Comeback (Gun Pedersen Book 1)

by L. L. Enger

  23

  Stony Lake Community Church was located at the once-picturesque corner of First Avenue and Lake, where the city crew had recently amputated from the boulevards a total of thirteen veteran oaks stricken with wilt. The stumpage invalidated the lush postcards once produced by the Stony Chamber of Commerce, which featured a traditional brick church, grandly overfoliated in leafy oak, and the silver-lettered slogan, “We visited Stony Lake. Why don’t you?” Now, on a June day bound for an unseasonable ninety degrees, Gun sat on one of the stumps and watched well-dressed men and women file into the church. They were going to bury Tig Larson.

  “Going in, Gun? Or are you just going to flatten your ass on that stump all day?” Jack LaSalle was not dressed for a funeral. He was wearing jeans and a tight, dark blue T-shirt that outlined concrete pectorals.

  “It’ll be warm,” said Gun. “Yup, I’m going in.

  Don’t know if the good shepherd will let such a wolf as you in, though, what with such a tender flock.” He nodded at Jack’s attire.

  “He shouldn’t worry. I’m going in to pay my respects, but I can’t stay. Left a sign at the bar that says Back in Fifteen Minutes.”

  “Be nimble, Jack.”

  “Ha.”

  People were already sweating inside. The forty pews—two rows of twenty with an aisle down the center—were nearly full. Men used hankies against their brows. Women fanned themselves with blue-bound hymnals. Reverend Barr was somewhere out of sight. Tig Larson was in a closed walnut box at the altar, the coolest man in the house.

  After a wait of some twenty minutes the Reverend Barr opened a narrow door near the pulpit and ascended into it. All hankies and hymnals were quieted as he gripped the stand and glared out over the gathering. He stood stiff for a minute. Then he said, “There’s a terrible reason we’re here today.” Barr let his eyes drop to the podium. “A favored member of this body lies before you,” he said in a low, emotional tone. “And his death is one that could have—yes, should have—been prevented.”

  Gun felt something like a drop in atmospheric pressure as forty pews’ worth of bodies inhaled and held it. The barometer’s dipping, he thought. Change in the weather.

  “All of you know me,” said Barr. “You know I’m not a judgmental person. Not one to lay blame on anyone’s shoulders. The Lord is slow to anger, quick to forgive, and I try to follow His example.”

  There were nods around Gun as listeners bowed to the vinelike strength of Barr’s voice.

  “But this is needless waste, this terrible end that our

  brother Tig Larson brought upon himself. Needless. It makes me angry, and I’m going to tell you why.”

  Get to it, Gun thought.

  “Tig Larson was a brave man,” said Barr. “A brave man who stood up and looked reality straight in the face, and in turn decided to face others and tell them what he’d seen.”

  Concentration was plain in the squints of the mourners. Sweat tracked down their temples, unmopped.

  “The week before he died,” Barr said, “Tig came to my study with a problem. He said he’d been doing some research. Research into an issue that mattered to Tig in his heart of hearts.”

  Barometer’s dropping, Gun thought. Watch those clouds.

  “There was only one thing more important to our friend Tig Larson than his beloved lakes, trees, and sunshine. And that was the health and wealth and wisdom of his fellow Stony residents. As a man in a position of leadership, Tig felt it dearly every time one of our locals lost a job or missed a meal,” Barr said. He swept the pews clean with a slow staring stroke. “Our brothers in the timber business, feeling hard times. Our resorters, feeling a slowdown in the tourist trade. Tig Larson was a man of compassion, and in the end he decided to compromise one ideal—a natural paradise—to aid another—a prosperous county and community. That was the problem Tig came to me about. He was afraid of the reaction that his public support for the Loon Country development would arouse.”

  Gun felt a dribble of sweat running like an ant down his neck and reached back to dab it away. Should have dressed like Jack did, he thought, and left just as fast. Humidity’s rising.

  “And this is the part,” said Barr, “that makes me angry. It seems Tig was right to be afraid. When he came to me, I said, ‘Don’t worry, old friend, they’ll understand. You just go out there and tell them how you feel.’ And that’s what he did. Not that it was easy for him. But he made a hard and honest choice, and at the public hearing he made his voice heard. And do you know what happened then?”

  The barometer fell out of sight. Gun wondered if people were breathing.

  “I’ll tell you what happened.” Barr stood up tall in the pulpit and his sweaty face glowed like Moses’ on the mountain. “Tig went on home. He went home to take the rest of the day off, to recuperate from the meeting. And then the phone began to ring. It rang time after time, and every time Tig answered it, and every time it was a local resident, and the residents were mad because of Tig’s decision. They called him things. They called him a turncoat. They said he’d betrayed his duty!” Barr slapped the pulpit with both hands.

  Lightning and thunder, Gun thought.

  “And worst of all,” Barr went on, “they never let him explain that they were the very reasons he’d changed his mind.” Barr paused, letting the vibrations he’d produced sink into the plaster. “They were hungry, and he offered them food. They were naked, and he offered them clothing. But they rejected all, and that rejection was more than Tig could take.” Barr stopped, took out his own hanky and wiped the rage from his face.

  There it was, Gun thought. The storm, brief but effective. He relaxed in his pew and waited for the rainbow.

  It came. “I don’t know who among you made those telephone calls,” Barr said softly. “But I know this.

  When you go off to decide for yourselves what we’re to do with this poor famished paradise, you’ll be thinking of Tig Larson. I want all of you to search yourselves, and if you’re part of the problem”—he nodded almost imperceptibly at the walnut box—”then I encourage you to become part of the solution. We can never justify a man’s death, but maybe we can make it seem less tragic. We all have one vote to cast. Mine’s going for Tig Larson—one last time.” Barr was done. He bowed his head to pray.

  Gun missed the prayer. His attention was on the reverend’s bowed head, which was, as he’d noticed before, bald on top with a ring of gray all around. Before it had meant only that Barr was losing his hair. Now it reminded him of someone else. Friar Tuck. The friar.

  People lost no time in getting out of the thick church air. Gun stayed behind until the pews were empty, then walked back past the pulpit and entered Barr’s study through the narrow door.

  The reverend was leaning back in a fat leather chair, his clerical collar off, his white short-sleeve shirt open at the neck, his eyes hidden under a damp washcloth. Gun’s entry had been quiet.

  “Very nice talk, Friar Barr,” Gun said.

  Barr snatched away the cloth and jerked forward in the leather chair. “Polite to knock,” he said, with low control.

  “So you were at Larson’s home, then, right before he died,” said Gun.

  “What?”

  “When all those angry people called him up. Were you there listening, or did he just stop by here on his way to the bluff and tell you about it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Pedersen,”

  said Barr. “Tig called me up that day. I was here at the office. He told me what was happening. The next day—well, you know. You found him.”

  Gun walked over to Barr’s desk and leaned his knuckles on Barr’s Calendar of Holy Days. “Do you know what I think? I think you could fill a cathedral with the amount of crap you just unloaded out there. I think you know damn well why Larson drove over the edge,”

  Barr leaned back again, placing the tips of his fingers together in a pastoral repose. “And what about you, Pedersen? What do you know about why he went over t
he edge?”

  “I know he didn’t go home to wait on the wrathful citizenry,” Gun said. “I know he didn’t change his stand on Loon Country because he was worried about resorters. And I’ve got a very good idea about why he did it, and when I know for sure, a lot of people are going to be very disillusioned about the sacred leadership of Stony.” Gun removed his knuckles from the desk and stood straight over Barr. “Afternoon, Friar,” he said, and walked out of the study.

  “Don’t call me that,” Barr called after him, less control now in the rising voice. “The title’s Reverend. Reverend Samuel Barr!” And he sat back in the leather chair, mouth open, staring at the ceiling.

  24

  The next morning Gun rose ahead of the sun, took his swings and swim in the creamy dawn mist, then went inside and made the sort of breakfast he figured could stoke a man through difficult tasks. In a large stainless pan he dropped two chunks of smoked Virginia ham, searing their sides on high heat. When they were sizzling he cracked four eggs onto a cast-iron griddle and cooked them sunny-side up, spooning over fat from the ham. He ate the eggs soft-yoked, with slices of cracked wheat bread. Then he went out on gravel to the lake road. On Highway 71 he turned south and headed for Minneapolis.

  Rutherford’s street address was 1637 Griswold Avenue. Gun didn’t know the area, but he had a map— the one from Larson’s Buick, drip-dried, stiff and pocked but serviceable. It placed Rutherford in a residential area near the University of Minnesota. A student maybe, Gun thought. The Reverend Barr, Gun knew, had left a Twin Cities church to come to Stony, though Gun hadn’t heard why. Could be that Barr had known Rutherford there and offered his special services to Hedman as a tool against Tig Larson. Barr certainly could have been “the Friar” spoken of by the bartender at the Back Entrance—who’d know him, thirty miles south of his parish? Gun squinted his left eye against the rising sun as he drove and tried to think of other men he knew with Friar Tuck halos. There weren’t any. But then, he stayed at home a lot.

  Ninety minutes south of Stony the lakeside resorts and motels, even the mobile-home parks, began shedding their overpainted, hardscrabble siding for aged wood and cedar trim. Bay windows swelled from clean cabins. The trees grew in ranks, hand-planted, and the grass was clipped right up the bark. This was about as far as most of the city people were willing to drive on their weekends off, and the city was starting to show. Gun stopped at a small red cafe with a mug-shaped neon sign and had a cup of coffee.

  “You been in here before,” said a man with a shiny scalp. He wore a white apron with a jumping bass iron-on.

  “Nope,” said Gun.

  The man eyed him down the counter. “You used to play football,” he said.

  “Nope,” said Gun.

  “Well, shoot,” said the man, wiping a glass with an apron. “Had you pinned for the guy used to play tackle for the Lions in Dee-troit. You sure?”

  “I live up near Stony,” Gun said. “Have had a place there for a long while.”

  “Well, shoot,” said the man.

  “Sorry,” said Gun. He dropped a dollar next to the empty cup and left.

  The temperature had risen enough for Gun to be

  uncomfortable with only one window down. He leaned over and reeled open the passenger window, then upshifted and drove with the wind crackling in his ears.

  So. If Barr really was the Friar, then it made sense to guess that Larson had killed himself to avoid blackmail. Acting as matchmaker, Barr might have introduced the commissioner to Rutherford, then conspired with friendly Lyle to catch the action in a camera lens. A discreet presentation at Hedman’s lodge, complete with black-and-white glossies, could have shown Larson the grave error of his conservationist ways.

  Gun felt in his shirt pocket and came out with his tobacco pouch and papers. He spread a paper, sprinkled, and rolled a cigarette on his knee. Chances were Rutherford would have been warned—a call from good old Larry Slacker, probably, or from Reverend Barr right after Gun’s post-funeral intrusion. Damn, Gun thought. Rutherford was probably in Miami by this time. Walking the beach until the referendum was through, the land overturned, the megamall open, and the condominiums doing a pleasant trade in timesharing blue-suits. And Mazy, permanent daughter-in-law to Lyle. Gun put the cigarette in his mouth and felt in his shirt pocket. He hadn’t brought matches.

  When the sun was at the top of the sky and turning the highway to water ahead, Gun turned on the radio. A sign told him he was eighty miles from Minneapolis, near enough to pull in WCCO. The Twins were playing the Detroit Tigers, game one of a doubleheader. Herb Carneal announced the score, three to one Twins, and the inning, fourth. Gun shook his head.

  Rutherford might be gone, then. But there would have to be some evidence of a connection, if there was a connection. If Rutherford was out of town, Gun figured, he’d wait until dark and pry open a window for a look around. He may have forgotten matches, but a four-cell flashlight rode under the seat, next to the Smith & Wesson.

  Allan Anderson was pitching for the Twins. With one man out in the Tiger fifth, Anderson walked a batter, then hit another. The hometown crowd buzzed worriedly. Herb Carneal remained placid. Anderson struck out the next two batters. Gun thought about Mazy and needled the speedometer to seventy.

  Running through it in his brain, Gun couldn’t believe she was pregnant. It only magnified the reason he hadn’t wanted to believe in the marriage in the first place. Mazy had never shown any interest in Geoff. She didn’t hate him, except for a brief stretch after the camping incident. He simply had not mattered to her. He was a thing in the background, an annoyance from the past.

  Thirty miles from the Twin Cities the Tigers were batting, top of the ninth, one out. Three to two, Twins. Anderson gave up a single, then walked a man, and Kelly went to the mound. Herb Carneal announced a new pitcher, one of the Twins’ anonymous relievers. Gun smiled; he could see it as if he were there in the on-deck circle, working his hands into the handle of the bat, watching the new kid whipping in his warm-up tosses. Smelling pine tar, waiting, feeling the coolness inside. Ready. Herb Carneal gave the batter’s name and Gun listened as the first two pitches went wide. On the third pitch Gun thought swing and the batter did, sure enough, the ball snapping over the radio and into the space between left field and center. A gapper. Gun turned up the sound, two runs scoring under Herb Carneal’s dispassionate voice. Four to three, Tigers, and Gun thought: a happy ending.

  He entered Minneapolis in late afternoon and felt the temperature rise by ten degrees. The old cement towers and the wider, glass-sided new ones trapped the air and held it in the streets. Gun steered the F-150 into a vacant lot and rattled Larson’s city map across his knees.

  It took him forty minutes to locate Rutherford’s house; 1637 Griswold was large and light green and peeling, with the kind of narrow lapstrake siding preferred by the wealthy in the 1930s. It did not look wealthy now.

  The house stood next to a four-story brick building with chipboard tacked up over the windows. On its other side were tall, full trees, their lumpy trunks ringed with orange paint. The house itself was in a dark permanent shade.

  Gun street-parked directly in front of the house, behind a round-edged silver Thunderbird. If this was Rutherford’s car, he was doing all right for a student. Gun doubted that he lived alone. The place was too big. A rental probably, shared with other students. Gun squinted at the dark windows. He was right, Rutherford didn’t live alone. Gun could see the movement of several people in the low light, bodies busy with some sort of action. He couldn’t tell how many there were, and he didn’t want to speculate on what they were doing. But as he watched, a shiny surface flashed for an instant, and Gun immediately recognized it. It was the sheen of a baseball bat, still new with varnish, and it reappeared again and again, swinging downward like an axe.

  25

  The street was quiet as Gun burst from the Ford, vaulted the front end of the Thunderbird, and ran through Rutherford’s yard like it was center field.
A few steps from the door he remembered the Smith & Wesson, but he didn’t stop. If Rutherford was taking those baseball-bat blows, he needed speed before force. Then Gun was through the door and twisted screws and hinges were zinging through the darkened room, and two men in light polo shirts stood over a crumpled-up bloodied figure. Too late.

  The one holding the bat was about six-two, and spread upward from his pencil waist like an overturned volcano.

  “The door was unlocked,” he said. His voice was low and liquid, full of potential. “You didn’t have to mess it up that way.”

  Gun stood still while his eyes adjusted to the dimness. He was glad the man with the bat had spoken. It meant he was the type who liked to

  intimidate with his mouth before doing the real damage.

  Gun didn’t answer. He kept his eyes open, his hands low. He charged.

  The guy with the bat wasn’t looking for it. He had to pull back his arms for a swing, and Gun’s height and speed pushed his hurried blow too high. Gun ducked it easily and caught the man’s breastbone with a powder-keg shoulder. It broke his grip on the bat and made a loud crack in the plaster when the man hit the wall. Gun turned and looked for the other one. He was taller and leaner and took Gun more seriously. He moved on his toes like a boxer, fists making circlets in the air. Gun could hear him blowing soft jabs of air through his nose.

  Gun didn’t dance. He stood on the balls of his feet, heels a half inch from the floor, one foot slightly ahead of the other, and waited. The boxer seemed impatient. He shuffled. Gun didn’t move. The boxer’s head bobbed side to side across his shoulders, anxious. Gun could hear the first man moving now, probably groping for the bat. The boxer couldn’t wait any longer. He sent a lanky jab at Gun’s face, and Gun slapped it away with an open hand. Behind Gun the first man rummaged on the floor. The boxer feinted with his left and came in with a roundhouse right, and this time Gun did not slap the hand but caught it in his own and snapped it downward, clenching his jaw as he felt the snap of wrist bones. The boxer screamed and went to his knees. Gun released the hand.