Jack Pine, page 26
“How she go there, Gary?”
Gary Chatoee tented his stomach with the magazine.
“Not bad, you know.”
Reuger pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down.
“How they treating you?”
“Oh, not bad,” he frowned.“But I don’t like the Jell-O, you know.” He rolled his shoulders. “The doctor, he says he thinks I can get out of here in a couple days.”
“That’s good then,” Reuger nodded.
Gary motioned to his badge.
“So you’re back on the force, hey?”
“Couldn’t keep me off.”
Gary squinted out the window.“That Riechardt, he came to see me to ask what happened in the Old Pines, you know.” He shook his head. “Kept wanting me to say you and Tommy Tobin shot Al Hanes in cold blood there, but I told him he shot at us first. I think he wanted me to say Tommy shot me, too, you know.”
Reuger palmed his hat. “I wanted to ask you a few questions about some old treaties.”
“Ya, sure,” Gary said, sitting up, grimacing.
“Anything you know about what kind of treaty might have been given to Johnson Timber at one time?”
“You mean how did they steal the wood?”
He clasped his hands over the sheet.
“All goes back to the 1881 Allotment Act. It was a way the government had of taking good land from the Indians. Eight-million acres passed out of Indian hands and usually for a horse and a gun, and the whites could log it and didn’t pay shit to the Indians then. Logging companies were supposed to pay reparations, you know, and Ben Johnson’s grandfather was one of them.”
Reuger hooked his boot at the knee.
“Government still honors these treaties?”
Gary shrugged.
“Ya, sure, they have to. Same with the treaty of 1854 for hunting and fishing rights. That’s why I can shoot three bears, and you can only shoot one.”
“Then the treaty would give Ben the right to log out those lands if he paid up?”
Gary frowned and rolled his shoulders, draping the tubes along side his arm.
“Ya, I suppose so, but he could never do it now because of them tree huggers.”
“What if he had an old treaty that said he had been granted the right to log the Old Pines?”
Gary held his hand out flat.
“I guess he could interpret it that way, you know.” He shook his head. “But it don’t mean shit and, like I say, them tree huggers there wouldn’t let him do it, they’d put it back in the courts.”
Reuger paused.
“Unless he already logged it.”
* * * *
He turned off the ignition to a backfire and watched road dust swirl up behind Ben Johnson’s truck. Reuger stepped out with the Winchester, and Gus with the shotgun. They walked toward the men with dark beards and green hard hats lounging on the lodge porch. Jim Carpenter leaned against a support post, and Ben Johnson sat in an Adirondack chair with a boot over his knee.
Ben motioned from the chair.
“Enjoy that badge there, Reuger. I’ll have it taken away from you tomorrow.”
He stopped with the Winchester in his right hand. The lake wind blew hard, flapping up some trash in the road.
“Where’s Cliff, Ben?”
“Who knows,” he shrugged and threw a peanut in his mouth. “Can’t keep track of him these days.”
“He and Tim,” Jim pointed north with his mug, “gone camping in the Boundary Waters.”
Ben Johnson balled the bag of peanuts into the road. Reuger watched it roll like a tumbleweed between spits of road sand.
“There you go. Gone camping,” Ben announced.
Gus stood with wind picking his beard and scraping leaves down the road. He looked at Reuger, plainly asking, “what now?” The two men on the porch stared out.
“You going to go arrest him, Reuger? You and Hopalong Cassidy there?” Ben shook his head and laughed. “You get some whore from Chicago to say what you want, and you think people around here are going to put my boy in jail?” He leaned back and hissed through his teeth. “Shit, you are one stupid bastard.”
“They’ll convict,” Reuger nodded slowly. “When they hear he raped a sixteen-year-old girl in a woodshed.”
Ben scoffed and spat.
“You’ll never get that far; tomorrow you’ll be washing dishes at the Ely diner.” He pointed down, drawing forward in the chair like an anxious king.
“You’re finished up here, my friend.”
Reuger turned.
“Can I have a word with you, Jim?”
Jim walked off the porch and sloshed his coffee in the road. They stopped by the dock in the smell of fish under a sky bridling rain. Reuger smoothed his hand over his jaw and looked at his old friend. Jim cleared his throat.
“I’d like to say something about the other day…I went off halfcocked…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Reuger said, waving him off. “I want to tell you what’s going on here.” He breathed deeply.“Dana Reynolds finally said what really happened in that shed… Cliff raped that girl in your woodshed, and I think he’s making a run for Canada with Tim.”
Jim stared at him with his mouth slightly open.
“She had gone into the woodshed with him after the campfire the first time and was too scared or too confused to say it was him by the time I talked to her at the lodge. Tommy must have come on them and thrown Cliff off her. The second time he just raped her straight out.”
Jim stared out to the lake again with his face drained of color.
“It wasn’t the first time for Cliff. I found Annabel Günter a year ago walking down the Old Timber road in the middle of the night.” Reuger paused.“She didn’t want to say anything, and I let it go.”
“Shit,” Jim whispered.
Reuger saw Ben Johnson over his shoulder and lowered his voice.
“I think Cliff might be involved with these dead loggers too. I pulled a dock spike from the one he was repairing on cabin eight, and it’s a dead match with the spike that Carter Grissom sawed into” Reuger paused again and put his hand on Jim’s shoulder. “Tim might be mixed up in this thing as well. I just don’t know how yet.”
Jim turned red.
“I found some wig he had taken from Diane. The wig matches strands I pulled out of the woodshed. My feeling is Cliff corralled him into doing something.”
Jim didn’t move then nodded imperceptibly.
“You think he would hurt Tim?”
Reuger tugged the brim of his hat down.
“I don’t know.… How long ago did they leave?”
“Must have been three hours ago.” Jim squinted north to a spider of light touching down. “I dropped them off at the Boot portage with a canoe.”
“How much gear?“
“Had an outfitter pack…”
“Don’t listen to him, Jim!”
Ben Johnson swung his arm with his voice swallowed by wind. From the dock his face was red under the Stetson. The wind died, and his voice reached them like a radio turned up.
“Just a drifter, and I gave the sonofabitch his first job, and you see how he repays you, Jim! He’s one of these goddamn tree huggers!”
Jim breathed tiredly with the small cliff of hair tapping his forehead.“Ben’s making a play for the Old Pines,” Reuger nodded. “He has some old Indian treaty and thinks it’ll give him the right to pull the trees out. I think Foster and Carter were burned out and shot to keep them quiet about cutting up the wood with their slashers.“
Jim was pale, rubbing his cheek with his left hand. He pulled the top off his plastic mug and winged the cup dry. He looked at the man on porch, then took off his glasses and pushed the hair off his forehead with a trembling hand.
“Sounds like he’s gone fucking crazy here,” he muttered.
Jim looked down then crossed the road like a soldier and stopped below the porch. His tennis shoes were flat and an extra roll caved his belt on all sides. Rain hazed down on Center Island with the boathouse door slamming shut across the bay. Reuger walked up behind him and felt the first drops.
“Don’t listen to a goddamn word…”
“Get out, Ben.”
Ben stared down like a man in a practical joke.
“What?”
“Get off my property,” Jim repeated, his voice cracking.
Ben Johnson stood on the stairs with cowboy boots over the edge.
“Shit, your property! My daddy owned this place before you were even a twinkle in your mama’s eye, boy, and I could take it back any goddamn time I want!” He snorted again. “From what I hear, once that lawyer is done with you, you’ll be lucky to have a fucking canoe left…”
Diane Carpenter burst through the screen door and winged up the Mossberg shotgun. She shucked a shell with her left hand and lowered her eye to the aiming pin. The barrel glimmered space five inches from Ben Johnson’s head. Reuger saw her finger curled tight in the trigger guard.
“Get off our property, ya bastard,” she ordered in a low voice.
Ben’s eyes cornered with the two loggers flat against the wall. He tried to smile then shook his head slowly.
“Still just a goddamn hillbilly, aren’t you, Diane? Just a miner’s daughter who’ll be back waiting tables again.”
“Ya, and that’s somewhere you’ll never eat,” she murmured with her cheek to the mahogany stock. “So just take these two assholes with you and get off our fucking property here.”
Ben turned slowly to Jim Carpenter.
“Just signed the death warrant for your resort.”
“I’ll take that chance here,” he nodded.
Ben muttered something, missing a step, then falling off the porch.
He stomped toward the truck with the two men swaggering behind. The doors slammed and the engine turned over. The truck backed up slowly then swung away leaving dust. Diane lowered the shotgun and pulled a cigarette from her pocket.
“Ya, that asshole no-good son of a bitch, I should have shot when I had the chance,” she muttered.
“Why waste good buckshot?” Gus asked, spitting in the dust.
Jim stared at his wife.
“Would you really have shot Ben?”
Diane lit her cigarette.
“That sonofabitch Cliff is with Tim now, and I could have shot him for that.”
“Tim was upset this morning.” Jim glanced at Reuger. “He was here when we were served the papers for the suit.”
“Ya, well, can you blame him?” Diane tore the cigarette away. “Expect Riechardt to come and padlock the place any day now!”
She wiped mascara from her eyes and turned to the rain-swept lake. Reuger walked onto the porch and watched the storm darken the sky. They stood side by side facing the dark rolling thunderheads toward Canada.
“Wonder where they’re going, you know,” she murmured.
Thunder concussed down and shook the windows.
Reuger tapped the rifle against his leg.
“Canada.”
58
THEY UNLOADED THE canoe from the lodge boat under an iron sky. They carried no gear besides the Winchester and shotgun and worked quickly in the still woods. Already, several fat gelatinous drops pattered the leaves with a scent of brass and black dirt. The portage trail tunneled behind them with roots snaking out of the ground. Rain sprinkled the water like scattered pennies.
Kurt had come running down the dock just before they shoved off. His face was white and his eyes small and lost. His mother was gone. She had been out on the dock, and he had fallen asleep in the cabin. When he woke she was gone but her book and her chair were in the water along with a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. Reuger had run down to the cabin and looked around. They had quickly covered the lodge, and they had no doubt. Patricia Helpner was missing.
“Think I should go with you.”
Jim Carpenter stood by the bow of the lodge boat, watching Gus and Reuger unload.
“I can’t let you, Jim.” Reuger shook his head. “Your thinking won’t be clear. These boys have a good three hours start, but they’ll camp somewhere tonight, and we’ll catch up.”
“I’ll have the scanner on, then,” he nodded.
Reuger handed the Winchester to Gus and slipped under the canoe, hoisting it onto his shoulders. He hiked down the portage trail with the cavern over his head, and Gus followed with a gun in each hand. The woods were dark already and the trail slick. They walked the edges of the muddy path.
Jim Carpenter turned his boat around as the storm hit.
59
PATRICIA HELPNER WANTED some clothes. It was her own fault; she had gotten into the boat on her volition. He had told her he was going to show her some eagles, and Tim Carpenter was in the boat, and so she had joined them. It wasn’t until they reached the far north end of the lake she realized something was terribly wrong.
“Is this where the eagles are?” she asked Cliff as he pulled the boat ashore with the canoe trailing behind.
He had smiled at her then and she felt sick to her stomach. He pulled up a large rifle as his eyes undressed her. Patricia involuntarily drew her hands to her breasts.
“No, it’s not, you tree hugger bitch” Cliff pulled back the bolt. “You’re going on a little a tour of our endangered resources”
Patricia stared at him, then Tim Carpenter transferring the gear from the boat.
“Tim…do you know what you are doing?”
“Shut the fuck up, bitch.” Cliff walked close up to her. “You’re the reason he’s losing the lodge and you’re the reason men are losing jobs. When we get to where we’re going, we figure we’ll hold a little press conference. With you along, people will listen to our story.”
She saw this was bullshit, but she also saw how Cliff had sold it to the younger boy. Tim Carpenter walked into the woods, dragging the canoe. Patricia looked around the darkening woods and realized her situation fully. She saw the pulse in his temples, the gleam in his eyes.
“You don’t want to do this, Cliff. Take me back, and we’ll forget all about this.”
He laughed shortly and smiled. “No, you aren’t going back.”
He lowered the rifle and Patricia thought she might faint. “Reuger’s been fucking the hell out of you, and I understand why now.”
She stepped back and hit a tree, then he was on her. He pushed the barrel against her chest then reached forward, and she felt his left hand on her vulva. Cliff fumbled with her suit, and then he was inside her. His fingers tearing and groping. Patricia winced as he leaned close.
“How’s that feel, bitch?”
She spit on him and he stopped.
“Get your hand out of my cunt.”
“You fuckin’ bitch—”
“Cliff!”
Tim Carpenter was back, and Cliff turned.
“Just putting a little fear in her, buddy.”
Patricia didn’t know what Cliff had told Tim to get him to go along, but she could see it wasn’t holding him. Cliff turned back to her and nodded slowly.
“To be continued,” he whispered. “I think we better tie her up, Tim. She could be trouble.”
He looked down.
“Just don’t hurt her,” he muttered.
Cliff walked over to the boat and slit the bowline. He walked back to Patricia with the yellow nylon and grabbed her hands.
“I wouldn’t hurt her, Tim,” he said, wrapping her hands tightly. “We’ll just keep her around and give her a scare.”
60
THEY REACHED BOOT Lake with the storm hurling lightning and thunder from the treetops. Reuger swung the canoe from his shoulders to the dark mountains ranging freely across the sky with thunderheads swishing the water white. Graywacke and granite and greenstone glowed unnaturally bright on the far shore. Rain battered the canoe.
“Reuger!”
Gus pointed to a man paddling in an army coat with black hair roping his shoulders. He had appeared with the storm and the lightning and concussion. Reuger watched the man cross the lake toward him like a creeping dusk and remembered his conversation with Bruce Anderson.
“So, you have the girl’s statement then?”
“A recording.”
Bruce made a sound like steam escaping through his teeth.
“Oh, ya, it’s still he said, she said, Reuger, but maybe we can get a DNA match. But I’ll bet Riechardt managed to botch that up too, you know, so you still need a witness here with Cliff Johnson. Ben Johnson won’t make it easy here.”
“I’m taking off for the Boundary Waters.”
The radio buzzed in his ear.
“Can you get the son to sing on the father on this logging business here?”
“Do my best.”
“Ya, well, it doesn’t matter. No jury will think Cliff Johnson acted on his own here—maybe with the rape we can strike a deal. Obviously the son of a bitch is using his own son for his shit detail here.” He paused. “I’ll swear out felony warrants, and you can go pick him up for conspiracy to log in federal lands. Might as well jump from the pot into the fire here.”
Bruce breathed heavily in the radio again.
“So what about Foster Jones here…Al Hanes kill him, too?”
“Maybe.”
“Ya, who else you thinking it might be?”
* * * *
Tommy Tobin dragged his canoe ashore and walked under the pines. His army coat was drab olive turned to the color wet tent canvas. His hair slicked his neck like tar.
“So yer made it away after Reuger saved yer ass, there,” Gus shouted with his beard wet and clingy like a poodle.
Tommy turned to the lake and raised his rifle.
“Ya, that Cliff Johnson, he come through maybe three hours ago. I think they were headed for Ensign Lake. They were moving fast and carried deer rifles, you know.”
Reuger unsnapped the restraining strap on his Colt and faced the big man. “We’re even, Tommy.”
