Dead Meat

by William G. Tapply

  I shook my head. “I’ve got a canoe stashed down the hill. I’ll have to take it back. Not looking forward to another bout with the blackflies, I can tell you that.”

  “See you later, then,” he said, and in a moment he had disappeared through the undergrowth.

  I took one last look at the dead moose and tried to think of something appropriately reverential to do to pay proper respect to the sacred Indian place. I ended up swatting at a cloud of blackflies and plunging back into the undergrowth.

  As I fought my way down the hill through the blow-downs and briers and blackflies, several questions nagged at me. Who the hell was this Rolando, and what was he really doing at this old burial ground deep in the Maine wilderness? Why did he carry a weapon—and, from the looks of it, a professional’s gun at that? And who, for that matter, was his brother? And how was his disappearance—or death—related to a dead moose?

  Who had killed the moose?

  And what did any of it have to do with an offer the Maine Indians had made to Vern Wheeler to buy the Raven Lake sporting camp?

  They all sounded like pretty good questions. I couldn’t answer any of them.

  When I nosed the canoe onto the sand beach, it was after five o’clock. Between the weariness of my muscles and the constellations of blackfly bites on several tender parts of my body, the only thing I wanted was a long cool bath.

  But when I entered the lodge, happy hour was in full swing, and Tiny saw me and waved me over.

  Happy hour seemed to have developed a singularly unhappy tone on this particular occasion.

  Guests and guides had gathered into a tight knot by the bar. I sidled up beside Tiny, who handed me a bottle of beer and whispered, “Little argument goin’ on here.” Tiny seemed uncomfortable about it.

  Woody was seated by the bar, his face granite. Rolando stood close to him, his chin outthrust and his eyes flashing. “… anything I feel like saying. About Indians or Poles or Eskimos,” Rolando was saying.

  “I didn’t kill no moose,” muttered Woody.

  “They’ve been goin’ at it for a while now,” Tiny whispered to me. “Mr. Rolando came in, had a couple quick pops, and started shootin’ his mouth off.”

  “I didn’t say you shot that moose,” said Rolando, his voice tense. “I said that Indians don’t respect the law.”

  “That’s just crap,” said Woody, lifting his eyes to stare hard at Rolando. “And anyone who says it is full of crap.”

  Tiny pushed his way toward the two men. He touched Rolando on the shoulder. Rolando whirled around. “Get your goddamn hand off me.”

  “Come on,” said Tiny. “Let’s change the subject.”

  “It’s okay by me. I said what I wanted to say.”

  “Apologize,” said Woody.

  “Aw, leave it,” said Tiny.

  “The white man insulted me.”

  “No apology,” said Rolando. “And don’t call me white man.”

  Several people who had been listening chuckled at this. Rolando glanced around. He seemed to notice for the first time that there was an audience. After a moment, he smiled. Then he looked back at Woody. “Look,” he said, “I didn’t mean anything personal, okay?”

  Woody stood up. He was several inches taller than Rolando, and he stared down at the shorter man from a dignified height. “Was that an apology?” he said.

  “By Jesus, it wasn’t an apology,” said Rolando. “It was an explanation. Take it or leave it.”

  Woody glowered at him for a brief instant. Then he pivoted and stalked out of the room.

  Eight

  I AWAKENED THE NEXT morning, itching. I had blackfly bites between my toes, inside my ears, in my armpits. When I sat up in bed, I discovered stiff muscles where I hadn’t known muscles existed. A day of paddling and hiking had taken its toll on my middle-aged body.

  I dressed as quickly as I could and shuffled downstairs. Bud was up early, and I silently thanked him for the urn of coffee on the table in the dining room. I poured myself a mug and decided to take it down to the dock. I could watch for the swirls of rising salmon on the misty surface of the lake and wait for the sun to come up.

  I padded onto the porch. The predawn air lay in a wet, gray opaque blanket of shadowy fog. The pewter face of the lake glimmered dully through the trees, a misty blur that mingled with the ground and the sky like a watercolor wash. Where I stood, it was still night. Everything was shapes and shadows. Back in the woods a few birds had begun to try out their morning songs.

  I picked my way carefully down the steps, groping among the eerie, distorted shapes of tree trunks toward the lake, touching them as I passed.

  I went down to the end of the dock. I sat on the edge, dangling my legs. The surface of the lake looked as if it had been layered with smoke.

  Suddenly, almost at my feet, a large bass broke the surface. I could see it swirl and dart back under the dock where I sat.

  I moved so that I was lying prone on the dock. I eased my head and shoulders over the edge to see if I could spot the spawning bed under the dock.

  Instead, I saw a man’s hand. It was attached to an arm, which was attached to a body. The body was lying facedown in the water. It appeared to be unclothed.

  I extended my torso as far as I could over the edge of the dock and found I could reach the hand. I tugged at it, and it floated readily to me. I managed to maneuver it out from under the dock, and as it emerged, I saw that the body was clad in pajama bottoms. It wore no top. That enabled me to see clearly the bloodless, puckered tricornered wound on its neck. A leech had attached itself alongside the wound.

  I floated the body around the side of the dock to the sand beach. Then I jumped down from the dock and tugged it up out of the water. I rolled it over.

  It was Philip Rolando, recognizable even though his face had swollen and turned pasty white after his now-still heart had pumped out his lifeblood into Raven Lake.

  He wore a matching three-sided wound on the other side of his neck. Through and through from the side with an arrow.

  I noticed also that a strip of his hair was missing. His scalp was strangely white. It took me a moment to recognize what had happened.

  He had been scalped.

  I stood quickly, revulsed by the realization. I hugged myself against the shudder that shook my spine. Then I sprinted back to the lodge, went inside, and shoved open the swinging door into the kitchen. Bud and Polly and Marge were there, creating what normally would have been inspiring aromas. But this time the good smells barely registered.

  Marge turned and stared at me. “Brady, what the hell…?”

  “Where’s Tiny?”

  “He’s upstairs getting dressed.” She frowned. “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Yeah, like that,” I muttered.

  I went up the stairs and pounded on the door to Tiny’s bedroom. “Tiny, for Christ’s sake, open up.”

  It took him a moment before he pulled open the door. He stood there tucking in his shirt. His hair and beard were snarled, but he was grinning. “Hey, Brady! What’s up?”

  “Phil Rolando’s been killed.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He was floating under the dock. He’s been shot with an arrow, it looks like, and he’s been scalped. Get the damn sheriff here.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “You’re not joking, are you?” He shoved past me and bounded down the stairs. He was very nimble for a big sixty-five-year-old man. I hurried after him and caught up to him down on the beach next to Rolando’s body. Tiny was staring at it.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “What are we going to do?”

  “I already told you. Call the sheriff. Tell him someone’s been murdered and that he’ll need to bring whatever passes for a medical examiner up here. Don’t let anybody near the body. Don’t let anybody walk around out here. If I were you, I’d just tell the folks that there’s been an accident and somebody drowned. And don’t let anybody
go out on the lake. I’m sure the sheriff’ll want to talk to everybody.”

  The next couple hours were a blur for me. I watched the sun come up and burn the fog off the lake from a seat at a table by a window inside the lodge. I drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. All the others had gathered inside, as Tiny had quietly asked. The folks talked among themselves in low, grim voices. Marge came over once and sat down across from me. We shared one of my cigarettes. We didn’t talk. After a while she wandered away.

  When the sheriff pushed open the front door to the lodge, everybody turned to look at him. He was a tall, stoop-shouldered, hollow-chested man in the gray years of middle age. Behind his round wire-rimmed glasses were small, watery eyes. He had caved-in cheeks and a wide, mournful mouth.

  Tiny went to him, and the two of them muttered together in grumbly voices for several minutes. Tiny jerked his head in my direction, and the sheriff peered beady-eyed at me. Then he nodded to Tiny and came over to where I was sitting.

  “Mr. Coyne?” he said. His mouth barely moved when he spoke. He did not show his teeth.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Thurl Harris. I’m the sheriff. You prob’ly already figured that out. Can we talk?”

  “Sure.”

  We went into Tiny’s office. Harris sat behind the desk. I took the same chair I had used when Tiny and I had our discussion with Rolando.

  “So you’re a lawyer, Mr. Coyne.”

  It was a statement, not a question. I nodded.

  “From Boston, huh.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you found the body.”

  “Right.” I lit a cigarette.

  “What can you tell me about this?”

  “This is a tricky line of questioning, Sheriff.”

  He cocked his head and smiled, showing his teeth. They were terrible teeth—gapped, crooked, stained the color of tobacco juice. They were backwoods teeth. Rural, impoverished teeth. Thurl Harris’s teeth gave away his origins. “There’s no reason to try to raise my hackles, Mr. Coyne.”

  I nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s upsetting. So. Why don’t you try to tell me what you can.”

  I took a deep breath and explained to him what I’d seen.

  When I’d finished he nodded his head sympathetically. “How well did you know this Philip Rolando?”

  “Just from being up here. He was looking for his brother, Ken. You know about his brother.”

  “He’s missing. Did you talk with Rolando at all?”

  “Sure. When he got here, he wanted to know all about his brother. Tiny asked me to be there.” I lifted my hands and let them fall. “So he asked about his brother. Natural enough. And I saw him again yesterday, out in the woods.”

  “You went out with him?”

  “No. I went out by myself.” I proceeded to tell Harris what had happened at the Indian burial ground.

  “So Rolando was hiding by this dead moose, huh?”

  “Yes. And he had a gun. A Colt Python .357, he told me it was. We talked about the possibility of his brother being killed by poachers. It seemed pretty farfetched.”

  “And now this one is killed, too, with an arrow wound through the neck just like that dead old moose. What do you make out of that, Mr. Coyne?”

  I shrugged. “If it had something to do with finding that moose yesterday…”

  “Yes? What if it did?”

  “Well,” I said, “I was there, too. Do you understand?”

  He smiled. It was a quick, automatic expression, a facial shrug, without any humor in it. “I understand.” He stared at his hands, which were resting motionless on Tiny’s desk. Then he suddenly lifted his gaze to my face. “Did you kill him, Mr. Coyne?”

  “No.”

  “Who did?”

  I hesitated. I thought of the argument Woody and Rolando had had the previous evening. “I don’t know,” I said. “But you’ll hear about an argument Rolando had with the Indian guide. I can guarantee that Woody didn’t kill him.”

  “An argument, huh?”

  I nodded. “I came in on the tail end of it. Look, Sheriff. Woody’s no killer. I’m sure of that.”

  “Nobody’s a killer, Mr. Coyne.” He sighed. “It seems to me that whoever killed that moose just might’ve killed our Mr. Rolando. Wouldn’t you say so?”

  “It’s a workable hypothesis, I suppose.”

  “Of course,” continued Harris, “if someone wanted to kill Rolando, the argument with the Indian and the story of the moose might’ve been just a convenience, if you follow me.”

  “Pin it on Woody,” I said. “Sure.”

  Harris cocked his head at me. “You’re pretty sure the Indian didn’t do it, huh?”

  I nodded. “Just from knowing him.”

  “What do you make of the fact that this moose was at the Indian graveyard?”

  I shrugged. “Are you suggesting something?”

  “Another reason for the Indian to be offended, maybe.”

  “Not Woody,” I said. “That wouldn’t offend Woody.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I value your opinion,” he said. He sat forward again and peered at me. “You okay, Mr. Coyne?”

  I shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “Good. Because I need your help.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve got a trooper out there by the body. I’ve got another one out in the big room there. The coroner will be coming by jeep. Should be here in an hour or so. There’ll be some forensic guys along about then, too. In the meantime I need to talk with everybody here. I’d like for you to be present. Okay? Just so nothing comes back on us later, assuming we can come up with something. Do you follow me?”

  “Makes sense,” I said.

  “Good.” He got up and went to the door. The state trooper came over, and they whispered for a minute. Then Harris went back to his seat behind Tiny’s desk.

  And one by one he interrogated every person at Raven Lake Lodge. He had a gentle, almost apologetic way of doing it. He never raised his voice or leveled an accusation. And yet he seemed to treat every person as an equally likely suspect.

  He queried them on their whereabouts the night the moose was probably killed. He learned that anyone could have walked the hundred yards or so to where the lodge trucks were parked and driven around the lake and back without being noticed. The keys were always in the ignitions. From the lodge nobody could hear them starting up. Anybody might have killed the moose.

  But no one admitted doing that.

  He asked them where they were the night of Rolando’s murder. Some of them had been together. Most of the guests shared a cabin with at least one other person.

  The guides, except for Woody, bunked together and could account for each other’s whereabouts.

  Woody readily admitted the anger he felt at what he believed to be Rolando’s insult. He said he’d spent the evening in his cabin reading and fell asleep early. No, he didn’t recall seeing anybody after he walked away from Rolando at happy hour. He missed dinner. He often missed dinner, he said. And no, by Jesus, he said, he never killed no cow moose in the springtime, this year or any year.

  The newly married Fishers had been with each other. Mrs. Fisher blushed when Harris asked what they had been doing, and her husband’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

  The two older couples had played bridge by lantern light until midnight, when they went to bed.

  Tiny and Bud and Gib had been together until they retired.

  Polly admitted that she had seen Rolando briefly after dinner, but heedful of her mother’s feelings, she had gone to bed early. Harris queried her closely, but she didn’t have much to contribute.

  The three guys from Boston said they played poker late in the cabin they shared. They had done quite a bit of drinking, they confessed. When they finally went to bed, they slept the sleep of the drunk. No one had seen or heard anything.

  Everybody had heard Rolando and Woody argue. Although nobody reported it exactly t
he same way, all agreed that Woody had demanded an apology and had received none.

  By the time the last person had been questioned, the coroner and a gang of other policemen had arrived, and the sheriff sent them off on a variety of chores. All the guests and guides and other Raven Lake folks remained in the lodge.

  Harris sat back and sighed. “What do you think, Mr. Coyne?”

  “Anybody could have done it, really,” I said. “Some of them don’t have anybody to corroborate their story. Others—well, if it was the work of more than one person, then they could just be covering for each other. But there doesn’t seem to be anybody with a sufficient motive to kill Rolando. Hell, nobody even knew the guy. He just got here night before last.”

  “What about the Indian? He had a motive.”

  “Not a motive to kill.”

  He nodded. “What about the missing brother?”

  “Obviously he could have been killed, too.”

  “Obviously.”

  There was a knock on the door. Harris said, “Yeah? What is it?”

  A trooper pushed open the door and glanced at me. “Thurl, we’ve found something.”

  Harris said, “You can come in.”

  The trooper entered the room and stood stiffly in front of the desk. “Shut the door,” said Harris. “And sit down.”

  The trooper did as he was instructed. He was carrying something in a big red handkerchief. He put it on the desk in front of the sheriff. “We found this.”

  Harris gingerly unfolded the handkerchief. I sat forward to look. It was a hunting knife. There was blood caked on the handle. The sheriff glanced sharply up at the policeman. “Where did you find this?”

  “In the Indian’s cabin. The first place we looked. Logical, see? I mean, since the dead guy was scalped, you think about the Indian first, right?”

  Harris nodded impatiently. “Did you find anything else?”

  The trooper glanced at me and then looked at the sheriff and grinned. “Matter of fact, yeah. He had a crossbow under his bunk.”

  “Did you look in the other cabins?” I said.

  The trooper opened his mouth, but Harris quickly said, “Don’t look like there’s a need, does there?”