Jack Pine, page 8
They stopped in the high weeds and heard wind volleying the treetops like a distant train. Gus chewed on his beard and gestured to the ground.
“How was Foster layin’, Reuger?”
“Curled up on his right side.”
Gus looked up one eye closed.
“Shot himself on the left side of the head then?”
“About right.”
Gus squatted down and clasped his gnarled and swollen hands together. The wind waved the jack pine and rustled the wild grass around them. Reuger felt the man who had flattened that grass in front of them. The blood-soaked grass was not unlike what was left behind when a deer who was dressed out in the field.
“I’m going to have a look at these logs here, Gus.”
“All right,” he nodded. “I’ll jest be a minute.”
Reuger climbed the piled and fire-blackened timbers and fell down through the crunchy wood. The wood was a lot of jack pine with some cedar here and there. Foster had piled the timbers up and was going to call in a truck to pick them up. It was strange the fire had jumped all the way over, but he could see the way it had burned the grass and of course sparks carried by the wind.
“What in Sam Hill you looking for, Reuger?”
“Know it when I see it,” he grunted, lifting a log and blackening his hands with creosote.
“Well, let me give you a hand then.”
Gus climbed up and they dug through the piled timber. The logs were like giant black matchsticks thrown into a pile. Cork blackened their hands and clothes. Ash puffed out of the heated creosote as they threw logs until they were winded and wet. They gasped and sweated in the suffocating breath of burned wood.
“Logs underneath burned through—nothing left here.” Reuger stood up breathing heavy and wiped his wrist over his brow. “Foster had a lot of wood here.”
Gus nodded breathing hard.
“Yer thinkin’ too much?”
“Maybe.”
Gus pulled back his long hair, sweat glistening delicately on his brow.
“Somebody may have had a grudge with old Foster and wanted to make sure he didn’t get any of his timber in.”
“Possibility,” Reuger nodded, climbing down and walking toward the large saw grappling air.
He ran his finger along the hydraulic hoses leading to the truck. He went over the scenario of Foster’s operation. It was a portable mill bucking trees into eight-feet lengths on the spot. The logs were fed into the whirring teeth creating a mountain of sawdust. The sawdust became red oatmeal after the rains. Chunks of splintered wood scattered the base, and Reuger sunk into the soft bedding under his feet. He stared at the slasher again, not burned at all. The fire didn’t touch the saw.
“Never seen a truck burned like this,” Gus called from the door of the cab. “Ah—Reuger? Maybe yer better come over here.”
Reuger stood and crossed the charred timbers to where Gus stood like a man who had discovered oil. He took off his hat, shading the sun over the logs and saw a discus the size of a quarter lying on a burned log.
“Have your handkerchief there, Gus?”
“Sure do.”
Reuger reached down between the logs scraping the back of his hands and picked up the disc. The button had been seared face to bottom but was still legible: Earth First. He held it flat against the white cloth, and the scene changed.
“Ain’t that what Tom Jorde calls himself?”
“You betcha,” he murmured, turning the button over slowly. “Mind if I keep the handkerchief?”
“I got a plenty, Reuger.”
He wrapped the button carefully and put it in his vest pocket. He glanced around the area and heard wind in the trees.
“Looks like that Jorde’s mixed up in this thing then, eh, Reuger.”
He felt Gus’s stare and saw the eager light in his eyes.
“Don’t know about that.”
Gus eyed him hard and spat.
“What yer…well, then, what in hell that button doing here then?”
“Don’t know,” he said hunching down, resting his elbow on his thigh.
Gus hissed through his teeth.
“Can I ask yer what yer do know about, then?”
He kicked up the brim of his hat, nodding toward the saw.
“I know there’s a lot of sawdust over there by that slasher.” He turned to Gus, one eye shut against sun. “Want to get your hands dirty?”
“Well sure…if yer has some idea you want me to follow,” he grumbled, following him and getting down on his knees in the brown muck. “Jest tell me what it is. I know this police work is complicated, but I sure thought…”
“It was.” Reuger looked up and nodded. “The button is something, Gus. It’s a good clue.”
He shrugged. “I just would’ve thought is all.”
The sawdust was like quicksand around the slasher, and they reached down above their elbows. The smell was like a cedar closet. The wet pine dust was pungent and they mucked their arms up almost to their armpits. Reuger strained his reach and felt something large.
“I feel a good bit of wood down here, Gus.”
“He must’ve dug a pit for this here sawdust,” Gus grunted, getting the coated wood shavings in his beard.
Reuger pulled hard on the piece of wood. Remnants of his woodcutting was down there and he found it strange he should dig such a pit. Most men just left the piled sawdust and moved the saw around when it got too big, but Foster had dug a pit.
“Can you lift it, Gus?”
Gus’s cheeks reddened over his beard. “Maybe…but she’s heavy, Reuger.”
“Ready, one, two…three!”
They lifted together and pulled a slab of wood out of the muck in the shape of a half-moon and dropped it in the grass. Reuger pushed his hat up and wiped his brow then sat back with arms coated in reddish paste.
“Pine, old Norway pine.” Gus nodded. “That wood’s from a big tree there.”
Reuger brushed the wet mush from the wood and saw the rings. The rings spun from the center of the wood like a spider web. Old wood had a different color and heavier density.
“You logged a long time, Gus. How old do you think this wood is?”
He licked his lips and squinted at the remnant then ran his hands across the rings.
“Haven’t seen a tree like that there for the last fifty years.”
“How old then?”
Gus rubbed his jaw, scratching like sandpaper.
“Bet that wood there is from a two-hundred-and-fifty-year old tree.” Gus’s watery blue eyes hardened. “Maybe more.”
Reuger whistled and stared at the pine.
“Trees that size were all logged out a hundred years ago.”
“Yep,” Gus nodded, looking up with a strange gleam in his eyes. “Except the Old Pines up in the Boundary Waters.”
Reuger stood and stared down at the remnant. You log and log and hit a few old trees. The treasures. Men stop in the forest and stare at a tree like they would a beautiful woman.
“I don’t know, Gus. I don’t think Foster’s dragging trees that far,” he said, shaking his head.
Gus rolled his shoulders and stood, brushing the wet paste from his knees.
“Jest sayin’. I only been up there once, but I’ve seen wood much the same, Reuger.”
The Old Pines. They were a legend when he logged before. Men spoke of them in reverence, and many breaks were spent contemplating the worth of such wood. The trees were the last of the giants. A two-hundred-acre swath of trees the loggers of 1890 had missed. Some of the men said it was because they just made a mistake and didn’t go up far enough. Others said that the Old Pines used to be swamp, and the loggers just took the easier trees. But whatever happened, the trees were left and had been federally protected along with the rest of the Boundary Waters when Teddy Roosevelt created the Superior National Forest in 1909.
Reuger reached down and ran his finger along a ridge chattered in the bark.
“What do you make of this, Gus?”
“Only one thing makes those kind of marks.” He tapped the wedge of pine. “Choking the tree with a chain, but I don’t see why Foster would be dragging logs with chains when he can pull right up with that cherry picker.” Gus chewed his lip. “One thing’s for sure here, that tree ain’t from around here, Reuger.”
“Ya, come in Reuger.”
He hefted the radio.
“Go ahead.”
Reuger… I finished with that .45 automatic, over.”
“What’d you find?”
“Well, the shell and the gun match. Foster’s prints were all over the gun, and I just about give up on it but then I dusted the barrel and found a couple of prints right before the sighting pin.”
“Foster’s?”
“Ya. Affirmative, sure is there Reuger, how’d yer know that?”
Gus stared at Reuger and shook his head. Hector was the Barney Fife of the Lake County Sheriff Department. He was bone-thin, short, and never left the station. He handled the paperwork and bookings and a lot of the evidence testing.
“Gun was clean then, Hector?”
“Noooo…so then I dusted under the barrel you know and right below the aiming pin was another print there.”
The two men waited in the forest. The drone of a seaplane whined in the distance. Gus hissed through his teeth.
“He goin’ to ever tell us what he found there, Reuger?”
He clipped the radio again.
“Foster’s, too, Hector?”
“Negative, that was the one there. Definitely not Foster’s. Could be your perp’s, Reuger.”
“Anything else?”
“Not so far but I’ll let ya know.”
“Thanks, Hector.”
“You betcha.”
“Barney catch yer crook?”
“Nope. But might have one now,” Reuger nodded slowly.
The seaplane came into sight and banked along the trees. Reuger waved as the Blue Phantom scoured the pines and vanished.
“Irene must be giving rides at Pine Lodge.”
“Well yer wouldn’t catch me in one them little planes.” Gus shook his head and spat again. “Especially with a woman piloting the dang thing.”
“Best bush pilot in the Boundary Waters. Done many a search-and-rescue with her.”
Reuger hunched down with the radio and looked at the quiet forest. There was no wind, but it had rained last night. Wind and rain were now his enemy. This was a crime scene. The clues had collected, and he felt now he could turn away from a suicide. Foster was not just a logger falling on hard times. The controversies of the last fifty years seemed to have found a purchase in this remote part of the forest.
He brought the radio up. “Hector!”
“Ya,” Static showered in. “Go ahead, Reuger.”
“Call the crime lab and let me know when they can get some people up here from St. Paul.”
“Ya, 10-4.”
Reuger hooked the radio and stared at the burned-out slasher and fire-blackened logs. He tapped his gun belt and waited for something. He tore open a pack of jerky and chewed the dried meat slowly. Gus hunched down.
“What yer thinking?”
“Wait a minute.”
Gus looked away and stroked his beard.
“Are yer thinking…”
“Wait a minute here.”
Reuger balled the wrapper in his vest and nodded. Gus breathed heavily. Reuger stared at the burned truck, the sprawled support legs like some pod.
“Are yer ready yet?”
“Yep,” he nodded, standing up and looking at Gus. “Let’s go and see Ben.”
15
REUGER AND GUS sat with Jim on his lodge porch watching the storm on the north side of the lake. Reuger thought about his visit to Johnson Timber. Ben wasn’t there, but Al Hane’s wife, Penny, was. Reuger regarded her smoldering vitality that pushed through with dark eyes and full red lips.
“Al says you stopped him from logging this morning.”
“Had an injunction, Penny,” he shrugged.
“Ya,” she said lifting a tired eyebrow. “You know they print those things themselves.”
Reuger sat on the desk edge and plopped his hat down. He could smell her perfume and watched the rise of her breasts in a white blouse.
“Your husband always call you during the day and tell you his business?”
Penny Hanes let the magazine fall to the desk and picked up a cigarette.
“Ben’s not going to be happy about that. He was counting on those trees, and now they’ll drag it through the courts for months.”
“Had a legitimate injunction, Penny.”
“Ya?” She shot smoke toward the dirty neon panel light. “Never bothered you before.”
Reuger lifted his hand. “Times are changing, Penny.”
“When you cut trees, I think I remember someone who didn’t let anyone get in their way.”
“People change.”
She fished another cigarette from her purse and sparked a lighter.
“Ya, I guess I should have known that about you.”
Reuger noticed her left eye powdered over and knew Al Hanes swung from the right. He took the small town girl and beat her in a provincial way. Ely was the end of the road. Mining or logging. Take your pick or leave.
Reuger put his hand on her desk and lowered himself. It had started in the Ely Motel with the red light shining in through the half-pulled shade. Penny was younger then, and so was he.
Gus and Jim sat silent as Reuger squinted across the lake. What Penny had told him about Foster Jones was troubling. He was six months behind on his lease, and Ben was about to throw him off the land. She said they had one hell of an argument she could hear clear out in the lumberyard, then Foster stomped away. Foster was a man with not much to lose. Once he lost his lease, he was done as a logger.
* * * *
Diane Carpenter pushed open the door with the screen wangling closed. She flared her cigarette in the storm light. She stared at the man leaning against the porch post with his hat low. She looked at his arms, then his sunburned skin and sandy mustache.
“Stay for dinner, Reuger? Gus too.”
Reuger glanced up, eyes brighter in the reflected light.
“Don’t have any pressin’ engagements.”
“I’ll tell the girls to put two more on, then.”
The screen door slammed, adumbrated by distant thunder. Sun knifed off the lake but over the far trees were shadows, and in the shadows lightning danced. Diane’s son, Tim, emerged from the boathouse and walked up the ridge the lodge was built on with his flannel shirt whipping in the storm wind. Jim crossed the porch and called out.
“Seen the boy and his mother from cabin eight?”
“No sir,” Tim said, pushing back his flat hair. “Their boat’s gone, too.”
Another blue bolt touched ground. Thunder rolled up closer, echoing majestically over the lake. Jim had seen the boat, that morning, go to the center of the bay. Voices traveled the flat water, and he heard the boy giving his mother hell. Then the boat took off whining toward the north end of the lake. Jim glanced at his watch.
“How long they been out?”
He turned to Reuger.
“Since this morning.”
“Mind if I use your boat?”
“No, because I’ll go with you.”
They ran into the rain just beginning to darken the sand road. Gus looked up and watched electric spiders crawl the sky. He saw a hazy column falling from mushroom clouds over Center Island.
“Reckon they got fifteen minutes before hell breaks loose,” he said to no one in particular.
* * * *
The storm flowed over the lake from Canada in a rolling glob of dark thunderheads stretching out over the trees and throwing down rain and lightning around the aluminum boat. Reuger sat in the front and searched the shoreline. Rain pelted his cheeks and dribbled from the brim of his hat. Flashes of light exploded, and they heard trees crack apart in the distance. The thirty-five horsepower motor strained against the whitecaps and water splashed up over the two men.
“I’ll head over towards the Second Sister,” Jim shouted with his hair slicked back and his shirt soaked to the skin.
Reuger nodded and wondered whether he might have to call in the seaplane. They would have to wait until the weather calmed before they could fly. But if they wandered off the lake, they could be lost in the interior of the Boundary Waters. The world slipped to the color of a flashbulb, then they heard another tree explode. He cleared his eyes twice before he saw the boat on the Second Sister. The boat was half in the water.
“See it, Jim?”
He pulled off his glasses.
“Oh, ya!”
Reuger saw the oars lying on the pink granite. He had a bad feeling. Wind sheeted the boat, and he saw water splashing white against the motor. Two bodies lay side by side on the rocks. Jim looked at him with his glasses pimpled with rain. Jim ran the boat up on the rocks, and Reuger jumped out, splashing ashore like a drunken man. He reached the woman first, with hair whipping like wet rope. He felt sick to his stomach as he turned over her sodden body.
16
THEY BROUGHT PATRICIA and Kurt back to the lodge. Patricia had blinked at Reuger in the rain then smiled when he turned her over. It was a moment she would remember for a long time. They had become lost then stranded on the island and when the storm began had laid face down on the granite rocks next to the lake.
The long table in the lodge hall was set with plates and covered with food. The fireplace crackled heat, and the pine walls made Patricia think she had walked into a movie of frontier life. The room filled with people. Two dock boys and two girls who helped Diane with the cabins walked in. Patricia thought the blond girl might be Diane’s daughter. The owner, Jim, ambled in with an old man, and the deputy sheriff who had helped her move into her cabin.
She watched Reuger hook his hat on a chair and push his gun to the side. She thought about the island where she and her son had been stranded, and how he rescued them.
