. Reuger stared at the two eyes hard as nickels and felt his heart in his chest. He could see the pulse in the older man’s temple.
“Easy now, Sheriff,” he said in a low voice. “You’re making a mistake now…”
“Shut up!” He shouted. “Disarm this man and cuff him for assaulting a police officer!”
The deputies were still holding their wrists. They hesitated.
“Do it!”
Reuger let the two men take his weapons and motioned Gus back. He knew the deputies as younger men who Riechardt had recently hired. They had identical crew cuts and pink skin. Hector told him they followed the sheriff around like bodyguards.
“Cuff him!” Riechardt commanded.
Reuger felt his arms pulled back and faced the sheriff with water dribbling from his hat brim. He motioned the shotgun.
“Put him in the car!”
The sheriff spun around then and faced Irene Peters. Lightning spidered down from a thunderhead over the lake. Rain swept the lake sideways and the concussion of the thunder rolled over the land.
“I need you to take me up now to recover an escaped prisoner!”
Irene stared at him in her dark aviation sunglasses.
“I’m not going up in this shit here.”
“This is police business!” Riechardt shouted with the gun up.
Irene pushed the barrel of the shotgun away.
“And this is my business, you sonofabitch, and I’m not going to auger my plane into a lake in the middle of a storm!”
The deputies pulled Reuger down the pier and shoved him in the back seat of the squad car. Rain hammered the roof and dribbled down his back. He struggled against the handcuffs biting his wrists then turned toward the rainy forest where Tommy had disappeared. He saw a low mist rolling the tree line like snow.
45
REUGER OPENED HIS eyes in the cabin darkness then picked up a .38 from the bedside table. He crossed the cabin and saw Patricia outside the front door in a jeans jacket, white shorts and hiking boots. She shaded her eyes against the porch light.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It wasn’t loaded,” he muttered. “Let me throw on a shirt.”
Reuger yawned back into the bedroom and looked at the covers and headed pillow. He put the gun back in the drawer.
“If it’s too late, I can leave.”
“No, I’ll be just a minute,” he called back, slipping on a T-shirt, socks, and a pair of mukluks with the strings missing.
She was in one of the armchairs.
“Coffee,” he grumbled, putting on his hat from the mantel.
Reuger popped the Hills Bros. can open and loaded the grounds, spilling granules on the counter, then poured water that slopped and mixed. He struck a kitchen match and flared the pot then walked back and sat down. The cloth of the chair was rough against his legs. A scent of creosote and pipe tobacco smote the cold corners of stone and wood.
He yawned again.
“Time is it?”
“Three a.m.,” she said quietly.
“Early …” He rubbed his eyes. “How’s the work going?”
Patricia stood and walked to the mantel with the jean jacket pulled around her. He noticed her legs against the shorts and the way her calf muscles flexed. She stared at his empty holster on the nail and turned against the hearth.
“Tom Jorde fired me.”
“We’re both off the case then.” Reuger waved his hand. “It’s a long story.”
Patricia fingered the holster again, and it fell. She picked up the leather worn dark from the oil of the Colt.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it—it’s an old holster.”
“No, I meant about the case.”
“Don’t worry about that, either.”
Patricia put the holster back on the nail and patted it lightly. The buckle swung free like a tendril.
“Where’s your gun?”
“Long story again.” He crossed his legs and took off his hat. “So what happened with Jorde?”
She stared at the blackened firebox. Wind roared outside like some low creature passing over the cabin. He thought he could hear her breathing.
“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine.”
“No.” She turned around. “Tom Jorde felt he wanted a lawyer who…well…”
“Wasn’t having sex with the deputy sheriff?” He tilted his head up. “You could have told him we weren’t having sex anymore.”
She smoothed back her hair and put one foot on the fireplace ledge. Her calf balled up above her sock.
“I won’t deny that having a relationship with you complicated matters,” she nodded running her finger along the curve of the lantern glass.
“Thought that was over too. Did you tell Jorde that? He could talk about it when he went on John Mcfee’s program again and say, ya, I think the deputy sheriff and the lawyer for Earth First were having a relationship, but from what I hear it’s over.”
She stared at him again. The coffee sputtered and scowled in the kitchen and the room smelled like morning suddenly.
“Let’s talk about something else,” he suggested, waving his hand. “Kurt back from Outward Bound yet?”
“How…”
“I know the leader of Outward Bound and told him to keep an eye on him and let me know how’s he doing.”
Patricia leaned back against the stone chimney.
“You don’t want to hear this. Not after the way I acted…”
“Nonsense. I’m glad you came by.”
She shook her head slowly.
“It’s just, it’s just I woke up tonight and felt so lonely. I hope Kurt is all right.”
Reuger kneeled on the hearth and began throwing newspaper into the fireplace. The balling paper was loud and tufted open on the grill. He scraped a copper bin over and tossed in stick pine with his knees on the cold stone. He chunked a log in and struck a match.
“Outward Bound is a professional organization, Patricia.” He pushed the wood further back and lit the paper. They watched the flames curl the paper then leap to the dry stick pine. “I’m sure he’s having the time of his life there.”
She sat down and held her hands out to the small flames.
