“Do you have one for you?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I lied.
I helped Jack put it on, snugging the Velcro straps.
“Once we see something’s wrong, we call the local cops,” Jack repeated. “Right?”
“Of course. They’ll handle it. But that doesn’t mean we should take unnecessary risks.”
“Good point.”
Something about her bug spray was bugging me (heh heh), but I couldn’t figure it out. I let it go.
“According to my phone, the boat launch is on the other side of the lake. Figure fifteen minutes to get there, another fifteen to launch and get in front of Cline’s house. Try not to get into any trouble until then.”
She nodded. I raised up a palm.
“I don’t do high-fives,” Jack said, and began to walk away.
Jack never did high-fives. Just like old times, from back when we were still partners.
It felt pretty good.
“Wait,” I called after her.
She stopped and looked at me.
“At the motel, you said you were broke. So how did you buy that bug spray?”
Jack didn’t say anything.
“Wait… you stole it?”
“Ticks are gross,” she said.
“I thought you were hiding from the larceny,” I said. “What happened to being a police officer, sworn to uphold the law?”
“That’s in Chicago,” Jack said. “This is Danburn, Minnesota.”
Jack took off into the woods. I watched her go, and then I pulled back onto the road, headed for my date with death.
Seriously, there’s a lot of death coming up real soon.
I took some dirt road to its very end and found the boat launch. After a difficult three point turn that should have won me an award, I backed the boat up into the water, noting with zero interest that someone had parked a truck in the bushes. I put the van in park and took my .44 out of the holster and shoved it under the front seat, replacing it with my throwaway Arminius. Then I got out of the van and went to unhitch the trailer.
Once released, the trailer rolled into the lake on its own. I didn’t have a rope or a chain to pull it back to shore, and I yelled a couple choice curses, listening to my angry voice echo over the lake. Finally, having no alternative, I waded in after the boat, soaking myself to the waist.
Working by feel, I unhooked the boat strap from the trailer, and it floated free. Then I tugged the boat out of the trailer’s V and pulled it back to the landing, beaching the bow. It was heavier in the water than I expected.
Once on land, I untied the ratty tarp that covered the boat.
No wonder it was so freaking heavy. Laying on the floor of the boat was a dead deer.
“I just wanted a boat and now I’ve got twelve hundred pounds of venison,” I said, to no one. Or maybe I said it to the buck.
He didn’t answer.
There was blood on its chest from where the rifle got him, and a good deal of blood at the bottom of the boat. I got in with the deer, and even though it was futile, I tried to lift up the carcass.
I heaved until I saw stars and my nuts threatened to pop. The buck didn’t budge. I tried again, lifting with my legs instead of my back, and called it quits when my sides began to ache. The last thing I needed was two feet of intestines to burst through my muscle wall. I knew a guy who got a hernia like that. It was so big he could twist it around and make balloon animals.
So, literally, the buck stopped here.
Heh heh.
I climbed over him and lowered the motor into the water. Then I attached the gas tank and primed it. The sucker started right up. And, happily, the outboard was left-handed.
“Fasten your seatbelt, Bambi. And extinguish all smoking material.”
I put the motor in reverse until I cleared the trailer, then shifted into forward and headed out on the lake.
The day was gorgeous, a bright sun and a blue sky and water as calm as a drunk baby. A perfect day to take my new, stinky, dead deer buddy for a ride.
“Maybe we’ll go water skiing later,” I promised him.
He didn’t answer.
The motor on the boat was an antique eight horse power Johnson. With all the weight it had to push, our top speed was about two miles an hour. I headed toward Cline’s house, the only house on the East side of the lake. Cline had a boat attached to his pier. A nice one that I bet went faster than two miles an hour.
There weren’t many people out on the lake today. Just me and some guy in a ball cap who looked like he was fishing. I noticed he was out in front of Cline’s place. Probably found a walleye hole. If I wanted to get anything done, I’d have to wait him out or scare him off. Being an impatient man by nature, I made a beeline towards him.
When I got within yelling distance, he seemed to notice me and took off in the opposite direction. Maybe he didn’t want me to know where his secret fishing hot spot was.
“Looks like we scared him off, Bambi. Maybe it was your scent.”
Boating upwind, I couldn’t help but get a whiff of my travelling companion. He wasn’t making my mouth water for deer stew.
I opened my stakeout bag and took out my good binoculars, aiming them toward the house. As expected, a monster of a speedboat was docked at the pier. Twin engines. Full waterskiing tow package, big enough to pull seven people. I wouldn’t be able to outrun it, deer or no deer. It would have to be put out of commission if I needed to make a quick getaway.
I focused my attention on the house and saw nothing of interest. The porch was lacking in humans, and the window blinds were closed.
Was everyone gone?
I scanned the property and saw someone behind a clump of trees. He looked to be barbecuing.
Even though it was too far away to smell, my mouth started to water. After all, I never got to finish my Mickey Mouse pancake, so I’d been living on junk food for the last fifteen hours. I dug my hand in my bag, still keeping an eye on the house, and pulled out a candy bar. A very poor substitute for grilled animal flesh. I was in the process of tearing open the plastic wrapper with my teeth when I heard a noise behind me.
Using the deer for cover, I dropped behind him, rolling over on my left shoulder and digging my right hand into my holster. The Arminius came out as if greased, and I found myself having a Mexican standoff with some guy in a “Kiss My Ass” cap. It was the fisherman that I thought I’d scared off, who had rowed up to me and was now holding a sawed-off shotgun.
“Hiya, Phin,” I said. “Nice hat.”
PHIN
I lowered the Stoeger. It was Harry McGlade, the private eye I’d tried to hire a few days ago.
Small world. Made even smaller by his choice in headwear, which was exactly the same as the cap I wore.
“We’re the Kiss My Ass twins,” Harry said. “You’re my hat bro. Let’s do a selfie, hat bro.” He turned away from me and held up his cell phone, pointing it at both of us. “Want me to text it to you?”
“Later,” I said. “You want to explain the dead deer in your boat?”
“Sure thing, hat bro. I’ve never had a sibling. It’s cool.”
I thought of my brother, Hugo. McGlade was dead wrong.
I tied my bow line to his, and we spent a few minutes catching each other up on why we were both there. He was especially interested in Tucker’s recorded phone calls.
“So Garrett is the little weasel who shot up my condo.” McGlade wrinkled his nose, like he smelled something rotten. Which might have been the deer at his feet. “All this time I thought it was my phone stalker. Instead, it’s because I did a shit job tailing Eddie Cline. Eddie noticed me, then told his employee to kill me.”
“We all have our bad days,” I told him, eyeing his choice in footwear.
“Who’s my stalker then?”
I shrugged. Figuring out who was leaving McGlade death threats wasn’t on my to-do list.
“Jack’s in the woods.” I stared at the trees surrounding Cline’s ho
use.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a crush on that gal.”
“Jack?” I snorted. “Never gonna happen.”
We were quiet for a moment. Rare for McGlade.
“Still dating that doctor?” Harry eventually asked.
“Yeah.”
“Great lady. You mind if I look her up when you kick off?”
I stared at him, hard. “I’m not planning on kicking off anytime soon.”
“Fair enough, hat bro. Want to help me get this dead deer out of my boat?”
I didn’t. But from a tactical standpoint, it was a smart move. It was slowing him down, and potentially could sink him. I boarded his vessel, and with much grunting and heaving we managed to push it over the side.
The deer didn’t sink. It bobbed there, all four legs sticking straight up like posts.
“He looks so life-like in the water.” Harry said.
I climbed back into my own boat. With McGlade and Jack here, the scenario had changed. Jack wanted to call the cops. They probably wouldn’t like my idea of murdering Tucker Shears. Neither would Jack, for that matter.
I wasn’t sure what to do.
“Got anything to eat?” McGlade asked.
I reached into my duffle bag and pulled out a candy bar.
Harry frowned when I tossed it to him.
The barbecue ended, and the four guys retired to the back porch to drink a few beers. If they did have two women held captive inside, they were pretty casual about it.
Earl was starting to give me trouble again, having gobbled up the aspirin I swallowed earlier. I found the bottle and swallowed a few more, chasing them with bottled water and a candy bar. The lake had barely a ripple on it. It was quiet like it can only get in a wide open space. Not a bad silence. A comfortable one.
I spat and listened to the light echo. Then the quiet consumed again.
If I wasn’t there to kill someone, it might have been damn peaceful.
When I first got on the lake I changed locations three or four times, concerned that the guys I was watching might spot me.
But after a while it was pretty obvious that they never even looked out the window. I could have been on their porch the entire time, for all they noticed what was going on around them. Once one of them—Cline, according to McGlade’s picture—went out onto the pier to get something from the boat. He didn’t even glance my way.
Then a scream cut across the lake.
McGlade reached for his holster.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s Herbie.”
“Herbie?”
“An egret. Big, white bird, lives on the lake. The residents named him. When he squawks, it sounds like a scream.”
“Oh. Want to play I Spy?”
“No.”
“I spy something… green.”
I didn’t reply. Encouraging McGlade was unwise. The guy talked more than three other people combined.
He didn’t take my hint. “How about mental Battleship? No playing pieces, only the powers of our minds. I’ll start. A-6.”
“I don’t want to play anything, McGlade.”
“Then let’s move in closer, see if we can spot the strippers that Cline brought up.”
I considered it. “What if he didn’t bring them?”
“What are you thinking?”
Shears needed to die. It would be easier if I had help. I had to convince my new hat bro that it was in his best interests to help me, even if this wasn’t a rescue mission. “Cline and Garrett tried to kill you. Shears tried to kill me. We can’t let them walk.”
McGlade pursed his lips, apparently in thought. “You know the Confucius quote. Before you seek revenge, dig two graves.”
“Yeah. I never understood what that meant.”
“Damn. I was hoping you’d explain it to me.”
“Revenge is dangerous, so you’ll probably die too.”
“Doesn’t work. You kill the guy, he kills you at the same time, and you both conveniently fall into the graves you just dug?”
“Maybe it’s metaphoric. You can kill your enemy, but then the good in you dies.”
“So in this grave lies some asshole, and in this other grave are my morals? Do I also have a funeral for my morals? Everyone wears black and eats shitty food?”
Thinking about the quote, it really was pretty stupid.
“Who would dig a grave for their enemy anyway?” McGlade ranted on. “I hate the guy so much I’ll kill him, but here’s the courtesy of a proper burial? Let the crows eat him. Who cares?”
“Maybe it’s a karma thing. What comes around goes around.”
“Then Confucius should have said what comes around goes around.”
“Confucius also said, silence is a good friend, who never betrays.”
McGlade was quiet. Maybe the quote worked.
“Bullshit,” he eventually said. “Confucius was a dick.”
“Question still remains. Do we let these guys walk away?”
McGlade opened the candy bar I’d given him and took a bite. “Have you ever killed someone in cold blood? Not self-defense. Not in the heat of the moment. But when they were unarmed, and you were in full control of your emotions?”
Harry really got right to the point. So I answered bluntly.
“Yes,” I said.
“Was it easy?”
Easy?
Stepping on a bug is easy. But killing a man?
I grew up with violence. I used violence. I didn’t like it, but I was good at it.
Some people needed killing. There weren’t a lot of people who could do work like that.
I could.
“It was… necessary.”
“Killing Cline and Shears and McConnroy. Would you consider that necessary? Or would you be okay with sending them all to prison?”
“You sound like you don’t want to dig a grave for your morals.”
“I don’t want to dig any graves, period. Digging sucks. And I’m not ruling anything out. I believe those guys are killers. They aren’t planting pine trees because they’re nature lovers. Those are graves.”
“I thought the same thing.”
“So what’s your plan? Hang out until nighttime, break in, and slit their throats while they sleep?”
I reached into my duffle, took out the AR-7.
“I didn’t know they made rifles in a snack-size version,” Harry said.
“It’s a .22.”
“It looks like a toy. My dick is bigger than that gun.”
“Can your dick take down a deer?”
“The only way that little thing would drop a deer is if the deer let you walk up to it and put the barrel in its mouth.”
“So what was your plan? Talk the guys to death?”
“See this?” Harry pulled a gun from his shoulder holster. “I just bought it. I know; a hunk of junk, right? But it doesn’t have a history. No serial number. I got it so I could ditch it if I needed to. But now I’m looking at it, and I’m not sure what I was thinking.”
I was losing him. “They tried to kill you, Harry. You’re thinking about returning the favor.”
“There’s more to it than that. These are very bad men, Phin. They’re like a cancer on society.” He stared at his gun. “But you don’t fight cancer with more cancer.”
Maybe it was the metaphor, but that hit home for me. Who could have ever guessed that Harry McGlade would become my moral compass?
“So what is it you want to do, McGlade? There could be two women being held hostage in that house.”
“I’m going to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“Wait for Jack.” Harry leaned back and stretched out his legs. “Jack will make the right move. She always knows what to do.”
JACK
I had no idea what to do.
I moved slow and low through the woods, watching for cameras, watching for ticks, making sure I didn’t drop my camouflage binoculars and lose them forever, and by the time I
finally made it close enough to the house to see what was going on, there was nothing to see; just four guys around a BBQ grill, drinking beer and laughing. Shears and the guy wearing glasses had their shirts off. Cline and McConnroy were in bathing suits and tees. They were acting like a bunch of normal dudes, not like the Motel Mauler. No sign of any women. No indication that they were planning a double homicide. None of them were armed. Two of them didn’t even have shirts on.
From the tree line, on my belly, I studied the house. It looked secure; steel bars and security doors and more cameras. But it also looked pretty normal. Not the dungeon of depravity I’d been expecting.
I began to doubt myself. I’d called the FBI, twice, probably sounding like a paranoid hysteric, and the only immediate threat here was one of these guys drinking too much and drowning in the lake.
The shades were drawn over the windows, so I couldn’t see inside. I held my breath and listened hard but didn’t hear any screaming or cries for help.
Which left me with three choices, none of them desirable.
I could admit I was wrong, call it quits, and go home, humiliated.
I could hang out in the tick-infested forest, waiting for something to happen.
Or I could walk over there and ask these guys a few questions.
The boys had moved from the backyard to the porch, which was closer to my hiding spot. I caught snippets of conversation, and it focused on sports. Baseball, not hockey.
The threat level kept getting lower and lower, until I began to feel ridiculous crouching in the woods in Harry’s Kevlar, like some kid playing commando.
I had to go talk to them.
I considered my walkie-talkie. Tell Harry my plan?
Yes. No point in having back-up if you didn’t let them know what you were doing.
I made sure the volume was down, then pressed the send button and said, “Nothing happening here. I’m going to go talk to them. Over.”
I waited for a response. None came.
“Harry, can you read me? Over.”
Nothing.
Maybe he wasn’t in position yet? Or something happened to his radio?
I couldn’t quite see the lake from my position, so I couldn’t tell if he’d been able to launch his stolen boat. Which made my decision for me. I had to move to see if Harry was there, so I might as well talk to the boys.
Phineas Troutt Series - Three Thriller Novels (Dead On My Feet #1, Dying Breath #2, Everybody Dies #3) Page 56