Hunter's Moon

by Chuck Logan

  She lowered her voice. “‘Gold,’ whispered the spider.”

  Harry sipped the bitter chicory. “I see,” he said.

  “Good,” said Miss Loretta. “The spider was a European import and Nanabozho saw he had a problem. Now that the spider was out of the white man’s chest, it could get loose and raise hell in the forest. So Nanabozho put the heart back in the chest and tied the arms and legs in a tight knot to keep the spider from getting out.

  Then he carried the body deep into a cave, way down to where there was a little shiny vein of gold. He piled tons and tons of rocks on that body so the spider would never get loose in the world.”

  Miss Loretta sighed. “Then, unfortunately, Nanabozho went off on one of his long trips.”

  Harry nodded and stood up. “Well, thanks for the coffee.”

  “Sit down, young man. I’m not done yet,” she commanded.

  “Yes ma’am,” Harry sat.

  “You see, Nanabozho screwed up. He thought the white man was a freak. A one-of-a-kind creature. Trouble was there were millions of other white men. And one of them was Bud Maston’s grandfather.

  When old Stanley Maston dug that pit to get the iron, damn if he didn’t let that spider out. That spider was hungry. Only thing he had to eat was the white man’s heart, and he developed a taste for it. Other thing, that spider was pissed at Indians.”

  256 / CHUCK LOGAN

  This time Harry got up and started walking toward the door.

  “Well, I got to go. Been nice talking to you.”

  She followed him out onto the steps. “When I told that story to Jay Cox, he understood it. Chris understood it. Becky understands it…”

  Harry kept moving, avoiding her eyes and her words.

  “To understand the story you have to go up there,” she tilted her head at the ridge. “Go without a compass into the woods until you are lost. Then when the sun goes down, listen to the winter voices in your heart—”

  “Be seeing you,” said Harry.

  “Harry Griffin,” she pronounced. “Do you really want to find what you’re looking for?”

  Jerry Hakala wiggled his eyebrows as Harry walked past. “She get you all straightened out?” he asked.

  Harry grunted and climbed into the Jeep. He drove slowly down a side street and pulled to the snowbank in front of the liquor store.

  Bubblebubble, toil and trouble, the three Indian winos, stood shifting from foot to foot in the cold.

  He glanced up at Nanabozho Ridge. Take these tourist woods any day over the Laotian highlands. He summoned one of the Indians.

  “How about you go in there and get me a fifth of Jack Daniel’s?”

  “Whatsa matter chief, you ain’t twenty-one?” asked the guy. His face was a burst sweet potato and his tapioca eyes perused the bill in Harry’s hand. “That’s Mr. Franklin.”

  “Just be a pal.”

  The dude returned with a bottle in a brown paper bag and a handful of currency. Harry took the bottle and told him to keep the change. The wino raised his eyebrows.

  “Back rent,” said Harry as he drove away.

  The switchboard at St. Helen’s Hospital defeated him. Harry hit the disconnect and tried Dorothy. Phone machine. He called Linda Margoles at her law office.

  HUNTER’S MOON / 257

  “Talk to Bud lately?” he asked.

  “It’s easier to ring up a federal prisoner than penetrate that damn hospital.”

  “I talked to his lovely wife. She wants a million dollars.”

  Linda Margoles whistled. “How are you doing?”

  “Fine,” said Harry as he jammed shells into the Remington pump.

  He set the shotgun across the dining room table and took a slug of whiskey. “Just signed up for a wilderness experience field trip.”

  “What?”

  “Check you later, Linda.”

  Harry found a seat among the granite polyps overlooking the lake and sipped from the bottle. The shotgun made a comfortable brace for his elbows across his knees.

  Whiskey was funny. Sometimes it slammed you hot and sweaty as Saturday night wrestling. Or, like now, it walked you slow and mercilessly through every mundane act of cowardice that living straight and drawing a paycheck from an American corporation required.

  The sun flamed out against the black sticks of the forest and briefly he pictured Jesse and Emery padding through the trees, silent as wolves. He did not hear Miss Loretta’s voices. He thought, instead, about a book that had been his sophomore bible. Man’s Fate by André Malraux. The scene where the baron, on a mission to warn the hero that the bad guys are coming to snatch him, tarries at a casino, drinks, and watches the roulette ball tumble round and round in fascination as his friend’s life runs out.

  That was close to what Jesse meant, he supposed, when she asked him to take a chance on her.

  42

  Working on One Day Sober Twice. The Sequel. Harry was thinking he had to figure out a way to shave the hot bristles growing on his eyeballs when the phone rang.

  258 / CHUCK LOGAN

  “Maybe you’re not so dumb after all,” said Dorothy Houston.

  “What you got?” Harry took the call stretched on a chair, pointing his bare feet toward a roaring fire.

  “My cop friend made a few calls.”

  “What’d he turn up on Cox?”

  “Cox schmox. Small potatoes. A couple of drunk and disorderlies in Seattle years ago—”

  “But Emery is a different story,” said Harry.

  “You nailed it. My friend found a detective on the Duluth force who used to work with him.”

  “Lemme guess.”

  “Detective Lawrence Emery shot Kidwell. Fact. But then it gets tangled depending on who you believe. The cops said Kidwell was resisting arrest. Kidwell’s family—brother and sister who co-owned his custom sailboat operation—insisted he was defending his business against intruders. There was a question about whether the cops properly identified themselves going in. The family sued. They settled it out of court for an undisclosed amount.”

  “What about Emery?”

  “The coppers all stuck together, said Emery did it by the book, was fired on, returned fire. They found traces of cocaine big-time in the sailboat, but no weight. Emery was cleared on the shooting, but the word was, if he’d stuck around, he’d have been walking a beat in the Boundary Waters.”

  “The money? Did the wife get any of it?”

  “Nope. She got the life insurance.”

  “How? He was shot allegedly in the commission of a crime.”

  “The insurance company investigated. They came up inconclusive on Kidwell’s involvement in a felony. No evidence. Where’s the crime? It was—”

  Harry took a breath and let it out. “An accident.”

  “Double indemnity for accidental death, Harry.”

  “How much did she get?”

  “A half a million bucks. He had tons of insurance. Even HUNTER’S MOON / 259

  had one of those Lloyds of London specials for the trip. She couldn’t collect on the policies he took out when they got married. There’s this two-year contestability thing. She was on the policy he’d had for ten years.”

  “And Emery and the grieving widow disappear into the sunset, to friendly Maston County,” said Harry. “Fuckin’ Bud. He hadda know this. He wanted Jesse to be this earth mother in a lumberjack shirt, so that’s what she was.”

  “You think this Emery and the Deucette woman were running the same kind of game on Bud?”

  “Damn straight. Except this time they were after a hunk of the Maston estate. Why didn’t someone in the Duluth media pick up on this?”

  “She went by her mother’s name in Duluth. Her picture wasn’t in the paper and she was never interviewed on TV. No one put it together.”

  “Hakala handled the media like a pro. That’s why he put it to bed so fast. Get Bud in treatment, politics, and Bill Tully. Sure, Right.

  Who investigates a county prosec
utor?”

  “State Attorney General or the Justice Department. You have to make a case for probable cause that there was a conspiracy to violate Bud’s civil rights.”

  Silence on the connection while his mind raced.

  Dorothy said, “The thing is, you have to connect that kid you shot. Without that, you just have a vivid imagination and a compel-ling coincidence. You’re right on the cusp of a conspiracy theory.

  Without proof you wind up sounding like a nut. Go slow. A lot of this is police department gossip.”

  “You run any of this by Randall?”

  Dorothy exhaled. “Mentioned it on the phone. I gave him Cox’s birthday and he said he’d get Hollywood to snoop around in the Justice Department computers. He called back and said he might have found something.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t say.” A tired concern wove through her voice.

  “Everything all right?”

  “The last time he hooked up with Hollywood he tried to 260 / CHUCK LOGAN

  party himself young. You know how they get going.” Dorothy paused. “And he told me to get you to come home. It’s not your scene up there.”

  “C’mon, Dorothy. You, too?”

  Dorothy’s voice changed, a bit of the childless matron in it. “We all love you, Harry…but you’re an amateur.”

  “Right. Thanks, Dorothy. Talk to you later.”

  Connect the dots. No wonder Emery looked so bummed that morning. He taught Chris how to shoot.

  Harry called Linda Margoles at her office. She was on another line. He left a message. When the phone rang, he leaped at it.

  “Harry?” Linda’s voice was cautious, concerned.

  “What’s probable cause?”

  “What?”

  “The legal definition of probable cause. C’mon—”

  “Harry, listen a minute. We got other stuff. I told Bud about the settlement. He said okay, if we can counteroffer the money minus the amount she cleaned out of his account. She forfeits the property.”

  “I figured he’d go for it.”

  “Harry. I talked to him. In my office. He’s out. He left the hospital.”

  “Aw shit.”

  “He wants me to get on the calendar in Maston County court. Finalize the terms of the separation. I have a call in to them right now—”

  “Don’t let him come up here.”

  “Harry, I’m an attorney; he’s my client. He wants to settle the money part of this fast. As a private person, I share Bud’s concern that you’re playing unguided missile—”

  “The guy should be committed. He’s not responsible—”

  “He says you’re the one who should be committed. It’s a wash.

  If I didn’t know you both I wouldn’t go near it. Screw the fee and travel time.”

  “Travel time?”

  “I have to go to court with him.”

  HUNTER’S MOON / 261

  “Linda. I gotta go.”

  Harry was exhilarated and wary, climbing a scaffold of toothpicks he was building as he went. But damnit, there was something here!

  So they left Duluth with a pile of loot. Dirty money, Miss Loretta called it. Wonder where they put it? He dug through the local phone directory and found the listing for Lawrence Emery. Then he placed the address as best he could on the township map in the front of the phone book. He tore the page out, threw on his coat, and jumped in the Jeep.

  To get to the county road Emery lived on, Harry had to drive around Bud’s property. The road was a boundary between two different countries. On one side, the timber was thick and towering.

  On the other, the land was bog and spindly jack pine. Hunters dotted the sparse swamps. Probably all the deer headed for the thick cover of the Maston acres.

  His stomach growled. Nothing in it but black coffee over mas-sacred digestive juices. He lit another cigarette and ran his fingers across the sweaty stubble on his chin.

  Emery lived on quite a piece of land. The acres of rolling, fenced pasture were divided by a fishing stream, the house was cedar, modern Tudor. But desolate. A hay feeder sat barren in the pasture.

  The barn looked empty. No horses in sight. No tracks in the windswept snow.

  He could see Jesse’s lethal ass poised in an English saddle, putting a thoroughbred through its paces in a paddock. Looking over the spread.

  Nice. But no lake. And just a sheriff’s salary.

  A house like that, new, might go for around 250,000 bucks. With the barn, the land, and the horses, it would eat up Jesse’s insurance settlement from Duluth.

  His eyes traveled the landscaped drive and stopped at the three-car garage. There was a basketball hoop, the net stiff with ice. He couldn’t picture Chris shooting baskets. Becky, maybe.

  What does a sheriff in a depressed county make a year?

  262 / CHUCK LOGAN

  Harry drew stares as he marched down the hall toward Mike Hakala’s office. He yanked off his wool cap and swatches of hair stuck at wild angles. The scabs on his face didn’t help.

  One of Hakala’s brothers and a woman sat in the easy chairs in front of Hakala’s desk. They viewed Harry with mild alarm when he appeared in the doorway. The woman stood up in a businesslike skirt and sweater. Her long legs didn’t flash so much, muted by nylons. She clutched a yellow legal pad in her hands and her face turned crimson in contrast to her long blond hair.

  Harry grinned. “The Hakala politburo I presume. Ginny. Didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”

  The Hakala brother rolled his eyes toward the sheriff’s office down the hall, Should I get someone?

  Hakala pursed his lips and discreetly shook his head. No.

  “Harry,” said Hakala, rising from his desk. “What can I do for you?”

  “Like to talk, you and me,” said Harry.

  “Sure. Uh,” he turned to Ginny and the brother. “Take a break.

  Say fifteen minutes.”

  Ginny’s heels clicked past him. She did not meet his eyes.

  “Close the door, Harry. Sit down. Coffee?” said Hakala.

  Harry looked down the hall at Ginny. “She cleans up well, your niece.”

  “Ginny picks up a few hours a week with the county, when she isn’t managing the diner.”

  “Right,” said Harry, sitting down.

  Hakala passed him a cup of coffee, leaning over his desk far enough to make a production of recoiling from Harry’s breath and his appearance. “Any more trouble at Maston’s? We’ve been keeping an eye out. We checked out the serial number on that snowmobile that got…left behind when those hooligans came through. Guy it’s registered to said it was stolen that night.”

  HUNTER’S MOON / 263

  “Uh-huh. Who hired Larry Emery to fill out the old sheriff’s term?”

  “Why, the County Board, on my recommendation,” said Hakala.

  “What’s a county sheriff make a year?”

  Hakala shrugged. “Low forties. Somewhere in there.”

  “How much you figure that house he’s got is worth? Looks pretty pricy for a sheriff’s salary.”

  Hakala smiled. “You, uh, recall a conversation we had in this office? About how civilians shouldn’t try to do the system’s work?”

  “Absolutely. Which part of the system checked out Emery’s resume?” Harry tossed the newspaper page on Hakala’s desk. “You recognize the lady circled in red?”

  Hakala studied it for a moment and rolled his eyes. “Don Karson’s already been through here with that. What else is new?” He sighed.

  “He’s dropping big hints that Emery had something to do with Chris. Then, to be fair, Emery is making sounds like Karson is the local pederast. Yeah, I went round the bases. I been to the high school and seen the writing on the wall.”

  Hakala’s desk phone buzzed. “Hold my calls,” he said brusquely, then paused, “What? When?” He tightened his eyes shut, listening.

  “Well, give them a good talking to. No. I’m staying out of it.” He
slammed down the receiver and sighed. “Fight at the high school, my kid just beat the dog shit out of one of the guys on the hockey team. I swear, this whole damn town is going batty. Where were we—okay,” said Hakala, rearranging his thoughts like notes. “Larry had some bad luck in Duluth. If he’d caught Kidwell with the dope it could have been the biggest drug bust in state history.”

  “Too bad, so he settled for Kidwell’s wife. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Jesse was the wife. She collected quite a piece of change. Like half a million bucks in insurance. Doesn’t it tweak your curiosity, the way Jesse Deucette’s husbands are prone to death by gunshot wound?”

  Hakala’s robust face clouded. “The bullet that passed 264 / CHUCK LOGAN

  through Bud Maston’s body came from Chris Deucette’s rifle. I have the forensic report right here.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  “Listen, fella,” Hakala cautioned. “I been going out of my way to be civil with you.” He rose out of his chair and walked back and forth behind his desk. “I realize you’ve been through a lot. I thought we had a working agreement. Get Bud some help and let it lie. Word of advice. After what you did at the funeral, Emery would like to nail your balls to a stump and push you over backwards. Don’t crowd him, Griffin.”

  “Why is Becky Deucette a missing person? Could it be she knows something about her dead brother and her dad? Something you overlooked? I didn’t tell you when it happened, but I think I saw her out there that day.”

  Hakala picked up some papers and threw them down on his desk.

  “You’re paranoid, fella. You’re starting to look like a loose cannon.”

  Harry stood up. “Your loose cannon is wearing a badge. And that’s not all. Bud’s checked himself out of the hospital and is headed this way with a pillowcase full of money to cash out Jesse.”

  “Not good,” Hakala breathed.

  Harry pointed an accusing finger. “There were flags on Chris starting back last summer. And last month you let him slide on a stolen gun offense. That kid needed help or he should have been put away and you let Emery put a rifle in his hand. You let him be turned into a weapon.”

  “Wait a goddamn minute. You can piss in the wind. I have to operate within the constraints of the law.”

  “Oh yeah? So what happens if Bud cruises into town to file his separation papers and some overeager deer hunter shoots him between the eyes, say, in front of the police station? One of those accidental deaths like what happened to Kidwell in Duluth?”