Deception Cove

by Owen Laukkanen

  Finally the man squared up, seemed to come to a decision. “Winslow,” he said. “Owner’s Jess Winslow. Lives up on Timberline, little red house a quarter mile from where the road peters out. If she’s home, you’ll see a Chevy S10 in the front yard. Be careful out there, mind; she saw plenty of action, and she brought most of it back. You’re going to want to make your intentions clear.”

  “Timberline,” Mason said. “I’m much obliged to you.”

  “Don’t bring her any trouble, son. She’s been through enough as it is.”

  “I promise,” Mason said, and he turned for the door.

  “Son?”

  He turned back.

  “It’s a couple, three miles up to where Timberline meets the highway. If you’re planning on walking, you might want to wait for the rain to let up.”

  Mason looked out into the parking lot, the same steady drizzle he’d been seeing all day.

  “I might have just goosed Harwood into killing that dog,” he replied. “I don’t think I have time to spare.”

  Seven

  The stranger appeared down the road in the middle of the afternoon, toward the end of the day’s long decline into night. If there’d been any sun for shadows, the shadows would have been long, but as it was, there was no way to mark the evening except for the world outside Jess’s window seeming to lose definition, slow and imperceptible, minute by minute, a steady diminishing of color and detail until, all at once, it would come dark.

  Jess watched as the man walked up the road toward her house. He didn’t look like anyone she knew, though it was hard to tell: he wore a green rain slicker like Ty used to keep on the boat, the hood up over a baseball cap, hiding his face. She couldn’t see a vehicle, so he must have walked a ways; she wondered if he knew where he was going, if he knew there was nothing worth seeing this far up the road. Then she wondered if he was coming for her.

  He walked steadily, with a purpose, and as she watched, he looked up at her house and changed direction toward it. Jess drew back from the window, felt ice down her spine. She wondered if the stranger was even real, if her mind might be playing tricks again, conjuring enemies where none existed.

  This was what Lucy had been good for. If Lucy responded to a visitor, Jess knew they were real, and if that visitor had bad intentions, Lucy might very well scare them away. But Lucy had sure responded to the last man who’d come knocking, and that hadn’t exactly worked out, had it?

  Jess drew back into the living room, thankful she’d kept the lights off. Her truck was parked up alongside the house, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe if she kept quiet and didn’t move, this guy would just leave her alone.

  She stood in the stillness, listening to the rain on the roof, hardly daring to breathe. Waited, and prayed the stranger would keep walking. Then she heard the sound of his boots on the front porch, and she closed her eyes. She was fucked.

  He knocked, three times, like the last guy who’d come. Jess didn’t move. The man knocked again. “Ms. Winslow?”

  She drifted back, farther away from the door, ducked into the shadows where the living room met the kitchen, stood stock-still. Watched the man’s shadowed form as he peered through the window. She didn’t move. Her heart raced. She still couldn’t make out his face.

  Go away, she thought. Go away go away go away.

  Time seemed to still. The man called her name again, and she didn’t reply. She heard his boot steps on the porch again and prayed that was the end of it.

  But it wasn’t, of course. Nothing ever came easy. The man left the porch and circled around the side of the house, and Jess caught a glimpse of him through a side window, knew he was headed around back to keep looking.

  Damn it.

  Quiet as she could, she crossed to her bedroom, the shades drawn in there, the lights off. She knelt by the bed and reached underneath, felt around until her fingers found the soft case she’d stashed. Quickly she unzipped the case and removed the shotgun.

  She’d purchased the gun from Chase Ogilvy at the marine supply store in town, after Harwood and his tagalongs had come back for Lucy. She’d let them take her dog, okay, but she’d be damned if they were going to take anything else from her. It was a Remington tactical shotgun, twelve gauge, model 870 Express. Seven-round capacity, and Jess kept the gun loaded.

  She stood. Hesitated. Strained her ears for any sound of the man through the rain. Heard nothing. Maybe he’d gone, but she doubted it.

  The house was getting darker, daylight disappearing. Shadows played on the walls, and Jess squinted to see. Squinted too hard, and she was somewhere else suddenly, back in the valley with an M4 in her hands, another shitty situation, another bad feeling.

  Pull it together. Come on back, marine.

  She let the sound of the rain bring her back to reality. Cradled the shotgun and moved back to the living room, the kitchen. Looked out over the sink into the backyard, the fenced-in weedy patch and the green-black forest beyond.

  The man was out there. He’d come up to the back door, must have looked in through the window. Now he was turned around, headed out across the weeds to the edge of the fence line. Ty had built a shed out there for the lawn mower and whatever else, and Jess watched the man check it out, look around the yard, slow, and then start back across to the gate.

  Quickly, Jess hurried to the front door. Opened it and slipped through as stealthy as she could, like she was back in the shit, patrolling Haji’s turf. She crept across the front porch and around to the edge of the house where the path came up the side. Waited there, stilled her breathing, clutched the shotgun two-handed, and tensed for the man’s approach.

  He wasn’t trying to be sneaky. Or he was really bad at it. Jess heard his boots on the gravel path, practically heard him breathing. Timed it so just as he reached the end of the house, she stepped out toward him, swinging the butt of that Remington into his belly.

  The blow punched the wind out of him. Knocked him flat on his ass, knocked the hood off his face. She flipped the shotgun around, showed him the business end, made sure he could see her finger inch toward the trigger.

  He was older than she was; in his thirties, she guessed. Crow’s-feet starting to show around his eyes, his face winter pale. Jess didn’t recognize him, but that didn’t mean anything. It sure didn’t make him a friend.

  The stranger caught his breath. Stared up at her, past the shotgun, like he wasn’t all that worried she’d use it. “I guess you’d be the army vet, then,” he said.

  “Marine,” she replied. “And who does that make you?”

  “Well, I’d be the guy trying to piece together why his dog bit a deputy,” he said. “Are you going to shoot me, or can I stand up?”

  She didn’t answer. Replayed his words, couldn’t make sense of them. “Harwood send you?”

  He laughed. “That deputy? No, ma’am, he did not. In fact, I’m fairly sure he’d take issue with my being here.”

  “What you said just now, about your dog biting him,” she said. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I trained that dog, Lucy—you still calling her Lucy?” He gave her space for an answer; she nodded. “Good,” he said. “I know that dog pretty well, and she wouldn’t just up and attack somebody. I came to figure out what went wrong.”

  She stared down at him. Held the gun square, center mass. “They said it was prisoners who trained her,” she said slowly. “Some jail back east. You a criminal?”

  He nodded. “I was.”

  “And what, you heard the dog was in trouble and you escaped?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “I served my time, and the first thing I did when I got out was call and check on Lucy, make sure she was all right. I wasn’t looking to see her again, nothing like that. I just wanted to see that she was happy.”

  She opened her mouth. Closed it. Figured she’d have some harsh words for the woman at the agency, sending this ex-con out in her direction. But the stranger caught her expression
.

  “She didn’t tell me anything,” he said. “Just said Lucy was in trouble and due to be destroyed. I figured out the rest on my own.”

  “How?” she asked.

  “You sent a picture, Lucy in some school yard?” He shrugged. “Deception Cove Ravens, that’s how I got it.”

  Jess stared down at him. How in the hell was this real, any of it? “What are you planning to do?”

  “I already talked to that deputy; he didn’t say much. I thought I’d look you up, get the real story. And then I was planning to do what I could to get that dog out of trouble.”

  Jess didn’t say anything. After a beat the man laughed.

  “Ma’am, I’d be glad to tell you anything you want to know about my plans and whatnot, but do you think we could do this inside? I’m getting pretty well soaked, and you…” He gestured to her feet. “You aren’t even wearing shoes.”

  She looked down, saw he was right, felt the wet soak through her thin socks, and realized she was freezing. Shit.

  “You try anything, I’ll cut you down,” she said, backing up a few steps. “I’ve got no problem with defending my home.”

  “I can see that,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. He brushed himself off, then held out his hand. “Mason Burke,” he said.

  She looked at his hand. Didn’t let go of the shotgun.

  “All right, then.” Burke pointed toward the front yard. “Shall we?”

  Jess kept the shotgun on him, stepped back so he could lead, and followed him up the porch stairs to the front door and into her living room. The house was dark, there was almost no daylight, and Mason Burke was a silhouette in the center of the room as she felt along the wall with her free hand for the light switch.

  “You want my boots off?” he asked her after she’d turned on the light.

  She shook her head. “You’re not staying long.”

  “Well, what about my jacket? I don’t want to drip water all over your floor.” He was half smiling again when he said it, like the Remington didn’t bother him, like this was some kind of joke.

  “Look,” he said, nodding over her shoulder. “You have a coat hook right there. You want to swing around so you can keep that gun pointed at me while I’m hanging it up?”

  She hesitated a moment, not liking being told what to do, but then she stepped aside anyway because he was dripping all over the rug.

  “Might as well take your boots off too, then,” she said, backing around him and toward the kitchen. “Take a seat on the couch, and don’t try anything stupid.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and as he knelt to unlace his boots, she ducked into the kitchen, pulled out a chair, and installed it opposite the couch, a clear line of sight to the front door.

  Burke hadn’t sat down. He’d kicked off his boots and ambled over to the mantel above the fireplace, was studying the pictures she kept there in frames. “This you?” he asked, motioning to the first one, a snapshot from the Kunar Province, her with her flak jacket and M4 and helmet, her hair down to her shoulders so the local women would know from a distance she was a girl too.

  Jess nodded.

  Burke studied it a beat longer. Then he moved down the line, the wedding picture, her and Ty outside the church in Neah Bay, Ty in a rented tux and her in that borrowed white dress from her cousin, her smiling and those stupid freckles showing across the bridge of her nose, and Ty looking at her all proud anyway, like he’d never seen anything so beautiful in the world.

  Shit.

  “Where’s the old man?” Burke asked.

  “Dead,” she replied. “Drowned. Been almost four months.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t do it,” she said. “He got drunk one night on that old boat of his, misjudged the distance jumping across to the dock. They found his body the next morning, stuck under a float.” She shrugged. “It happens every few years; people get careless. And Ty had a tendency to get that way when he’d been drinking.”

  Burke turned from the picture to look at her, the skin around his eyes crinkling. She wondered what he was seeing, what he was thinking about.

  She motioned with her Remington over to the couch. “You going to sit down, or what?”

  He gave up on the photos and went over and sat. “Okay.” He set the palms of his hands flat on his thighs. “You want to tell me how Lucy came to bite that deputy?”

  She sighed. “Not really,” she said. “Look, what are you planning to do here? Are you thinking you’ll just pile that dog in your truck and take her back home with you?”

  “I don’t have a truck,” he said. “I took a bus here. And I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. But, ma’am, she’s your dog. I just want to see to it that she stays alive.”

  She said nothing. Chewed on her lip and lowered the gun slightly.

  “So you want to tell me what happened, or what?”

  Jess closed her eyes. “Not really,” she said again.

  Lucy was growling, her hackles raised, and Jess tried to shush her as she slipped past to the front door, tried to chase the fear from her voice, hoped the dog couldn’t hear it.

  But the dog knew something was wrong.

  Whoever was outside knocked again. Startled Jess so bad she thought her heart had stopped. She nudged Lucy away from the door with her knee. Brought her hand to the lock, hesitated. Then she turned the lock and pulled the door open.

  “Good evening, Jess.”

  Kirby Harwood stood on her porch, Stetson in hand, smiling that plastic smile like he was already running for Sheriff Wheeler’s job, that same plastic smile she remembered from high school, when he was a lock for all-state and the homecoming king, and still the asshole who got his kicks locking freshmen in their lockers when he didn’t think anyone was looking. Harwood was taller than Jess by a fair sight, outweighed her by about a hundred pounds, most of it muscle. He filled her doorframe, and the sight of him did nothing to calm Lucy down.

  Jess nodded to Harwood. “Deputy.”

  “Was wondering if you’d had the chance to think over what we talked about last time,” Harwood said. He looked past her. “You mind if I come in?”

  She did mind, very much, and judging by the growling noises by her right knee, Lucy did too. But Jess and Harwood both knew he hadn’t really asked a question, and she stepped aside and grabbed hold of Lucy’s collar, let the deputy walk into the house and stand in the middle of the living room, looking around the place like a real estate agent, like he was trying to decide how much he could sell it for.

  But that wasn’t it at all.

  Harwood’s eyes landed on Lucy. “Hey, girl,” he said, smiling even broader, oblivious to Lucy’s clear lack of cordiality. “How you doing? That’s a good girl. Jess, you can let her go, she just wants to say hi.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Deputy,” Jess replied. “She’s feeling kind of territorial tonight.”

  This is her territory, Deputy. You’d better step off.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Jess? Call me Kirby. We certainly go back far enough. Hell, we almost dated, if I’m remembering right.”

  He wasn’t remembering right at all. She wondered if it was an honest mistake, or if the deputy had talked himself into an alternate version of the facts. He’d asked her out, sure, sophomore year, but she’d seen how he picked on the freshmen, targeting the weak, told him she’d rather they just stay friends.

  Later she found out he’d told the whole football team she’d gone down on him in his dad’s old F-150 late one night out by Shipwreck Point Beach. By that point, though, she’d found Ty, and all the rumors and gossip didn’t matter.

  Harwood sat down, heavy, on the couch. Glanced at the TV, watched what was playing, another infomercial, then felt around for the remote and hit the mute button like he owned the damn set. The sound died, but the blue light remained, casting flickering shadows on the walls, on the ceiling, on Kirby Harwood’s face.

  “Now,” Harwood sai
d. “What was I saying?”

  “I don’t have it,” Jess told him. “Whatever you and Ty were into, he carried that to his grave. He sure didn’t share it with me.”

  Harwood’s smile remained, but his eyes got harder. “You look for it, Jess? I mean, really look?”

  “Of course I looked.” She gestured around the house. “There really aren’t that many hiding places, in case you couldn’t tell. Maybe if you’d give me an idea what I was supposed to be looking for, I could help you.”

  “What about the boat?” Harwood said. “You check the boat?”

  “Checked the boat. Checked the truck, checked the shed, checked under the porch. Deputy, whatever you’re looking for, I don’t have it.”

  “There’s no need for that tone, Jess,” Harwood said, and he had a tone too. “I’m an officer of the law now, don’t forget.”

  Sure aren’t acting like one, she thought.

  “Here’s the thing,” he said, planting his boots and pushing himself to his feet. “Like you said yourself, there aren’t too many hiding places in this little house of yours.”

  Lucy tensed as the deputy turned toward them. Pulled at her collar, whined a little. Hackles still raised.

  “You’ve been back, what, a good couple months now; that’s plenty of time to look. Doesn’t seem like you’re doing much with your free time besides.”

  “That’s right,” Jess replied. “I’ve got nothing to do all day but sit around and clean up Ty’s messes. So if I haven’t found this particular mess yet, Deputy, maybe it just isn’t here.”

  “Or maybe you’re hiding something yourself.” Harwood’s smile was gone; he took a step toward her. He filled the room, so she had nowhere to go. “You holding out on me, Jess? Because I’m telling you, if you’re trying to play hardball, you picked the wrong man.”

  Jess shook her head. “And I’m telling you I have enough problems without getting into Ty’s little calamities. Now maybe you’d better run along, Deputy, before you do something you’ll regret.”