Wolves

by Cary J. Griffith

  Standing across from Angus, he appeared to be the same height and build. But where Young had narrow shoulders and an upper body molded to the contours of his desk, Angus Moon, who spent most of his life outdoors, was weathered, compact and powerful.

  “All of them part wolf?” Young asked, distractedly.

  “Half wolf. Every one of ’em. But some of them act more wolf than others.” He nodded toward the cages and said, “Grab a couple of those pine poles. We don’t want our hands to get bit off.”

  The others watched Hal Young retrieve the poles and he and Angus inserted them into the cage’s top metal squares.

  Winthrop, Bill Grebs and Hank Gunderson looked on.

  Winthrop knew his death was an unusual accident for a man with his hunting expertise. Unusual, but not unheard of. Once the estate was settled and the insurance claim paid, they’d divvy up the shares. Williston was taking half. Under the circumstances, he considered it generous, considering the money he’d managed to squirrel away into Belize banks—client trust money he knew he would eventually be at pains to explain.

  Over the next five years the Club had planned two more deaths. Angus Moon would go missing in the wild. Angus was easy. They’d have to wait a year, settle with the insurance company for a lesser amount. But Williston knew they’d clear a million. Bill Grebs would be more difficult. But Williston Winthrop hadn’t funded Club members’ life insurance policies to assist insurance companies with their bottom lines. Only Hal Young and Hank Gunderson would be left to live out their natural lives. The Club needed contacts back on the Range. They couldn’t lose complete touch, though on paper Winthrop, Moon and Grebs would be desiccating corpses.

  Identifying his own corpse had been routine. The front half of Winthrop’s head was entirely removed. Witnesses could only identify his clothes and the shape of his body. The Coroner knew Williston well enough to recognize what was left of his white hair and the orange hunting cap’s torn away bill. The sheriff had his identification. Besides, Sheriff Dean Goddard had seen the corpse’s outfit only two days before the accident. And he recognized the weapon. What was left of his grisly countenance was the worst hunting accident any of them had ever seen. And while everyone spoke of it as an accident, Williston assumed the sheriff told the Coroner about the sheriff’s investigation into Williston’s legal practice, and that Williston knew about it. Williston Winthrop would not be the first aging lawyer to choose death over a prison cell. And truth was, they were all anxious to cover over what was left of his grisly head. And they were all thankful to be rid of him.

  Prior to staging his own death, Williston’s brief meeting with the sheriff had been necessary to find out how close the county DA was to Winthrop’s illegal activities. And he’d been damn close, closer than Williston dreamed. In his own way District Attorney Jeff Dunlap had sealed the vagrant James T. Beauregard’s untimely end. And the sheriff had been the messenger. Everything about Williston’s accident had happened perfectly. The sheriff’s relief, the intense cold, a tough hike, the black middle of the night, and the grotesque wound that made Goddard’s investigation perfunctory.

  Come Saturday Williston Winthrop would be laid to rest in the grave next to his estranged wife.

  Moon and Young placed the cage in front of the dog’s house. When the plywood was pried loose and slid away the dog was expected to leap into the cage and the wire door slam shut. When everything was in place Angus pried the plywood open. There was a low snarl.

  “Get ready to drop the door,” Angus ordered.

  Young slipped off the catch and pulled it open. In the dull light his face appeared tense and worried.

  “Ready?” Angus asked.

  Young nodded.

  Angus slid back the board and the dog charged out. Young dropped the door. The dog reached the end of the cage, spun around, and gnashed out between a thin wire square, trying to get a piece of him. Young fell back, sitting down in the snow. Angus started laughing.

  In the same way, they caged the other four dogs. They used the poles to carry them out of the woods, loading each of them onto Moon’s pickup. As they worked, the snow came down more heavily. By the time they finished, the trail was disappearing beneath a thick film of white.

  “You should go first,” Winthrop told Grebs. “Stay on the radio. You see anyone going or coming, give us a couple clicks on the CB,” Winthrop directed.

  “Sounds like a plan.” Grebs turned and started walking toward his car. He was as medium in stature as Young and Angus, but he moved with an authoritative air.

  “Angus and I will be five minutes behind you. You others follow us, but give us some time. We don’t want a caravan.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Hank Gunderson said. “Just don’t start the show without us.” He was a big man. The skin on his face and belly sagged in alcoholic puffiness. His face was clean shaven and his eyes were bloodshot. “I’ve got a hundred on the she-devil to draw first blood,” he said.

  “That’s a wager I’ll take,” Williston said. “You always pick the bitch, Hank. That big Arctic will take the lead.”

  “I guess it’ll take a hundred to see who’s right.”

  “I guess,” Williston agreed.

  “It’s turning into a pretty good night’s work for a dead man and four stiffs.” Hank smiled and turned away.

  Winthrop laughed. He and Hank had known each other since they were kids. When things were tense, Hank had a way of making him grin.

  Grebs had been gone over five minutes before Winthrop and Angus pulled out of the woodsmen’s long, narrow drive. There was nothing on the CB. Winthrop sat up, watching the snow come down more heavily. Then he motioned and Angus turned onto a side road that disappeared in a rough diagonal through the trees.

  “You checked this way out?” Winthrop asked. He peered ahead. Through the driving white they could see the snow banked high. On either side of the narrow lane their headlights flashed over a wall of winter bush and pine.

  “This morning,” Angus answered. He looked ahead and steered carefully over the ice-covered ruts. In spite of the whiskey, he drove soberly. The truck jostled and on occasion the cages in the back shifted and clanged, but the dogs were quiet now, sensing they would soon be free.

  For the remainder of the crossing they drove in silence. Winthrop was careful to stay out of sight. There was little chance anyone would be out on roads like these at this hour in the middle of a building storm, but when it came to the law, Williston took no chances.

  The days since Grebs had first found Jimbo were characterized by inspired design. The other members of the Club had quickly seen what could be done. Everyone except Young, who had reservations. But they needed Young’s insurance angle to make it work so they bullied him.

  Williston didn’t like it. They bullied Young the same way Angus forced him to help cage the dogs. Angus was reacting on an instinctual dislike for cowardice, but it was the exact thing Young needed to force his participation. Still, Young was the weakest link and Williston worried about him.

  In a few short days Williston would be buried. Into the ground with him would be laid all the unpleasantness from the investigations into his not exactly legal practice. There had been three investigations, none of which amounted to more than a mild wrist slap. The real crimes, of course, were right under their noses—three client trusts Williston had been bilking for years. That was the fourth investigation, recently begun. He needed Angus to clear up one last issue, an office fire engulfing every piece of wayward paper and incriminating computer file. All record of his clients’ trusts would go up in flames. And without evidence?

  It was a detail he had not shared with any of the Club members, because there was no need. Like the other reason for the slaughter of the calves in his barn.

  In a matter of weeks the dead Williston Winthrop would resurrect himself, someplace warm to start, one of those countries south o
f Mexico, where the dollar ran on forever and no one enquired about your past. He would miss the Range, but he’d spent time south of the border and knew there were places a man with his particular talents could thrive.

  As he looked back on it, it had been a satisfactory life. He regretted his dead wife, or perhaps more specifically the 179,000 dollars she drained from her account in the months preceding her death.

  The day Miriam died, Williston went over to her house, let himself in, located her will, and altered it, forging her signature. She was going to leave everything to the boy. It was a simple matter, changing the will. Hal Young was a notary public. Hal notarized the revised document, and pre-dated it a month before her death.

  After Miriam’s death the will was probated. There had been two enquiries; one from the sheriff and one from that bitch Diane Talbott. Talbott claimed, so Goddard told him, that Miriam said she was leaving everything to the boy. But Miriam’s notarized signature was legal proof they couldn’t refute. And where was the goddamn boy? No one had heard from him in years. Williston hoped they might bring him forward. He had a score to settle. In the end the flap over Miriam’s 11th-hour change of beneficiaries blew over like a northwestern squall.

  When Williston finally enquired about her accounts, he found out about the missing cash. Williston knew people at the bank. They’d worried about her, about her state of mind. She was frail, and withdrawing that kind of money in hundred dollar bills over the last six months of her life was worrisome. But Miriam knew Bill Radcliffe, the bank President, and convinced him it was for a variety of worthy causes, including her estranged son. Bill agreed to keep it quiet. No one at the bank said anything to anyone until she died. When Williston found out, he exploded inside Bill Radcliffe’s office like a detonated propane tank. But Radcliffe showed him the withdrawal records, everything was legal.

  In the days following Miriam’s death, he’d turned the old house inside out, searching for the cash. He assumed she’d somehow gotten it to the boy. But he’d checked with the post office, checked with all her friends. None of them remembered anything about a series of large stuffed envelopes or boxes that might be used to ship stacks of bills. Or they weren’t talking. He thought about trying to track it from the other end, going after the boy, but finally decided it would be safer to let it alone. There was still the life insurance money. And he needed her house and share of the farm, no questions asked. He and the boy had accounts to settle. But he didn’t want the insurance money or the farm to be part of them.

  If the boy had another copy of the will there could be problems. But he suspected the kid would stay away rather than risk his arrest for attempted murder. It was doubtful Williston and Grebs could make the charge stick, but the boy wasn’t stupid. A tree-hugging chickenshit, as Williston remembered; someone who wouldn’t want to risk his luck, particularly in a Northern Minnesota court. The boy was more Miriam’s son than his own. But that made it all the more likely the boy wouldn’t show his face to enter into a contest with someone he knew, one way or another, would win.

  After twenty minutes they turned onto the snow-covered ruts that took them down to Winthrop’s house and barn. The buildings were dark and barely visible through the snow. The gray outline of Grebs’s police car waited at the bottom of the drive.

  “Go around to the side door,” Winthrop ordered, pointing to where a pair of ruts disappeared behind the barn. “It’s pretty well hidden. And if wolves came that’s where they’d get in.”

  Angus backed the pickup to the side door. The intensity of the driving snow was starting to swirl around them. When they got out of the cab, Grebs appeared out of the white like an apparition.

  “Startin‘ to come down pretty heavy,” he shouted.

  “Perfect,” Williston shouted back.

  A gust of snow whipped across them in a horizontal slant.

  “Couldn’t have asked for a better storm,” Winthrop added. “An hour after we leave there won’t be anything left to track.”

  The entry to the barn had a small holding pen where the dogs were corralled. The three men worked at the back of the truck. The cages were hoisted down to the side entrance, their openings set flush to the door. The cage lids were slid away. When the barn door opened the starving animals charged into the confined darkness.

  While they worked, Gunderson, and then Young, came down the drive and made their way to the barn.

  “Better get started,” Winthrop yelled over the wind. “It’s gettin‘ pretty wild.”

  Williston led them around the barn corner, up the rise to the loft door. He was the first through the small opening. He came out above the barn floor. The rest of them followed, leaving the storm outside, shaking off the snow and cold as their eyes grew accustomed to the dark. From the loft Williston turned on a small overhead light. They could hear the dogs beneath them. They watched the vague shapes of three feeder calves jostling at the other end of the barn. The three young fatlings made worried sounds in the dark, low and plaintive.

  Williston looked down, excited by his front row seat at the timeless spectacle of predator and prey. The men stared over the edge, transfixed by the scene. Williston double checked everything, making certain there would be no doubt that the wolves forced their entry and slaughtered the animals while no one was there to prevent it. Hank Gunderson hauled up three hay bales, squaring them like park benches. “Come on, she-devil,” he called, whooping for his chosen fiend.

  The dogs were jostling in the narrow confines, anxious to be free. The five men listened to the young cattle, all less than a year old, ululating fear.

  Outside, the winter storm increased. The snow buffeted the roof and the north-facing walls. The barn blustered and creaked.

  Angus passed his tongue over his lips, contemplating the entire scene one last time. He sent a spasm of brown liquid over the loft’s edge.

  “Come on, Williston,” Grebs said. “Let ’em out.”

  Williston reached down, opening the door less than a foot before the first dog exploded through the narrow gap. Then all the dogs were through it, roving in a pack of fast-moving whines toward the cattle stalls, recalling instinctively the methods by which wolves quarry and kill.

  The Club members started yelling, cheering on the dogs they guessed would draw first blood, or deriding those who demonstrated weakness, cowering to nip and dart at bovine flanks.

  It took less than fifteen minutes for the calves to be silenced. As usual, Hank chose the bitch and chose wrong. Money changed hands and Williston suggested the rest of them get back to town. He walked with them to their cars. It was late and the storm worsened.

  As Young pushed through the howl, Hank Gunderson and Bill Grebs walked with Williston to their cars. Hank yelled above the wind. “When will they be found!?”

  “Could be as early as tomorrow,” Grebs answered, his head bowed. “If I know the sheriff he’ll have to poke his head out here once or twice. If he does it in the morning he’ll find plenty.”

  “If he doesn’t make it,” Williston yelled, “Angus can report it! He’s supposed to be taking care of them!”

  “Just make sure you make it out to the cabin,” Grebs yelled. “We don’t want the sheriff finding you.”

  “We’ll get out,” Winthrop assured. “We’ll cage ’em as soon as they’re done and get them back over to Moon’s. Worst case, we can hole up at his place till morning.”

  Gunderson nodded and turned toward his car.

  Grebs looked out to where Hank was already disappearing in the snow. They heard Young’s engine grind and start in the cold. “What was today’s price on feeder calves?” Grebs asked.

  “I don’t know what they closed at,” Winthrop yelled, a smile in his tone. “Close to a grand an animal, I’d expect.”

  “Chicken feed, considering,” Grebs smiled. “We’ll be out night after next, for the party.”

  “Just rem
ember about Miriam’s house in Defiance,” Williston reminded him.

  “I remember,” Grebs said. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

  “I’m dead and these calves have been taken by wolves in a barn. It’ll get reported. And once it does, others might decide to take advantage, now that no one’s around to watch over our things.”

  “No one’ll get into that house,” Grebs assured. “At least not without me knowing it. Meantime, need anything?”

  Winthrop thought for a moment. The snow whipped around their tiny huddle. “The check from Agriculture would be good. That, and some Cohibas,” he added, talking cigars. “They have some of those knock-offs from the Dominican down at Websters! Good as Cuban!”

  “Too early for the check!” Grebs said. “But the DNR investigation should be done. We’ve got time!” he smiled.

  Williston nodded. “That we do.” Then he looked up to consider the storm. “Better get going!”

  Grebs turned, bent into the wind, and started toward his cruiser. “The Cohibas you can count on,” he yelled behind him.

  Chapter Six

  January 30th, past midnight—on the roads outside Defiance

  Sam Rivers stopped at the snowy crossroads, trying to remember the way. The radio was playing Sheryl Crow’s “My Favorite Mistake.” His dashboard clock read 12:41.

  The previous day he had driven 17 hours, three of them white knuckled, steering slowly through two Dakota snow squalls. He’d reached Grand Forks around 9 and took another hour to find, check-in and get settled into a Super 8. Then he crossed the street to a local café for a late night dinner. He was comatose by midnight.

  Around 4 p.m. the sound of wind rattling his windows brought him awake. It wasn’t a good sign; blows like this one usually presaged storms.

  He rolled over, fell into a deep sleep, and dreamed of wolves hurtling through Northern Minnesota woods, closing in, blood in their eyes.

  Sam awoke late and spent the day at the Grand Forks public library, where he used Google Earth to take a bird’s-eye flight over his planned route. It had been 20 years since he’d returned to Defiance, and he worried the roads had changed. But from what he could tell—the images were from summer—they appeared to be the same.