by Rob Brunet
“So then what?” asked Ainsley.
“When it had been quiet for a while, I crept down from the rafters and there he was. Dead.” She looked at the ground, breathed deep, then turned her eyes back to Ainsley. “I didn’t kill him, Max. Really. I just...”
She pointed at the charred ruins of what had once been Ernie’s home. “Lying there in the doorway to his home...the gun that killed him at his side. It was horrible...I think I threw up...”
Officer Ainsley shot a glance at Perko and moved his hand to his hip, reflexively, seemingly stunned to find no holster there. Linette breathed deeply, trying to regain a little composure. Perko was impressed. “So then you torched the cabin?” he asked. “Why?”
“No, I didn’t do that, either. I was freaked out, for sure, but I figured there was no way anyone could tie me to his death. I had parked down around the corner. I wanted to sneak up without that little busybody from across the street coming over to stick her nose in my business with Ernie. Besides, I’m still an officer of the court. No one’s going to blame me. Good riddance, I thought, and I just needed to get away from this place.”
“Linette, this is a real problem,” said Ainsley. “The man was burned to a crisp. The fire marshal’s report was inconclusive. With all the empty bottles lying around, everyone figured he’d gone on a tear and burned the place down himself. If someone killed him because of the money—”
He leaned back against the trunk of a massive sugar maple. “You just confessed to something. Knowledge of something at least. Accomplice, I don’t know.”
“I didn’t do anything, Max. Trespass, maybe, but the door was open, and—”
“Uh, and then the door had a dead man lying in it,” said Perko.
“You had motive. Opportunity,” the cop counted out on his fingertips.
“Max...”
“Seems you two have plenty to talk about. I guess I’ll be on my way,” Perko said. “And, Officer Ainsley—”
The cop made no move to stop him.
“—I reckon you owe me one,” Perko said.
He turned his back and marched over the hill to where he’d left his Harley. He had parked the other side of the rise, so Danny wouldn’t hear him approach. Fuck of a lot of good that had done him.
He really didn’t give a shit who had killed Ernst McCann. Except that the killer was probably the same person who had his money. Danny Grant had come here for the stash and Perko believed the thieving bastard really was as surprised as he was that the dough was gone. Still, he didn’t have a clue where to look next. All he could do was hope the punk had more ideas than he did. By now, Danny and the girl had a decent head start in the canoe. He needed to get his hands on a boat and fast.
And he still had Mongoose to worry about. He needed a new excuse to send him back here to the burnt-out cabin and the outhouse. (Jonah could freeze his ass off waiting, as far as Perko was concerned.) And how could he tell Hawk he had let Danny get away? Without the cash. One thing he knew: if the punk didn’t lead him to his money, he’d make damn sure the fucker died trying.
He climbed back on his Harley for the ride back to The Boathouse, hoping Mongoose would have relieved Terry Miner of the keys to the Sea Ray before the loudmouth drowned. He cranked the accelerator wide open and took air coming over a rise half a mile from the cabin.
And he said a prayer.
Twenty-Eight
Buzz Meckler was freaked. Rounding a blind corner less than a mile from the place in the photo, he nearly creamed some guy on a chopper. The guy’s bike slid out from under him, showering Buzz’s windshield with gravel. Like it was a normal everyday thing, the rider stood up, brushed his leather chaps and strode toward the car, stopping cold ten feet away.
“What the—” the man said.
In spite of the dramatic costume change, there was no question: Buzz was face-to-face with the dude in the bad brown suit who’d attacked him at the bus station. He started to open the car door, aching for revenge, then thought better of it when the man pulled a gun from under his leather jacket.
Buzz slammed his foot on the gas, peeling out, his door flapping shut. A crash behind him showered him in glass from the rear window.
For a second, he considered pulling a one-eighty and confronting the guy. Wasn’t that what a real hero would do? But the biker had a gun, so short of running him over, Buzz was at a loss how to deal with him. Besides, the guy was racing away from the cabin fire’s location. Who knew what dastardly deeds the outlaw might have committed? His latest victim might need Buzz’s help. There had to be a victim at the fire scene. Didn’t every scoundrel leave a trail of victims? That’s how it always worked.
Less than a minute later, Buzz narrowly missed a second head-on collision, this time with a cop car that fishtailed around a bend. His tires churned the soft shoulder. As the car blew past, he had time to see a woman in the passenger seat. She seemed to be yelling at the policeman driving. Hot pursuit! thought Buzz. We all have our roles to play.
He was shaken when he arrived at the scorched scene. He sat there wondering what to do next. His latest extra-large double-double cup of coffee had gone cold, but he drained it anyway. He got out and scanned the lot. No victims. He decided a little investigative stroll might give him some ideas. He looked at the freshly dug hole and then noticed the outhouse on the other side of the burned-out cabin. He wandered over and opened the door.
It looked clean enough.
Jonah was fit to be tied. What started out as a simple game of blow-up had become one of the longest afternoons of his life. Why the hell hadn’t Perko warned him this was going to be a bloody circus?
No sooner had he got comfortable by the shore than some scrawny bugger with a pony tail had shown up and started blabbing with Perko. Then the new guy hid himself, too, which kind of stuck in Jonah’s craw. But what did he know about professional hit men. Maybe they always worked in pairs. Besides, it wasn’t long before the guy ran from the bushes and hightailed it away on his motorbike.
Soon as the longhair disappeared, some dickwad showed up and started digging a hole in the ground. Jonah was tempted to blow him up just for practice, but he never went near the outhouse.
When Perko himself showed up again, Jonah watched in frustration as Perko held a gun on the dirt digger while the guy shoveled deeper and deeper into the ground. As impressed as Jonah was that the biker was getting the guy to dig what was starting to look like his own grave, he was pissed with being hung out to dry with the damn detonator. He crept halfway up the hill with a view to giving Perko a piece of his mind. He was almost within shouting distance when some girl came out of nowhere and the biker ended up tossed into the hole the other dude dug.
Jonah’s head was spinning. Should he give chase? Run and help Perko? Before he could make up his mind, some cop rushed in with a lady who looked like she was on her way to a wedding or something, all dressed up and such—and Jonah’d had quite enough of cops of late. He skulked back to his hidey hole, spitting curses, and watched dickwad shovel guy and the other chick make off in a canoe.
Ten minutes later Perko, the cop, and the fancy lady were all gone, too. The sun was low in the sky and it was getting darn cold.
This was not the deal he had struck.
Perko had promised it’d be quick, simple, and back to the motel for booty call. Instead, he was likely to end up with a bad case of poison ivy and a runny nose. He was about to leave when another car pulled in. At first, Jonah dismissed the new arrival as yet another clown, but then the guy stepped out of the car. He wasn’t riding a Harley and his clothes looked like they’d been picked out by his mother, but he was big enough to fit the bill and his hair, while brown, all stood up on top of his head. Besides, after barely a minute, he headed straight for the outhouse.
Jonah licked his fingers and pulled the detonator onto his lap. He stroked the wire that ran from it and watched as his target stepped into the shitter. He waited, salivating, savoring the moment, and then pressed th
e red button firmly.
And it blew.
Man, did it blow.
The shitter really was built like a rocket. Watching it lift off was like nothing Jonah had ever experienced. His chest filled with pride, and he wished his Pa were there to see it with him.
The outhouse sailed straight up and over the bushes where Jonah was hiding. It splashed down into the lake behind him and a small part of him wanted to go have a look at the damage he’d done. A far bigger part of him, however, urged him to hightail it back to Aunt Helena’s Mexican Restaurant and Motel, which is exactly what he did.
Stephanie Silver was easily the spunkiest gal Rick Stevens had met since graduating top of his class in finance and administration. She was also the hottest, by a long shot, to accept one of his oft-declined invitations to a weekend in the country. Rick had concocted an image of the perfect romantic weekend. It involved a roaring fire, hard-to-pronounce wine, and soft acoustic jazz recorded someplace warm and Latin. Unfortunately, he was woefully unprepared when Stephanie Silver said, “Sure, I’ll go. How about this Thursday?”
Since Rick had only ever dreamed about sweet romance in the boonies, and since his budget precluded either of the four-star inns still open late October in the Kawarthas, he’d done the next best thing. He’d rented a houseboat.
The last houseboat, actually, according to the grizzled rental guy who’d taken a good long look at Stephanie’s ass as she climbed aboard. The guy had chortled about being careful “not to make too many waves at anchor.” Then he’d wandered back to the marina parking lot, bouncing the keys to Rick’s freshly-leased BMW in the palm of his hand.
Stephanie told Rick overnighting in a floating trailer park special was not exactly what she called luxury or romantic.
“You heard the guy,” Rick protested. “Everything else is dry-docked. The season’s almost over. We were lucky they still had this baby on the water. Hey look, pumpkin, it’s got a space heater and everything!”
Turned out the forty-foot floater handled a little differently than your average cigarette boat. It had taken nearly two hours to fight their way four miles up the lake into the wind. At first, Rick hugged the shore for fear of open water. Twice, he crunched the pontoons onto barely submerged boulders. The sickening groan they produced was only slightly more discouraging than Stephanie’s non-stop muttering about freezing her tush off on this fisherman’s yacht.
She paced back and forth, hugging a bright purple fleece tightly around herself. Rick wore an identical jacket, having bought the pair at Walmart in a fit of ardor that morning. He hoped the fact she was still wearing hers meant they might yet cuddle by the electric fireplace when the sun went down.
He was fumbling with his iPod, looking for a little Spanish guitar, when a thunderous crash sucked the air out of the houseboat cabin.
Together, Rick and Stephanie rushed out the door to see an outhouse sail through the sky. It flew over top of them, and splashed down a few hundred feet away. As the shack fell toward the water, they listened to a non-stop stream of obscenities so blue Rick cupped his hands over Stephanie’s ears. Soft brown pellets drifted to the water, not a few of them splattering on the houseboat deck. Clods stuck to their spanking new purple fleeces.
It took a moment for Rick to comprehend he and his intended had been showered in shit.
In a bright red canoe approaching the houseboat’s stern, Danny and Judy watched the same explosion.
Judy stopped paddling, her head shaking with short jerky movements. “Paddle hard,” Danny said in a low voice. Wort cowered in the bottom of the boat.
Within a minute, they had reached the houseboat and pulled up alongside just as the motor restarted. Danny clambered onto one of the pontoons. Judy threw the bow rope around a strut.
Danny marched through the houseboat’s rear bedroom and surprised the couple huddled by the steering wheel. “Gonna make a trade,” was all he said.
“What the...? Who the hell are you?” the man said.
“I’m the guy stealing your boat. You’re the guy not putting up a fight.”
The man started to protest, but Danny grabbed his wrist and pulled one well-manicured hand behind his back. “Okay! Okay!” the guy said. “You can have the boat. Just take us to shore and—”
“You get off here,” Danny snapped.
“But, but, but I can’t swim!” the wiener whined.
“Shut it. Take your lady friend out the back. There’s a canoe there.”
The man didn’t move. He actually smiled as the woman buried her face in his chest.
“NOW. Or I’ll throw you off the damn boat and you can learn to swim on your way to shore.”
“But there was an explosion...”
“We heard screaming.” The woman started to blubber.
Danny grabbed the man’s elbow and ushered him along with the weepy woman to the back of the houseboat. Judy had already climbed on deck with Wort. She wore an apologetic half smile and shrugged a little as Danny squeezed past her with his charges. The canoe rocked and nearly overturned as he thrust them aboard. As they drifted away, facing each other, Danny heard them argue about which end of the canoe was the front. He hustled back to the captain’s chair and gave the boat full throttle. The motor roared but the craft moved near as slow as the canoe. He was pretty damn sure he could swim faster.
“Run that one by me again?” Hawk growled. “You say you had the guy in your hands and you let him run?”
Perko stood in front of the table in The Boathouse with his hands in his pockets. “Like I said, the cops showed up. Must’ve put two and two together. There was about ten of them. Lights, sirens, everything. I couldn’t very well let them take him in, could I? Haul his ass back to prison for who knows how long? Then how’d we get the money back?”
“So you let him go?”
“Uh huh.”
“With our money.”
“Well, I, uh, I didn’t...that is, he didn’t exactly have it while I was holding him.”
“What?”
“He...I was shaking him. Like this.” Perko pulled his hands from his pockets and made like he was strangling someone with his bare hands. “And then I let him go ’cause the cops came, and then, when he was running away toward the water, I saw him pick up a duffel bag. Must’ve dug it up before I got there. He had it hiding behind a tree, I guess. Took it with him in the canoe.” Perko looked at his feet.
So far, neither had said a word about Mongoose. Perko had dialed Jonah from The Boathouse parking lot before coming in, intending to tell him the deal was off, he could go play at Auntie Helena’s. Instead, Jonah told him he was already back at the hotel, and that Mongoose was splattered across the lake. “Blowed up somethin’ fierce” were his exact words. Perko had been struggling to contain his glee while Hawk interrogated him. He was so giddy he was afraid he’d mix his lies up with his exaggerations.
Hawk was saying, “No matter how the bastard got away, fact is, he’s got our money; he’s on the water; we go get it.”
“What about Mongoose?” Perko asked, figuring it was the thing to do.
“He took off back to the cabin when I showed up. Looking for you,” Hawk said. “Far as I could tell, he was on his way to crack your skull. Pissed you’d left him alone with the boat thief.”
Perko fought back a grin. “We’ll see who cracks who,” he said, trying not to sound glib. “So you gave him the green light on me?”
Hawk ignored the question.
Perko said, “The other rat. Miner what’s-his-name. Drowned?”
“Nope,” said Hawk. “Thought he might come in handy. He knows Grant. He’s tied up outside, behind the garbage bins.”
“He was bragging about some boat he could get us.”
Hawk nodded. “If the cops are swarming, we’re going to need some lead. I’ll call our guy in Bobcaygeon while you get the boat. And Perko?”
“Yeah?”
“You smell like shit.”’
Twenty-Nine
&n
bsp; “Now what?” Judy asked.
Danny looked at her, sitting with Wort on her lap. The late afternoon sun barely lit the houseboat’s cabin but still her hair kind of glowed. He felt terrible he’d dragged her into his mess.
As if she could read his mind, she said, “I’m okay with this, you know. I mean, I could do without running from the police and being chased by a biker gang. But I’m okay about stealing this boat.”
“Really?” Danny said.
“Do you have any idea how much garbage these houseboat partiers leave in the water? They’re worse than fishermen. And I swear one of their bonfires is going to burn down a forest.”
Danny nodded. Most island parties he’d been to were a potent mix of beer, sun, and motorized amusement.
“Still,” Judy said, “I wouldn’t mind knowing where we’re headed.”
“I wish to hell I could tell you,” Danny answered. He’d been scanning the shoreline for evidence of a faster boat he could steal. Even a fourteen-footer with a nine horse motor would be an improvement on this tug, but each time he spotted one, it was docked at one of the few cottages with smoke pouring out the chimney. Everywhere else he looked, the docks had been lifted, made ready for winter.
Judy set Wort on the cabin floor and came over to stand beside him at the wheel. She asked, “If you don’t know where we’re headed, then where are we going?”
He ignored her question and breathed deeply. With the window open, fresh water sprayed him each time the pontoon splashed across a big wave. He knew it should feel liberating, but all thoughts of freedom were crowded out by the fear of getting caught. Any minute now, his sorry ass could get hauled back to his prison cell. Or stuck in some less pleasant hole.
“I haven’t got a fucking clue,” he said. He shut the motor off, stepped away from the window, and slumped onto the bench. Judy followed him and draped her arm over his shoulder. It was the first friendly human touch Danny had felt since his mother had disappeared. He trembled as Judy caressed his shoulder. She gripped his bicep and gave it a little squeeze before she gently pushed him to face her.