Hunter's Moon

by Chuck Logan

  Hakala watched him closely. “So what’s your point?”

  “What happens to his estate?”

  “Arggh,” Hakala growled dubiously. “Bud has no children.

  HUNTER’S MOON / 265

  As far as I know he’s the last of the Maston line. And a decree of separation, which does not terminate a husband and a wife’s legal connection, is not a final judgment of divorce—”

  “In other words?”

  “The surviving spouse could go after the whole thing,” Hakala said. “Not only that, but the estate would be disposed in the domicile of the deceased. And since Bud has resided here for a year, has voted in a local election, banks here, has attended Don Karson’s church, and since he has assets here, the land, the lodge…” Hakala clicked his teeth. “They’d carve it up right here in the probate division of the Maston County court system. My Uncle Toyvo presiding.”

  “No grand jury. That was a slick move, Hakala. Fuck!”

  “Hey,” Hakala opened his hands reasonably. “I was trying to help the guy out, for Chrissake.”

  “Let me help you out,” said Harry. He held up his hands and framed a rectangle of air. “Lightning strikes twice in Maston County.

  Helpless widow inherits millions. Then it comes out. Helpless widow has fucked sheriff. Fucked sheriff sired her bastard kids and has a habit of shooting widow’s husbands.”

  Harry turned his back on Hakala and was going through the door when the district attorney went into a conniption:

  “You’ve been drinking and picking fights! Now you’re hallucinat-ing spurious allegations! You’re way out of line, Griffin!”

  Harry passed Mitch Hakala standing at the dispatcher’s desk in the company of a deputy with black sideburns. Morris, the tobacco-chewer, from the morning of the shooting. Mitch leaked blood from his gauze-bandaged right hand and his face was a mask of perma-frost. He stepped in Harry’s path. “Need to talk to you,” he said.

  Harry pushed by. “Later, you’re busy.”

  Mitch pulled Harry aside with surprising trained strength in his hands. “Be at the lodge. A couple hours from now. Four-thirty.”

  “Take it easy, Mitch,” said the deputy.

  266 / CHUCK LOGAN

  Ginny Hakala was on the sidewalk in front of the sheriff’s office.

  Warily she watched Harry approach. “Okay, I’m busted,” she said.

  “I combined a little business with pleasure. Actually, it was Jerry who wanted me to get next to you and I saw a way to make Jay jealous.” She shrugged sadly. “And it worked. We’re back together.”

  “You don’t look very happy about it.”

  Ginny grimaced. “Larry’s pushing for a grand jury. He wants to subpeona everybody, including me.”

  “Why you?”

  “Because he’s after Jay.” Ginny Hakala had tears in her eyes as she turned and went back into the county offices.

  Jay my ass.

  Harry let it all float, words and faces. He stood on a lip of granite overlooking Glacier Lake as the sun dipped into the tree line. But tonight he was drinking reheated black coffee from a stout stoneware cup.

  Almost time for Mitch to show up. Flashlights swung in the woods at the far end of the lake. Emery’s search party.

  The cry slid on sheets of crystalline air, eerie, echoing along the shore.

  Wolf.

  Out there hunting.

  He had to find Becky before Emery did.

  43

  Mitch Hakala steered his scrupulously waxed, olive-green Jeep Wrangler through the wreckage of the Battle of the Snowmobiles and parked, out of sight, behind the pole barn. Harry met him at the door. Mitch’s steely blue eyes bored straight ahead and beneath his blank, manfully contained adolescent fury, he looked like a very shook-up young man.

  HUNTER’S MOON / 267

  “So Ginny’s your cousin?” Harry started slowly.

  Mitch nodded stiffly. “Look at the phone book. There’s forty of us.” Inside, Mitch inspected the plume of soot over the mantel, the empty socket in the woodwork, and the scrawl of paint on the wall.

  “They really did a number on this place,” he said.

  They sat in front of the fire. Mitch slid a Lucky Strike from a steel cigarette case and lit it with tight-banded reflexes. Harry nodded at the orange stain of iodine and the bandage on Mitch’s swollen right hand.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. How’d it go with my dad?”

  “He’s hiding something.”

  “Older people get, the more they got to hide.” Mitch raised his eyes and fixed them on a spot on the balcony overlooking the main room. His eyes stayed pinned there with intense concentration for long seconds.

  “Mitch, why’d you steer me into the boy’s John?”

  “People lie about who they really are.”

  “Was Chris like that?”

  “No. Chris tried to be up-front, but they all fucked him over. He had guts, but it wasn’t the kind of guts the people in this town could understand.”

  “You’re the guy he came on to in school, aren’t you?”

  Mitch gingerly flexed his battered knuckles. “Yeah, but it wasn’t like people say. I mean, he didn’t grab my zipper or anything…”

  His eyes tightened. “We just talked.”

  “So what did you talk about?”

  Mitch shrugged. “Life. Our parents. Fantasies. He was, you know, real open…maybe too open.”

  Pain corroded Mitch’s face. Harry went to the fire, put on another log, stabbed a few times with the poker. When he turned, Mitch was watching him intensely.

  “Guess trust is hard to come by in this town,” said Harry.

  Mitch rubbed the heel of his battered right hand across his cheek, smashing a tear. “Trust is a bitch, ain’t it,” he said.

  “Whatever you got broken off in you, you might as well pull it out.”

  268 / CHUCK LOGAN

  “Yeah, well…Chris said that your fantasies are the key to your sex,” Mitch dragged on his smoke, exhaled. “He said when he jacked off he always wound up thinking of me. Then he wanted to know who I thought of…”

  Mitch bit his lip. “It was like a real serious talk we were having, so I had to tell him the truth. So I told him I thought about his…sister, Becky.”

  Harry smiled. Mistake. Mitch looked like he might break into tears. Soberly, Harry asked, “How’d he take that?”

  “Well, at first he looked hurt but then he laughed, too.” Mitch stood up and began to pace. “I felt like his older brother. I’d look out for him at school. He had a way of pissing off the other guys.

  Quick with words. But it kind of worried me, too.”

  Mitch paused in front of the fireplace.

  “Chris made me promise not to tell anybody about…” Mitch shook his head. “But I decided he needed someone to talk to. Someone older he could trust. What the hell did I know? I was a junior, he was a sophomore. I mean, he was not real strong and able to take care of himself. And he was freaked, having Sheriff Emery for his dead and being fifteen and wondering if he was, you know, a homosexual.”

  “Did Emery know any of this?”

  “Hadda hear the gossip.” Mitch allowed a tight smile. “Before they moved out, I’d be over there and Sheriff Emery would come home for dinner and Chris’d tease him about Jesse. You know, if he was so damn tough why didn’t he marry her. Sometimes Emery would look like he was about to explode inside.”

  “Did Emery ever rough him up?”

  “No. He never laid a hand on any of them, not Chris, or Becky or Jesse.” Mitch shook his head. “That’s what pissed Chris off so much. That his mom could just walk all over Emery.”

  “So who did you trust with Chris’s problem?”

  “Reverend Karson and Mr. Talme.” Mitch said sarcastically. “And I told Chris I thought he should talk to Karson.” He dropped his eyes. “Chris felt I snitched him out.”

  HUNTER’S MOON / 269

  “But Chr
is talked to Karson?”

  “Oh yeah. Hardly talked to anybody else but. And Mr. Maston, who’s into a lot of the same silly shit Karson is.”

  “What kind of shit?”

  “You know, love the trees. Clean up the lake, close the mill, put everybody out of work. Brought those weirdo city guys up here with the drums. That’s when he started doing the cyberpunk bit, the hair and the drugs. Was almost like Chris was daring Sheriff Emery to step in and straighten him out.”

  Harry thought out loud: “Sonofabitch. Would Chris try to kill Maston to get his mother and father back together?”

  “I don’t Know.” Mitch clenched his fists and winced. “There was a fight. Right in this room. Just before Maston and Jesse got married.

  My cousin Jerry got a call to come out here. There was Jesse and Jay Cox and Maston and they were trying to calm down Chris and Becky. I guess Chris was really nuts. Jerry said he had to drag Chris outside and sit him in the police car. He was yelling all this crazy shit like, how he’d tell his dad and he’d kill Maston if he married his mother.”

  “Did your dad know this?”

  “Course he knew, everybody knew.”

  Mitch lowered his eyes. “Jerry told me I’d better try and talk to Chris and Becky.” He grimaced. “Becky and I were going steady for two years and she dropped me cold. And Chris turned to stone.

  Next thing I know, Chris and Maston are getting along and Chris suddenly gets hot to go deer hunting and he’s off in the woods with the sheriff learning how to shoot.”

  Mitch rotated his eyes around the lodge. “Becky wouldn’t talk to me for a month, then the day of the shooting, I go to the hospital when I hear what happened and she comes running out and says to get her outta there.”

  “She’s talking to you now.”

  “Not really. She leaves me notes in different mailboxes. Where to meet her on the road with food. I don’t know where she’s hiding.

  She wanted me along with a rifle when she met you on the ridge and before that, on the trail out by the lake.”

  270 / CHUCK LOGAN

  He exhaled. “She wanted to see if you’d try to hurt her. She’s acting screwy. You killed Chris and she says you’re the only one she can trust. It’s driving me nuts.”

  Mitch walked to the window and pointed down the lake. “Lookit those dumb fuckers out in the dark,” he said.

  Lights, coming up the east shore of the lake.

  Mitch laughed. “They’ll never catch her. Not in these woods. She’s too damn smart for her own good, Mr. Griffin.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She saw it that morning. The whole thing between Mr. Maston and Chris. That’s why she’s hiding.”

  “What did she see?”

  Mitch’s muscular interior lines bunched with anger. “Didn’t tell me. There’s a lot she didn’t tell me. Just that she was there. She says no one can see it because it’s right in front of their noses.”

  “That’s why Emery’s looking for her.”

  Mitch heaved his shoulders. “Ask her. She’s waiting out past the cabins on the snowmobile trail. Give me five minutes with her first.”

  Harry waited on the porch, dressed for the woods, impatiently smoking a cigarette, watching the darkening space between two of the cabins where Mitch had disappeared. Mitch came jogging back, his eyes tracking, wary.

  “It ain’t good,” he said, biting his lip. “They posted some guys down on this end. The rest are making a drive along the lake. She says some of those idiots have guns, and the light’s going. She says it’s too tricky to come in right now.”

  “So let’s get her outta there.”

  “Don’t you think I tried,” said Mitch between clenched teeth, and the yardlight punched up the glaze of tears in his eyes. He glanced back toward the trees and shook his head. “She…likes it. Having everybody worry about her.”

  Without further comment, Mitch jumped into his truck and drove away with his lights off.

  HUNTER’S MOON / 271

  Trying to flush her like a deer. “Bullshit,” said Harry. He ran into the lodge, grabbed the Remington pump, and jammed the .45

  automatic in his waistband. With luck, she’d find a way to let him find her.

  44

  The bewitching hour, when the last light ink-stains into shadow and the deer start to move. It had gotten noticeably colder since Harry had begun searching.

  “Becky! I know you’re out here, goddamnit.” His harsh whisper echoed with the crunch of snow under his boots. “I won’t let them get you—”

  “You dummy, you got it upside down. You the one getting got.”

  Her voice thrilled in the twilight.

  Out there, pacing him silently in the snow. Where was she? He stopped and his breath came in bleached, shivering clouds.

  “Can I trust you, Harry?”

  “You wouldn’t send Mitch if you couldn’t.”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve seen pictures of you—”

  Pictures of me? Harry moved toward her voice. “Damnit girl, come on in. It’s freezing.”

  “Scary, too. We’re not alone out here.” She stepped onto the trail, a lithe, wraith-haired shadow with one hip thrust out and the whites of her eyes hyper-alert in the failing light. She smelled dank with sweat and kerosene fumes and she trembled violently.

  Harry removed his glove and touched her sooty face. Bits of leaves and a burr snagged in her stringy hair under a dirty wool cap. “You been out here too long. You’re suffering from exposure.”

  “No shit,” she giggled. “I been exposed to a lot.” Then she arched, her whole body acute. “Shhh. Hear that? One of them’s right up there.”

  “Who,” he whispered. “Emery? Cox?”

  She stifled a nervous giggle and for the first time she 272 / CHUCK LOGAN

  looked like a frightened trapped animal. “Mitch tell you?” she asked hesitantly.

  “He said you were out there the morning of the shooting.”

  She nodded her head vigorously and her teeth chattered. “What else did he tell you?” A branch snapped above them on the ridge.

  She shuddered and started moving, ready to run. Harry followed.

  “Look, I don’t have much time before I have to split,” she said.

  “Tell Mom not to take the money. It’s not too late if she stops the divorce.” She was scared stiff, freezing, talking crazy.

  “Becky, let me take you to Saint Paul, we’ll talk to some real cops.”

  “No. We have to do it my way or it won’t work.”

  “Fuck,” whispered Harry. “You think this is fun.”

  Her teeth flashed in her grimy match-girl face. They both cocked their ears as footsteps punched through the frozen snow up the slope. Lights bobbed in the trees up ahead. Deepening shadows closed in. The trail cut a hazy gray arc.

  He seized her arm. “You’re coming with me. I can protect you.”

  “No one can protect me the way it is now.”

  “’Nuff of this shit.” Harry tightened his grip, balanced the shotgun in his right hand, thumb off the safety.

  “No way. Ow!” she protested. No longer whispering. Their voices rang in the dark. “They’ll catch us. They’ll ask me…questions. My dad would kill me if—”

  The steps above them stopped. A blubbery whistling sound.

  “What the hell…” When he looked up, she slipped from his grasp and sprinted down the trail.

  The blowing came louder.

  “Goddamnit, Becky…” Harry ran after her.

  Crack-beoww!!! A rifle shot cracked. High.

  “Search party my ass!” he bellowed, ducking, turning to the ridge.

  Crack! Crack! The third shot clipped a piece of branch. Splinters rattled on his parka. But he fixed on the muzzle HUNTER’S MOON / 273

  flash. See you, motherfucker. Extreme range for the shotgun, up the slope. Harry aimed high. Scare ’em off. The 12 gauge boomed. A load of buckshot wapped through the upper branches where the af-te
rshadow of the muzzle flash sparkled out. He crashed into the underbrush, wracking the pump action. Boom. Boom. Boom.

  Marching fire. Still keeping it high. In the intervals between the shots he heard the buckshot thunk into trees, slap through the brush.

  A scream echoed down to him. Fear. Not of pain. Harry dropped the shotgun, yanked out the pistol, and charged up the slope, smashing through brush, chasing the tripping footfalls ahead of him.

  “Get you, you fucker!” Could see him now, a dumpy shadow waddling against a wall of snow. Pistol upraised, Harry ran down the wheezing man.

  “Oh God, oh God, please,” yelled the guy.

  Harry pushed him face first into the snow. “Fuck the ground, asshole,” snarled Harry.

  “What?” came the bewildered response.

  Harry knelt and frisked him. He’d dropped his rifle. Wasn’t carrying another weapon. “Stand up,” he ordered. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Na-Na-Norm Patton. I wa-wa-work in the Ba-ba-bank.”

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “Sa-sa-searching.”

  Harry seized him by the collar and pulled him to his feet. “Down the hill. I’m right behind you.”

  Pushing Norm Patton ahead, he retraced their footprints, retrieved Patton’s deer rifle, then his shotgun. Snowmobiles scurried loudly up the trail next to the lake. Other lights, headlights, it looked like, flashed between the cabins by the lodge. A crumpled cellophane squawk, police radio.

  Backlit by the headlights, two figures jogged toward him and his hyperventilating prisoner. Harry slid the .45 back into his belt, out of sight.

  “Griffin!” shouted Larry Emery. “Now what, you sono-fabitch!”

  Jerry Hakala’s only slightly less furious face bobbed next to the sheriff’s.

  274 / CHUCK LOGAN

  “Calm down, Larry,” yelled an indignant voice from the snowmobiles convened on the trail. Don Karson.

  “I seen her, Sheriff,” said Norm Patton. “Sh-sh-she was right down here on the trail with him.”

  “This asshole shot at me,” yelled Harry, throwing Patton’s rifle into the snow.