Hunter's Moon

by Chuck Logan

  Harry tried to see the morning in terms of a cut-and-dried legal diagram. His left hand moved to his right bicep and massaged the tender spot where the rifle had kicked into the muscle.

  Hakala steepled his thick fingers. “Bud tells me you’re his best friend. And you’re a reformed alcoholic. He discussed Chris Deucette’s drug use with you. What about his own drinking?”

  “We’re just talking? Right? Nobody has given me my rights.”

  “Relax. Look, I’ll give it to you straight. Bud’s in a sticky situation.

  When Don Karson refused to marry Bud and Jesse Deucette, I took Bud aside and told him not to do it. Hell, I tried to talk him out of shacking up with her in the first place.” Hakala sighed. “Trying to talk to the drunken millionaire who owns the county is like trying to talk to a gorilla. He does what he wants.”

  “His drinking was that obvious?” Harry asked.

  “Started to stink in the summer when he put on all that HUNTER’S MOON / 103

  weight. People would coffee up in the bait shops and talk of little else between welfare checks.” Hakala shook his head. “We knew Jesse would blow up in his face. But not…this way.”

  Harry kept his voice cautious. Let him do the leading. Don’t offer anything. “I took one look at him and decided he belonged in a treatment center.”

  Hakala came forward in his chair. He rubbed his thick palms together and lowered his voice. “I’d go discuss it with him. In fact, let me lend you a little leverage.” Hakala leaned back, resteepled his fingers. “Let’s say I’ve received a little incentive to work this out.”

  “Yeah?” said Harry.

  Hakala rotated the swivel chair to the wall and studied the autographed portrait of the governor—a fellow Iron Ranger. Then he swung back to face Harry. “If Bud agrees to go inpatient and complete a treatment program, I’d be less inclined to a grand jury. I mean, if the guy sobered up…” Hakala’s smile was an effortless blend of concern and self-interest. “And put all this behind him in the right way—you know, humble, wiser for the pain—he could get that House seat. Maybe even make a Minnesota senator someday.”

  Harry smiled. “As long as he observes a decent interval. And remembers who his friends are, huh, Hakala?” He stretched in the chair and connected the dots. Gene Houston to Bill Tully to someone in the governor’s office who made the call to Hakala. Bud and his prodigal millions were being brought back into the fold.

  Harry had committed adultery, justifiable homicide, and now he was brokering a political deal. All before lunch. It was tranquil in the office. Sitting in the eye of Hurricane Jesse.

  Hakala held up his finger. “If he won’t take a quiet vacation in a place like Hazelden, remind him that this wasn’t the first time Chris was mixed up in stolen guns and drugs. And the other time I erred on the side of leniency because Bud wanted to try straightening out the kid. That comes out, the press could blow this way up, start digging around. It could

  104 / CHUCK LOGAN

  get messy for all of us.” Hakala stressed the “us,” inclined his head back, and looked at Harry down his nose. “Oh yeah, we looked you up in the computer. You, ah, did a little time.”

  “County jail stuff, nothing serious, years ago,” Harry minimized.

  “Couple of pretty serious assault charges…”

  Harry casually opened his palm, a gesture of affirming the obvious.

  “Just as soon let all that lay.”

  “Fine.” Hakala smiled. “Then I see no reason to exacerbate the tragedy of an open-and-shut case by putting everyone through a grand jury.” His big hand waffled deftly. “You get Bud to agree and I’ll handle the vulture control with the media. Bud can take the cure and get on with his life.”

  “So you think you have a motive?”

  Hakala smiled briskly. “Do we understand each other, Harry?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Off the record?”

  “Sure.”

  Hakala rocked back in his chair. “We have Bud’s sworn statement.

  Chris said he’d never let Bud turn him in and then he shot him.

  Bud’s damn lucky to be alive. He’s got a serious powder burn on his temple where Chris missed him point-blank the first time. And we have evidence. A small drugstore and an armory turned up in Chris’s room. The guns match the serial numbers of three handguns heisted from the Ace Hardware three weeks ago.”

  Hakala shrugged. “Bud told me how he found that stuff and threatened to turn Chris in for violating the agreement we worked out the last time Chris got busted. But he was willing to give it one more try, bring you up here and do some kind of intervention. In his condition, he underestimated the kid’s capacity for violence with predictable results. This is what happens when civilians try to do the work the system is set up for.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Harry, unable to hide the skeptical edge in his voice.

  “Well,” Hakala knit his brows conscientiously, “we can’t HUNTER’S MOON / 105

  read minds. But it looks to me like Chris figured that hunting season’s a good time to kill somebody…Kinda like a war. Lots of men with lots of guns. Accidents happen.”

  Damn straight, Harry thought. Jesse, the instant bride and instant widow, might have been in line to inherit the farm; especially with a blind sheriff on the case.

  Hakala sighed and ran his fingers through his fine hair. “Well, we’ll know some more pretty soon. BCA has a gizmo that does blood analysis. We’ll see if Chris was jacked up on something—”

  “Another crazy kid hopped up on drugs, huh?” asked Harry.

  “Probably not a good idea to take a kid like that deer hunting?”

  “Up here, everybody goes hunting. Hard to sort out the crazy from the sane once they’re all dressed up in orange. Last season we had an engineer from 3M shoot three cows. Hell. We practically close the high school. Now that the mill’s shut down we got forty percent unemployed. These people live on venison most of the year.”

  Harry stood up. “I’ve got the picture. Now I’d like to go talk to Bud.”

  “Good. I’ll have Jerry run you up. Take you out through the garage. Avoid the vampires with the TV cameras out there.”

  16

  Bud wasn’t fine.

  The IV was back in his arm and his green hospital smock was pulled to the side. A glass tube stuck from his wound to drain bullion gruel into a kidney-shaped pan and his stitched lower lip looked like a gob of purple sausage with flies on it.

  But Harry wasn’t real long on sympathy at the moment. “You sorry drunk bastard,” he swore softly. “I had to hear from Karson who I just shot. The fucking sheriff’s kid.”

  “Illegitimate,” Bud mumbled. “Jesse wouldn’t marry him.”

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  “I should have known better to come up here with you when you were drinking. Randall tried to tell me.” Harry swung his head from side to side. Then he saw the stupid grin on Bud’s face. “What’s so damn funny.”

  Bud ducked his head into his shoulders and said in a tiny apologetic voice, “It’s the Dilaudid. I’m stoned.”

  “Great. Okay, look. They’re not charging me. I talked to Hakala.”

  Bud nodded with dreamy eyes. “I really messed up…So much for playing Dad. Being married. It all came apart.”

  Harry leaned down and whispered in Bud’s ear. “Not quite. The fix is in. Hakala’s been on the horn to Bill Tully down south and now he’s playing God. Here’s the deal. You agree to go to treatment.

  No grand jury poking around in your life. That giant sucking sound you hear? That’s everybody lining up to drain you dry. You owe Hakala and Tully for the rest of your life.”

  For the first time Bud noticed Harry’s face. His hand drifted up, nearly touched. “Christ, what happened?”

  “Becky clawed me up when I told them.”

  “You’ll be scarred,” said Bud. “Christ, I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this. I thought…” Bud’s voice cracked and his eyes b
rimmed with tears.

  Harry pursed his lips and looked away. That’s right, go on. Lose it on me.

  Bud sobbed and an enormous tear rolled down his cheek and trickled along the stitches on his lip. “I thought bringing you along would be good for everybody. You too. You know, if it worked out next year we could have done it again, the four of us…”

  “Four of us?”

  “You know, your boy back in Michigan—”

  “Jesus, Bud. Get a fucking grip!”

  Ashamed of his tears, Bud hid his face in his hands for a moment.

  The shudder passed. He dropped his hands and controlled his voice.

  “We’ll get through. I owe you big time. I’ll take care of you.”

  HUNTER’S MOON / 107

  “Take care of yourself,” Harry said sharply. “Did you hear anything I said?”

  “Don’t yell at me. You always yell at me.”

  He was ducking down that open elevator shaft, into the thing Harry didn’t understand. In a softer voice, Harry said, “Take Hakala’s offer. Dry out. Get divorced. Lay low in the weeds for a while. Start over.”

  Bud avoided Harry’s hard gaze.

  Harry tapped him on the shoulder. “This morning your new bride was one bullet away from probate court.”

  Bud’s peeked out nervously from a window in his fluffy Dilaudid cloud. “The thought crossed my mind.”

  “Hakala seems to have overlooked that angle—”

  “No love lost between me and the Hakalas. Family thing goes way back—”

  “Get her out of your place. Get a lawyer…”

  Bud pointed at the diamond ring that lay burning a hole in the bedside table. “She threw it away.”

  Harry wanted to grab him and shake him till his teeth rattled.

  “Goddamnit! We’re going to put you on a plane. Fly you down to Ramsey in Saint Paul. Get you in a decent hospital, out of this fucking county.”

  “Okay. I can see that. When you get back, call Linda Margoles.

  She’ll know what to do.” He smiled again and sailed away.

  “Jesus, Bud. There’s a million lawyers out there—”

  “Call her—”

  “Bullshit. You call her.” Harry picked up the phone on the bedside table and handed it to Bud. Bud shook his head and looked away.

  Harry placed the phone back on the cradle.

  Bud said, “It really happened, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it really did.”

  Bud squeezed Harry’s hand and his eyes widened into blue sau-cers. “Harry, don’t let this morning mess with your head. Maybe you should just accept it, don’t dwell on it, huh?”

  “Right. The Serenity Prayer. Accept the things we cannot change.

  Gotcha, except you gotta revise the rules a little when 108 / CHUCK LOGAN

  somebody brings live ammo to the therapy group,” said Harry.

  Bud dropped his bearded chin to his chest and stared straight ahead. Harry said, “Randall and Dorothy are flying up. I’m going back with them.”

  Bud nodded, raised a hand, and let it drop. “Talk to Hakala for me. Tell him it’s fine what he said. And thank him.” He tried to smile but all that came was a loose, watery stare.

  “Hey, Bud, who drives a green Jeep Wrangler in town?”

  “Huh?”

  “Green Jeep Wrangler.”

  “Ah, Mitch. Mike Hakala’s boy. He goes out with Becky.” The words came out softly. So many blown bubbles. Then: “Harry, you think there’s a Hell?”

  “You’re stoned, man. Just crash and we’ll get you out of here.”

  Harry squeezed Bud’s arm.

  He stepped through the curtains into the antiseptic tile emergency room but the chill on his heart told him he was standing in the shadow of sudden violent death. Maybe not Hell, Bud…but something. Love and hate were strong enough to leap across the grave.

  They canceled each other out. The last one standing walked your soul into the darkness.

  17

  Jerry, apparently under orders not to dis cuss anything with Harry, didn’t say a word round-trip. Turning onto the waterfront, they saw the mobile TV van double-parked in front of the county offices. And two print photographers with Nikons around their necks hunched at the door. They talked to an auburn-haired woman in a belted trench coat who had good legs and one of those quick faces.

  Seeing her, Jerry broke his silence and whistled. “Sherry Rawlins from Duluth. Duck your head.”

  Harry stayed low until they were in the garage and the door closed behind them. The decibel level in the sheriff’s HUNTER’S MOON / 109

  office had picked up. The TV crew was clawing for information in the lobby. Phones rang. Harried deputies scurried from room to room.

  Emery slouched against a pop machine in a pool of melted snow from his hunting boots and watched Harry and Hakala approach from different directions. Hakala, with shaving lather dotting his left ear, wore polished wingtips, a T-shirt, and his suit trousers trailed suspenders. He nodded at the men’s room.

  Emery spit his frayed toothpick on the floor and walked away.

  In the john, Harry stood over the sink and methodically cleaned the residue of crusted blood from between his knuckles and from under his fingernails. As he dried his hands, Hakala stooped to check that no one was in the toilet stalls.

  “Get an air ambulance to fly him down to Ramsey in Saint Paul,”

  said Harry.

  “Right away,” said Hakala.

  “He said to thank you.”

  Hakala cleared his throat. “I’m preparing an appropriate statement to read to the press.”

  Randall and Dorothy marched into Hakala’s office as primed and cocked as a matched set of dueling pistols.

  Dorothy hugged Harry quickly and then appraised his face with her long, cool fingers. “You talk to my dad?” she asked. Harry nodded.

  “There’s a TV crew from Duluth camped in the lobby,” said Randall. He reached over, pried the toothbrush from Harry’s fingers, and put it out of sight.

  “It’s on the wire,” said Dorothy. “I heard a report before we took off.”

  “Where’s your stuff?” Randall asked. Harry kicked his duffel bag.

  A cloud of Old Spice preceded Hakala in a suit coat and tie, hair slicked back. Harry introduced them. Hakala stooped 110 / CHUCK LOGAN

  over in manly genuflection and reconstructed his conversation with Dorothy’s father. Harry stood back while they shot the legal breeze.

  Emery filled the doorway.

  The sheriff’s face was puffy and loose, his caged eyes mainly inspected the floor, and his breath was a potpourri of mints and alcohol.

  Harry drilled Emery with a cold look. “He get off all right? No accidents?”

  “He’s en route to Saint Paul Ramsey,” said Emery tightly.

  “Will you be taking this to a grand jury?” Dorothy asked.

  Emery drew himself up, about to say something.

  “Don’t think so,” said Hakala, warning Emery with a quick glance.

  “So that’s it,” said Randall briskly.

  Harry turned to Emery. “Consider Bud and Jesse separated. Get her and her kid out of that lodge.”

  Emery lowered his eyes, his face reddened, and the veins of his neck bulged. “If that’s what Mr. Maston wants.”

  “It’s what he wants,” said Harry.

  Dorothy, a former member of the working press, planned their exit. “Is there a side door?”

  Hakala walked them past the garage to a service door. Dorothy checked out the approach and strode off. A few minutes later a Jeep Wrangler wheeled up to the door. Dorothy sat in the passenger seat.

  “Who’s the driver?” Harry asked Randall as they went out.

  “Hakala’s son. Met us at the landing strip. He’s being very helpful,”

  said Randall.

  “You’re outta here, Griffin. Sorry about all…this,” said Hakala.

  He extended his hand. “You’ve been rea
l cooperative.”

  Harry took the hearty handshake, expecting Hakala’s hand to be oily. It was hard and dry. Hakala stepped back and Emery did one of his puma-footed moves and was right in Harry’s face.

  “We’ll meet again, motherfucker,” said Emery.

  Harry met the fierce, suffering eyes without flinching, but HUNTER’S MOON / 111

  he had to pucker up to keep his spine from turning to ice and dropping through his sphincter.

  Jerry was there, summoned by the threat in Emery’s voice. Randall was right behind him. Jerry walked Emery back into the building.

  “What’s that about?” asked Randall. Harry shook his head. “Time to go,” said Randall as he opened the door of the Wrangler. Thirty yards away, a TV crew rounded the corner.

  Harry caught a flash of trim calves above slipper snow boots as the chesty lady in the trench coat stepped from behind the service door.

  “Sherry Rawlins, Duluth paper,” she said quickly. “How many shots? How many times was the kid hit?”

  Randall elbowed the reporter aside and pushed Harry into the back-seat.

  Hakala’s kid was Iron Range gut-tough in his varsity hockey jacket and scarred platinum eyebrows. He drove tight-lipped, never taking his steely eyes from his route, which avoided the front of the police station. No one spoke. Five minutes later they drove out onto a recently ploughed tarmac where a Cessna was warmed up and ready to go.

  As Harry was getting out, he put his hand on the driver’s shoulder.

  “Hey, where’s Becky…” he started to say. Mitch Hakala shook off the hand, averted his face, and stared into the ramparts of snow that lined the runway. Randall tugged Harry from the car.

  The plane taxied into the wind, took off, and gained altitude and the dollhouses of Stanley, Minnesota, and the secrets they held, pinwheeled away and Harry looked down on a rash of blaze-orange measles sprinkled through the blank tundra.

  “Wow,” said Dorothy. “What the hell did Bud get himself into?”

  “It’s seriously weird up there,” said Harry, shaking his head. “His wife could bump Kathleen Turner out of Body 112 / CHUCK LOGAN

  Heat. This clan of Finns runs the town. There’s this character named Cox who acts like he knows me.”