Bearskin

by James A. McLaughlin

  “So we’re even?”

  Stiller shrugged, sealing their agreement. They were square when it came to knocking folks down. Until tonight, anyway. Impatient to be done with the charade, Rice stacked and lifted a ninety-pound armload of juice boxes and condensed milk and cases of assorted cans he couldn’t identify, stuff that might’ve been on the shelves since the last big flood.

  He grunted as he limped up the steps, his bruised ribs nearly shattering in protest, hoping his knee wasn’t about to give way. “But you’re mad at me because some of your dogs are still missing, and you think I shot them.”

  “You did somethin’ to ’em.”

  “No, I didn’t.” He deposited his load against the wall and straightened, promising himself not to lift anything else that heavy for a while. Stiller came in behind him with an armload of canned energy drinks. “Here’s the thing, Mr. Stiller. I like dogs, even big-ass yellow dogs that growl at me like they’re fixing to bite my leg off. I like dogs a lot better than I like people. I can’t have you all hunting on the preserve, but I don’t blame the dogs. Next time I’ll tie ’em up so they don’t run off.”

  Stiller looked away and mumbled something about how next time he’d better let them dogs be if he knew what was good for him. Rice wondered if he’d heard about the incident with the big German shepherd up on the mountain.

  “That big yellow one was your dog?”

  “Mack. He’s still missin’. Gone this long he’s dead or stole.” He didn’t show any emotion. Stiller’s heart didn’t seem to be in a confrontation about the dogs.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Rice seriously doubted anyone could have stolen that dog. Mack. Mack the scary giant mastiff. Seemed like someone would’ve called the dog catcher if they’d seen him.

  The next load Rice carried was the last of the heavy stuff, and when he came down from the loft, the shotgun had disappeared and Stiller was seated behind the counter watching the TV.

  “You got any cold beer for sale?”

  Stiller rolled his eyes, jerked his head toward the refrigerator. “No discounts, I don’t care if you helped out.”

  Rice opened the walk-in and, as usual, the door slammed shut behind him when he stepped into the cramped space. The light was dim and cold, dry air caught in his throat. All of the inventory from the coolers in the store was stacked in here along with kegs and cases of beer. The sign on the inside of the door seemed particularly appropriate today: STOP! DONT PANIC! in large clumsy letters. Underneath it read Push bolt to get out.

  On a whim he picked up a six-pack of Corona and pushed the bolt on the door with his hip. When he came out, Stiller gave him a nasty sneer—Mexican horse piss, should’ve guessed it. He rang up the purchase, and Rice was handing over a twenty when the man came out with it.

  “Your Mexican friend ever find you?”

  Finally. “Excuse me?”

  “Some old boy come around looking for you.”

  “Yeah, DeWayne mentioned that. When was this?”

  “Right after lunch, I believe.”

  “What’d he look like?” He tried to act nonchalant, laying the money on the counter.

  “Said he was your friend. Buncha tattoos on him but he dressed good, had new clothes anyway. Had a accent but not like them greasers over by Marshalton what sound like a goddamn Fritos commercial. He showed me your picture, wanted to know if I knew you, said he was your old pal from out west, passing through on business.”

  Shit. Stiller made change, and Rice fumbled two quarters. They fell to the floor and rolled in opposite directions. He squatted down to pick them up.

  “I don’t know anybody like that.”

  “Said your name was Rice Moore, not Rick Morton. He knew you lived around here, said he wanted to surprise you. Now, this fella looked to me like he was in the drug business, and I got to thinking, maybe you and him was in the same gang. Figured y’all might be looking to move into some new territory.”

  “I’m not in the drug business, Mr. Stiller.”

  Stiller was puffing up now, having some fun. “Rice Moore’s your drug name? You’re ‘White Rice,’ and your buddy is ‘Brown Rice.’”

  “It was just one guy? What did you tell him?” He was sure Stiller had gleefully sent him straight up to the preserve. Probably sitting on the porch of the lodge with an AK right now.

  “Got a dago in your gang named Rice-A-Roni?”

  Rice stared, vaguely aware the man was mocking him. He let the silence hang. A car passed by, tires swishing on the wet road. Rice listened for it to slow down but it kept going. He waited while Stiller’s playground bully belligerence spent itself.

  “Yeah, it was just him. I said I didn’t have nothing to do with no out-of-state drug dealers, and he could take his greasy Mexican ass straight back out the door. I reached under the counter here and I got my hands on the twelve-gauge so he’d know I wasn’t messing around.” Pleased with himself, Stiller leaned his head back and actually looked down his nose at Rice.

  Rice wanted to hug the unpleasant old man. He wondered what he would say if he knew how close he’d come to dying.

  “And how did he take that?”

  “Just looked at me smiling for a while—”

  Deciding whether or not to kill you, Rice thought.

  “—then he turned and walked out, drove off in a new black Tahoe with Arizona plates. When you come in I figured you wanted to make some trouble. Thought maybe your Mexican fella had got his feelings hurt.”

  Forty-Four

  He’d opened a beer before pulling away from the store, and he was seriously considering a second one now, driving on Route 608 toward the entrance to the preserve. His reloaded .45 lay on the passenger seat, but the beer was doing him more good than the pistol would. The beer was cold, as advertised. The pistol looked puny and ridiculous—he wished he had that FN SCAR he’d buried in Arizona. His eyes flicked to the rearview: nobody following. Ahead, between intermittent slashes of the windshield wipers, the road looked treacherous in the headlights, rain-smeared, pregnant with black SUVs nosing out of tree-lined driveways or gravel side roads.

  His own laugh surprised him. Fucking Agent Johns. He’d found that guy’s number on the wall of the bathroom in the Beer & Eat. Johns must’ve blown his general location weeks ago. He wondered how long the “Mexican fella” had been in the area.

  He accelerated and blew past the driveway at sixty-five, no sign of anyone waiting, hit the brakes, and screeched around the curve that came up fast, drove another mile before he turned around. Nothing out of place, nothing suspicious, no black Tahoe. He pulled up to the gate and leaned forward over the steering wheel, flicked on his high beams. The rain had slackened, but wind still gusted in the trees. Didn’t look like anyone had tried to get in. He carried the pistol with him when he opened and then closed and locked the gate, but no cars passed on the road and, when he checked with his flashlight, no tracks around the gate, no footprints, no tire tracks coming in. Of course, any tracks more than an hour old would’ve been washed away, but Rice didn’t sense any intrusion, not yet.

  The receiver on the seat startled him when he drove over the sensor, dutifully informing him of a breach in Zone One. When he came out of the forest he killed the headlights and nosed along with the running lights. Heavy rain began to fall again, and he was almost to the parking area when he simultaneously saw lights on in the lodge and the reflectors on a car parked in his usual spot.

  Lights off, ignition off, pistol in his hand, sliding out of the truck before he’d formed a conscious thought. He pushed the door closed clicking too loudly and hid behind the truck. Knelt in the wet gravel and watched. The rain ran down his neck. Nothing happened. By now he’d started wondering why an assassin would leave his car there in the open and turn lights on in the lodge, and when he crept forward he confirmed the car was Sara’s. The hood was cold. STP must have called Sara after she talked to Sheriff Walker today, might have even asked her to drive up here and check on him again.<
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  Fighting off a mental newsreel of murder and mayhem, he snuck fast up the front steps and peered through the window to the left of the door. In the great room she lay on her side on the couch under a wool blanket from the unused bedroom. As soon as he could breathe again he called her name and tapped on the glass, wondering if her timing could possibly be worse.

  “Hey, it’s me. Be right back.”

  She sat up and regarded him. Didn’t look like she’d been all the way asleep. Worried. Mad, a little.

  He waved and ran back to his truck, parked it next to the Subaru, and slid the driveway alarm into his jacket pocket. Pistol in the small of his back. When he opened the front door, Sara was still sitting on the sofa, blinking at him. He took off his jacket and hung it dripping on a peg beside the door, faking a calm he didn’t feel. He looked at his watch. Almost one thirty.

  “How long have you been here?”

  She yawned and tossed off the blanket, got her feet on the floor. “I don’t know. I got here, it was after nine I guess. Would it be intrusive if I asked where the hell you’ve been?”

  He couldn’t calm down. He felt hot, jittery.

  “No one’s showed up?” he asked.

  “No. No one ever shows up. Were you expecting someone?”

  He wasn’t sure how to answer, and before he could start, she spoke again.

  “Starr called, told me about that missing guy, the poacher. She’d talked to Sheriff Walker.”

  He nodded, glad to have something he knew how to talk about. “He’s okay. When we fought I fell down a cliff and he thought I was dead and he took off, hid out with his biker pals in Philly.”

  She looked confused but didn’t say anything. He realized he’d been speaking rapidly, and tried to slow down. There wasn’t time to talk, but he sat in a chair, left knee bouncing.

  He and Sara both looked at his knee. He tried to make it stop.

  “It all sounds kind of crazy.” He stood up again. “Look, Sara—”

  “They said his name, the guys who raped me. When they thought I was unconscious. Mirra. I must’ve thought they were saying ‘mirror’ so it seemed to be nonsense at the time. Then when Starr said it as a name it triggered these memories.” She stared at her hands, concentrating, forcing her mind back to that night without drama, without so much as an eye twitch. It made Rice feel like a coward. “I don’t think he was there, but they knew him. Mirra this, Mirra that. They were talking about him and some other guy, or guys.”

  “Okay, yeah, that makes sense.” He moved closer, sat on the edge of the coffee table, leaned forward, palms on his thighs. He couldn’t quite hold still. “Um . . . shit.” She looked at him. She’d just dropped what should’ve been an informational grenade and he knew his reaction was off.

  “A lot happened today,” he said. He knew that what he was about to tell her would be like a punch in the gut, but he didn’t have time to make it subtle. “I think I know who they are. They’re in Mirra’s motorcycle club. Not the Stillers, three guys from out of state, serious criminals. I’ll find out for sure, I promise, and we’ll do something about it.”

  Now her mouth opened but no sound came out.

  “Sara. Jesus. I’m so sorry, there’s something else.”

  Lightning flashed outside. In the pause before the thunder rolled in, he felt detached and overdramatic, like a kid who’d been talked into a role in the high school play.

  “We have to get out of here.”

  Forty-Five

  Stop.”

  He’d left her sitting on the couch while he stuffed his clothes, most of them dirty, into a trash bag, but now she stood at the bottom of the attic steps, waiting for him. He carried his heavy fireproof cash box under his arm. He made it to the bottom step before she put a hand on his chest.

  “Why is a guy coming to kill you?”

  He saw she wasn’t going to let him off the steps unless he gave her something. “You know I was in prison last year, right? My partner and I carried stuff back and forth over the border for one of the cartels. The tech jobs for the agencies were our cover, a reason to be down there. Border Patrol ignored us. One day we were supposed to meet some new clients across the border and federales arrested us, planted drugs in my pack. We’d been set up, I still don’t know why. They turned my partner over to the DEA but they hung on to me, threw me in a prison near Nogales. The cartel tried to kill me inside but it didn’t work. After I got out I took this job and disappeared.” There was a hell of a lot more to it but he hoped that would be enough.

  It seemed to make her angrier. “I thought you were just in for, I don’t know, possession or something. What stuff did you carry?”

  “They never told us what was in the bags but we figured it was mostly bulk cash, prepaid debit cards, shit like that. Drugs sometimes, going the other way. It was small-scale compared to the tunnels, the trap cars and trucks and all that.”

  “And what, you think they’re after you now?”

  “They’ve been after me all along. Now they know where I am. All that business with the sheriff, Mirra going missing. There was a DEA agent running his mouth to people in Tucson.”

  “We’ll call him, we can call Sheriff Walker.”

  Rice was shaking his head as he raised the steps and shut the trapdoor, but she’d reminded him of something. He laid the cash box by the front door next to his backpack and the big contractor’s trash bag with his clothes in it. Other than his truck, this was pretty much everything he owned. “Sheriff Walker is busy.”

  Sara followed him to the office, where he’d left STP’s camera. “What, the storm? Isn’t this more serious than the weather?”

  He suspected she was playing along, didn’t quite believe him. Probably thought he’d snapped again. He couldn’t blame her.

  “Walker isn’t ready for this sort of thing, and I don’t want to get him killed. It’s safer if we leave.” He pulled the data card from the camera and sealed it in an envelope, wrote “Sheriff Mark Walker” on the outside. Back at the front door he opened the combination lock on his box, pulled out his modest cash hoard, and stuffed it into the top pocket of his pack. He dropped the envelope inside the box and relocked it. “I’ll put this in your car, and if something happens to me—meaning I’m dead or disappeared—give it to Walker, tell him there’s important evidence inside. He’ll be able to get it open.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  He told her it had to do with the three bikers, but it was complicated. They could talk about it later. He started describing his plan: he would drive out first, she should hang back several hundred yards. Low beams only. If it was safe at the entrance he would open the gate and wait for her. The weather would give them some cover. He was making plans on the fly and he didn’t like it.

  “If something happens on the driveway, if you see lights, another car, anything—they might be waiting at the entrance—you back up, turn around, drive back here, hide somewhere you have service and call 911. Hide in the woods. They’re not going to waste time looking for you. Do you have a weapon? Besides the stun gun?”

  She nodded, but he was distracted, remembering the preserve’s .22 rifle. Better bring that. In the office he unlocked the closet, made sure the magazine was loaded. When he leaned the rifle against the wall beside the front door, Sara had disappeared.

  “We should go,” he called out.

  “Wait.” She was in his bedroom, stripping the sheets from his bed. “We can make it look like you moved out. We’ll shut off the power. You go dump everything in the fridge and the freezer into a bag, we’ll take it with.”

  “There’s no time.”

  “It’ll take five minutes. If they think you’re gone for good they’ll leave you alone.”

  No, he thought, they won’t. He won’t.

  “Go,” she said. She’d opened a drawer in the empty dresser and was folding his dirty sheets into it. “Kitchen trash, too.”

  In the pantry he pulled out another big trash bag from the r
oll and opened the refrigerator, started tossing the food he’d just bought into the bag. The storm came on with more rain, heavier than before, wind booming in the metal roof. He told himself he wasn’t just humoring Sara. That maybe she had a point.

  He carried the last bags to his truck at a run, came back up the front steps two at a time, remembering he should bar the back door when they shut off the power at the breaker box. Everything else was loaded. Sara waited for him in her blue rain shell, holding a towel to wipe up their wet boot prints on the way out. He’d just inserted the steel bar into the brackets on the back door when the voice began speaking to them from his pocket.

  “Alert, Zone One. Alert, Zone One.”

  He checked his watch while Sara looked at him, frowning.

  “What’s that?”

  Forty-Six

  They turned right just past the cabin and drove their vehicles up the fire road. Exactly eight minutes after the alarm went off, they disappeared into the forest. Rice was confident the heavy rain would hide the glow from their running lights—he’d warned Sara to keep her Subaru in the lowest gear and not to hit the brakes. He pulled off into the wet forest duff and coasted to a stop, shut off the truck, got out in his rain shell, and jogged back to Sara’s car.

  She moved her laptop bag and he sat in the front seat. He reached up to turn off the interior light so it wouldn’t come on again, laid the driveway alarm receiver on the dashboard. They drove on another hundred yards, out of sight of his truck, nosing into the thick pine saplings at the first switchback, before she shut her engine off. The darkness was total, and he felt the dense forest enclose them protectively, like coming home, giant trees thrashing in the wind, to his mind now a sound of sword-rattling. She would be safe here, so long as the storm didn’t drop a big branch on her car.

  “Do you have a signal on your phone?”

  She hit a button so the screen light illuminated. “One bar. It’s usually better than that up here. Must be the storm. You want me to try 911?”