Deception Cove

by Owen Laukkanen

  Not that Mason didn’t try. He took the tire from Lucy, who’d already seemed to sense the new tension on the yard. Tossed it to Porter Trammel, who caught it and grimaced at the amount of drool that coated the thing.

  “Come on, Luce,” Mason said, standing and starting toward the pile of toys. “We’ll find you something else.”

  Except to get to that pile of toys, Mason had to walk past the two men who’d challenged him. And Alvarado wasn’t about to let the issue die. He moved over as Mason passed, bumped him, stood in his way.

  “Stay in your lane, hillbilly,” Alvarado said. “Keep that dog in line.”

  Conversations stilled. Heads turned. It wasn’t so much the words Alvarado chose; it was the tone in his voice and the fact that he and Mason Burke were having words at all.

  “Take it easy, Marques,” Mason said. “You got your little toy back. What else are you looking for?”

  “What am I looking for?” Alvarado smirked. Cracked his knuckles. “Well, shit, hillbilly, an apology would be nice.”

  This was where Lucy drew her line, apparently. She tensed beside Mason, let out a long, low growl in Alvarado’s direction, and when Mason looked down at her in surprise, he saw that her hackles were raised, and she was staring at the banger with menace in her eyes.

  “Hell, even the dog wants some,” Alvarado said. “This is going to be fun.”

  Lucy’s back was up like Mason had never seen before, and worse, Alvarado had the gleam in his eye Mason had seen in other prisoners, men who didn’t care anymore, who’d given up any dream of a new life outside and had settled for causing mayhem wherever they could, with whomever they could, inside the prison walls. Mason knew Alvarado would enjoy what was coming; he knew, also, there was no way to escape it. Hell, he just hoped Lucy survived.

  She has your back, he thought. It’s too bad it’s going to cost you both.

  Then Bridges Colson stepped in.

  “The fuck are y’all doing?” he asked, looking hard at Mason and at Alvarado and Trammel in turn. “You boys figuring to start a dogfighting ring up in here?”

  Mason said nothing. Neither did the other men; they were hard guys, but Bridges Colson was harder, and he had numbers at his back, out in general population. Nobody took up against Colson and enjoyed the experience.

  “You all got a week before these dogs are graduated,” the big man was saying. “Less than a week. And you want to risk all of that over some petty shit, really? You want to fuck up these dogs’ lives over a goddamn little chew toy?”

  He looked at Mason again, as if expecting an argument, like Mason was going to tell him it was more than a chew toy; it symbolized something.

  But it didn’t, of course.

  “You two,” Colson said, addressing Alvarado and Trammel. “You all got your little tire back, so quit being bitches. Go on off and play with your dogs and don’t start shit no more, understand?”

  The men said nothing, but their posture spoke for them. They were beaten without even throwing a punch; Bridges was the alpha dog here.

  “And you, Burke,” Colson said. “You seen how this dog was, the first day she got here. You seen how she changed since she’s been here. You going to throw that away?”

  Mason shook his head. “I’m not looking for trouble.”

  “Yeah, well.” Colson reached down, scratched Lucy’s head, and the dog, damn her, had the gall to wag her tail and look happy about it. “You’re almost out of here yourself, man. You gotta be smarter than this.”

  He had a point. But what stuck with Mason as Alvarado and Trammel slunk away wasn’t so much how close he’d come to ruining his life again, or how funny it was that Bridges Colson had been the stabilizing influence, but rather the look in Lucy’s eyes when Alvarado had stepped to him, the menace in her growl as soon as Mason was threatened.

  She has your back, buddy, he thought as he fed Lucy a Milk-Bone and threw a tennis ball for fetch. That dog cares about you, and that isn’t some small thing.

  Ten

  The twelve gauge was a piss-poor companion.

  Jess had set the shotgun down on the table in the living room after Mason Burke left, and sat down on the couch next to it and stared at it most of the night.

  She didn’t sleep. If she slept, she’d dream of Afia, and if she dreamed of Afia one more time, she might well blow her head off with that shotgun the moment she woke from the nightmare. So Jess didn’t sleep. She didn’t blow her head off either.

  She’d bought the shotgun from Chase Ogilvy with that eventuality in mind; she could admit that, now that she wasn’t going to do it. Sure, she would use the weapon to defend herself in the interim, but once she’d scared Kirby Harwood and his buddies away, once she’d found herself left alone in Ty’s house again?

  That shotgun was meant for one purpose, and that purpose was to rid her head of the nightmares, of Afia and the valley, forever. Jess figured she could live with the side effects.

  But she didn’t blow her head off, alone as she was with her thoughts. And the reason she didn’t do it was that every time she looked across the living room at that shotgun on that table, her eyes would skim past the gun and scan the room a split second, and she’d catch a glimpse of Lucy’s worn leather lead hanging on a hook by the door.

  She hadn’t been able to throw the lead out, not yet. Same for Lucy’s water bowl in the kitchen, and the bag of pepperoni treats stashed in the fridge. The dog was as good as dead, but to trash her stuff would make it final, and Jess wasn’t ready to take that step yet.

  Except now she couldn’t look at the shotgun without seeing that lead, and she couldn’t look at the lead without hearing what Mason Burke had told her, how Lucy was still alive and he planned to rescue her. And if the dog was still alive, and Burke planned to save her, then damn it, the notion of Jess blowing her head off kind of made it seem like she was abandoning the damn creature, giving up too easy.

  Jess didn’t give Mason Burke a snowball’s prayer of rescuing Lucy from Harwood and his buddies, but the dog was still alive, and that meant she still had a chance, however infinitesimal. Jess wasn’t sure she had the energy for a fight, but damn it, the last thing she needed was to pile more guilt on her head, feel like she’d let someone else down.

  She stared at the shotgun on the coffee table some more. She didn’t know what to do.

  She’d always known, more or less, what to do. Her whole life Jess Winslow had had plans, a path spread out before her, and growing up had been as simple as putting one foot in front of the other.

  Marrying Ty, that had been simple. He’d asked her out shortly after Kirby Harwood did, sophomore year, and he was ambitious and funny and cute and didn’t bully the freshmen, and she’d said yes and they’d gone into Clallam Bay to the movies, and afterward Ty had kissed her, and then they were going together, and that was pretty well how it happened. She felt safe with Ty, liked his dimples and the way he looked at her, and the way he talked about making something of himself, a real man, a highliner like his daddy used to be, resurrecting the family name and Deception Cove at the same time, doing something important. She liked that.

  And even after they’d graduated, and Ty’s big ideas didn’t pan out the way that he’d planned, he always had other ideas, more schemes, and anyway, Jess was enlisting and there was no sense in waiting—kids in Deception Cove married their high school sweethearts, that’s just how it went—so they married before she set off to South Carolina, and then overseas, and by the time she came back from that first tour of duty, she’d been gone so long and seen so much that she wasn’t even sure she could recognize herself, much less the man she came home to.

  He was up to no good then—he must have been, those big schemes gone sour—but Jess was so stuck in her own head that she didn’t catch on. And anyway, there was still some of that magic left sometimes, like she’d come out of her fog now and then, and there was Ty, like the old days; they’d watch a funny movie together, or he’d drive her out to the cap
e and they’d walk in the woods, the stillness of the rain forest a salve on the wounds she carried inside her. Ty still knew her better than anyone else in the world, still loved her, and she supposed she’d still loved him, too, and still did.

  But she’d reenlisted anyway, and gone back over, and he’d gone and gotten himself drowned.

  The corps, too; she’d always known she’d be a leatherneck. Her dad had fought in Iraq with the First Marines, Operation Desert Storm, and growing up, Jess had wanted nothing more than to emulate her father, impress him. So she’d enlisted after graduation, joined a female engagement team, and found out pretty quickly that she was just as good a marine as she’d ever hoped she would be.

  It wasn’t just the fighting, though she was plenty good at that part too. Working with Afia was less about shooting M4s and more about talking to people, listening, mediating. Gathering information and assessing its value, helping your team leaders make tactical decisions. And Jess, who’d never been much of a student, realized she was good at the engagement stuff. Working with Afia, she’d been better than good.

  But Afia was gone, and Jess was too fucked up in the head to fight anymore, a medical discharge and some combat ribbons and a never-ending barrage of nightmares her only souvenirs of a four-year engagement she’d hoped might become a career.

  Her dad was dead, Ty was dead, Lucy was gone; for the first time in years, maybe even a decade, Jess Winslow had no idea where she was going, what she was supposed to do. No path to guide her but her memories of the valley, and the blessed relief offered by the shotgun that lay before her.

  And she might have done it too. She might have eaten that barrel, put an end to the guilt and the horrible thoughts, the hopelessness and aimlessness and apathy. She might have welcomed the silence, the sudden end.

  But damn it, every time she looked at the gun, Jess saw Lucy’s lead on its hook in the background. And every time she saw that lead, she saw Lucy, languishing somewhere, terrified and alone. She saw Mason Burke and the look in his eyes, and she knew there was still a path she could follow, if she could only find the starting point.

  She’d given up on Afia. She wouldn’t give up on Lucy. Jess supposed that meant she’d have to find Mason Burke.

  Eleven

  The drizzle had dissipated into a fine mist by the time Mason left the motel room the next morning, and as he walked down the hill into town, he could sense the sun, somewhere above, trying to burn through the clouds. He stopped at the diner and ate the same breakfast as yesterday, at the same table as yesterday, and when he’d finished his meal, he crossed the street to the sheriff’s detachment and asked to speak to Deputy Harwood again.

  Harwood looked less pleased to see him the second go-around, though he made a nice try of keeping his smile fixed. He led Mason back to his office again, closed the door behind them. Went behind his desk and stood and spread his arms and looked at Mason.

  “Well, Mr. Burke,” he said. “What can I do for you this time?”

  Mason took his bankroll from his pocket. Counted out ten hundred-dollar bills. “One grand,” he said, laying it on the table. “A thousand dollars, cash money, and I’ll take that dog off your hands.”

  Harwood clucked, tried for a sympathetic smile and didn’t quite get there. “That’s a generous offer,” he said, “but like I told you before, that dog’s not for sale. You want an animal, the pound out on the Indian reservation is sure to have a good selection of—”

  “Thousand won’t cut it,” Mason said, interrupting. “I guess that means whatever Ty Winslow took from you is a sight more valuable.”

  Harwood’s smile flickered. He looked Mason over again, and when the smile came back, it was something harder, something meaner.

  “Are you looking to go back to jail, Burke?” he asked.

  Mason said nothing.

  “I did some reading about you.” The deputy gestured to his computer. “Mason Burke, thirty-three years of age, the last fifteen years a tenant of the Chippewa County State Penitentiary, Chippewa County, Michigan. First-degree murder, if I read that part right.”

  Mason held Harwood’s gaze. Still didn’t say anything.

  “Does that pretty young widow know you’re a murderer, Burke?” Harwood asked. “Did you tell her that part, when you told her you’d get her dog back?”

  “I served my time,” Mason said. “What I did fifteen years ago has no bearing on what we’re doing here today.”

  “What we’re doing.” Harwood clasped his hands together, cracked his knuckles. “What I’m doing, Burke, is attempting to dispose of a menacing dog, while simultaneously aiming to protect my town from the murderer who just showed up out of the blue.”

  “That’s how you’re going to play it,” Mason said. “That’s fine.”

  “That’s how it is, Burke. You want my advice, you’ll get back on that bus and ride off to where you came from, forget you ever heard of Deception Cove.” Harwood’s smile was gone now. “Because if you stick around here and keep stirring up trouble, I’m liable to get angry. And I bet you’ve pissed off enough cops in your life already.”

  Mason gathered his cash from the deputy’s desk. “I’ll take that under advisement,” he said, turning to leave. “Anything else?”

  “Get out of my town, Mr. Burke,” Harwood called after him. “Next time I won’t be so polite about it.”

  * * *

  Harwood watched Burke walk out of the detachment. When the drifter was gone, the deputy walked to the door of his office, called across the room to his men.

  “Sweeney, Whitmer. My office.”

  The deputies looked up from the coffee machine, fell in line. Came over to the office, where Harwood sat behind his desk, waiting for them.

  “Close the door,” Harwood told them. “We’ve got trouble.”

  The younger deputy, Cole Sweeney, sat across from Harwood. Dale Whitmer closed the office door, remained standing. Harwood tented his fingers.

  “I heard from Okafor,” he told the men. “He gives us to the end of the month.”

  Whitmer nodded. Sweeney glanced at the calendar on Harwood’s desk.

  “Three days,” Harwood told him. “Three days, we get Okafor that package, or we get him his money. Or not, and we’re all in one hell of a shitstorm.”

  “Jess isn’t panning out,” Sweeney said. “Maybe she really doesn’t know where her old man hid the package.”

  “Maybe she’s not looking hard enough,” Harwood replied. “We didn’t give her the proper motivation, and now this asshole’s come sniffing around, distracting her from the task at hand. We need to set her mind back on what’s important.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “The dog,” Harwood said. “We haven’t been severe enough. First thing tomorrow we start sending pieces. We run out of pieces, we start in on Jess herself.”

  Sweeney made a face. “Jeez, Kirby.”

  Harwood looked at him, stern. Watched the younger man wither.

  “I’m just saying, we got into this to make money, boss,” Sweeney said. “Nobody said we were going to have to be killers.”

  “Them or us.” This was Whitmer, from the door. “You see eight hundred grand sitting around, Cole? What do you think Okafor is going to do if we don’t make him whole?”

  Sweeney went paler. “I know, but still.”

  “We don’t have to worry about Okafor,” Harwood told them. “Because once we lean on Jess harder, she’ll get us that package. We just have to up our game.”

  Sweeney didn’t reply. Whitmer was smirking.

  “Yeah, what is it, Dale?” Harwood glared at him. “You got something to say?”

  “Just thinking on how you and Jess used to have that thing together, back in the high school days, remember?”

  “Yeah,” Harwood said. “So?”

  Whitmer winked at Sweeney. “Well, I guess you mustn’t have impressed her all that much, boss,” he said. “Seeing as how she sure hates your guts these days.”

/>   Harwood felt his muscles tense up, involuntary. “I used her up till I was good and done with her, Dale, and then I traded her in on the cheerleading captain,” he said. “I guess Jess still holds a grudge.”

  Whitmer nodded, still smirking. “Yeah, I guess so.” Then his smile faded. “And the drifter, boss? What do you want we should do about him?”

  Harwood relaxed a little bit. Pushed Jess from his mind. “Run him out of my county,” he said. “By any means necessary.”

  Twelve

  At first pass, Mason had assumed the building that housed the Cobalt Pub was abandoned, if not condemned. But today, looking past the graffiti tags, the boarded-up windows, and the wind-worn posters for long-ago musical acts, he found a black, windowless door, and when he pulled the door open and peered inside, he found himself in a bar, just like Hank Moss had promised.

  Barely nine thirty in the morning and already doing business, the Cobalt was a long, narrow room, a bar along the right wall and a row of tables on the left. The place stank of sweat and stale beer and urine, the light dim enough to hide most of the filth on the walls, the floor, the countertops, though nobody would ever have made the mistake of calling the place clean.

  A couple of old men sat drinking alone at the bar. Toward the back, three more men sat at a table. They looked middle aged, though in the shadows Mason couldn’t be sure. Their eyes followed him as he found a seat at the bar.

  The bartender was an older guy too, a white beard and thick, muscled arms. He nodded at Mason as he sat down. “What can I get you?”

  “Beer,” Mason replied, and the man took a greasy glass from a rack and filled it from an unmarked tap.

  “Three bucks.”

  Mason slid him a five. “Looking for someone,” he said. The bartender raised an eyebrow. “Guy named Ty Winslow. You know him?”