Starvation lake sl-1

by Bryan Gruley

  “Will do.”

  “And tell them I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For their loss, Scott.”

  I didn’t want Tillie to hear, so I went up to my apartment to call the Virginia number. It rang once then burst into the middle of a recorded announcement.

  “…located just off Route 50 in Fairfax. For directions, press one. For the pro shop-”

  I pressed zero. It rang another four times before I heard the cracked, indifferent voice of an adolescent boy.

  “Fairfax,” he squawked.

  “Hello,” I said. “What’s Fairfax?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m sorry, what’s this place I’m calling?”

  “Fairfax Ice House.”

  “You mean a rink?”

  “Uh, yeah. Can I help you?”

  “Like a hockey rink?”

  He paused, probably thinking how stupid is this guy. “Yeah, a hockey rink.”

  “When are you open?”

  “We’re open now.”

  “No, I mean, what time do you open?”

  “Seven on weekdays, six Saturdays and Sundays.”

  “So you’re open tomorrow at seven?”

  “Yeah.”

  I hung up and dialed my mother. Her answering machine picked up. Of course I could barely make out her message, but I heard enough to remind me it was her bowling day. After the beep, I said, “Mom, I’ve got to make a little trip. You might hear some things, but don’t worry, OK? I love you.”

  Back down in the newsroom, I grabbed my coat and swept past Tillie and out as if she weren’t there. After closing the front door behind me, I patted the pocket that held Perlmutter’s photograph. I was filled with a strange mixture of excitement and dread. Leo had told my mother that he did a terrible thing on that night in 1988. It was terrible, all right. Worse than if he’d just put that bullet in Blackburn’s head. But that bullet was never shot.

  Crossing Main Street, I saw two blue-and-gold state police cruisers parked front to back near the marina. The officers had their driver’s-side windows down and were talking. Instinctively, I ducked my head.

  Inside Audrey’s, Joanie was at the counter digging into a grilled Swiss on pumpernickel. Behind her hung the old photo of Audrey’s girlfriend’s uncle, the great Gordie Howe. I sat down next to her and whispered, “I’m going out of town.”

  She stopped chewing. “Now? Where?”

  “Keep it down, please,” I said. Elvis Bontrager was sitting at his usual table nearby. “Just for a couple of days. I’ve got an emergency to attend to.”

  “For the story?”

  I couldn’t tell her yet, certainly not in Audrey’s. “Sort of,” I said. “I’ll have to fill you in later. Hey, Audrey.”

  Audrey poked her head out of the back. “Hello, Gussy.”

  “Could you wrap me two tuna fish on whole wheat to go?”

  “Toasted?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Joanie grabbed my arm. “You better not be going to Detroit. You’re not going to give up your source.”

  “No. But you’ve got to take over for now. I’ve made arrangements for Traverse City to handle our copy, but I need you to get a Blackburn story in shape. It probably won’t run tomorrow, but Saturday for sure.”

  “Gus-”

  “Your best story, Joanie. Everything you know. Put it all in. File it directly to Traverse. Then I want you to call Kerasopoulos directly and tell him what you’ve filed. Make sure you get him on the phone.”

  “I’m not talking to that stiff.”

  “Just do it. Which reminds me.” I leaned closer. “See if you can find a guy named Jeff Champagne. He used to live here. Played for Blackburn with me.”

  “Champagne? Like bubbly? Where is he?”

  “Like bubbly. And I have no idea.”

  “Why do I care?”

  “Think Brendan Blake.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. And the Perlmutter story-get that ready too.”

  “Didn’t we promise him-”

  “Not a damn thing. Get it ready.”

  “What about the lawyers?”

  “Fuck the lawyers. Even if it doesn’t run, you can show it to the Chicago Tribune. A woman from there called me today. I’ll call her as soon as I get back, and I’ll say good things.”

  Joanie blushed. “Um, thanks.”

  “One more thing,” I said. “I think I know what Perlmutter was trying to tell us.”

  “Let me guess: Bigfoot killed Blackburn?”

  “There were only two bullets.”

  “I know that, Gus.”

  “No, you don’t know. There were only two bullets-the one he found in the tree, and the one in the snowmobile.”

  “What about Blackburn’s head?”

  I stood. “Write your stories. You’ll hear from me.”

  “I’d better.”

  The coming storm had turned the afternoon to dusk. The state police cruisers now were parked at either end of Main. As I crossed, exhaust plumed from the back of one car. Don’t hurry yet, I told myself.

  The bells on the door jangled as I stepped into the Pilot. Tillie was out. I turned around and reached up and tore the bells off in one staple-popping rip. I stuffed them in my pocket. At my desk I stopped for a fresh notebook and two pens. Tillie had left me another message from Trenton. URGENT, it said. I tossed it in a wastebasket on my way out the back.

  Outside, snow had begun to fall again. I tied the bells to the radio antenna on my truck, hopped in, turned the key, and swung out onto South Street toward the lake. I checked the rearview mirrors for state cops. None yet. I smiled when the truck hit a pothole and the bells jangled. I thought of the photo of Gordie Howe in Audrey’s. He was winding up to shoot on a goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens. The goalie was one of the best ever. During the 1940s, he won two Stanley Cups and made the NHL All-Star team six times. He once went 309 minutes, including four entire games, without giving up a goal. His name was William “Bill” Durnan.

  At the lake I turned left on Beach Drive. Walls of snow closed me in on both sides. I flicked my brights on. I’d hoped to get half an hour’s head start before it dawned on Superior that I hadn’t ratted my source out after all. But as the road crested just before Mom’s yellow house, headlights blinked in my rearview mirror. They were fuzzy pinpoints, probably a mile back but gaining. Passing Mom’s, I felt an urge to pull over and surrender. Instead I tapped the horn twice.

  The headlights in my rearview had closed to half a mile when I spied another pair behind them. Without slowing, I veered left onto Jitters Trail. The back of the truck fishtailed on the snow, so I gave it a little gas and it swung back straight. The road dipped and swerved to the right and I had to slow down so I wouldn’t miss the narrow opening in the trees. The two-track road burrowed through a canopy of snow-laden pines. As I slowed to turn, I saw the twin sets of headlights weaving erratically toward me. First one, then the other turned on the red-and-blue flashers. As the sirens began to wail I felt a surge of adrenaline like I’d felt a thousand times when a shooter bore down on me, alone in my goal.

  My truck crashed down to Jitters Creek, the axles hammering the ground, my head banging off the cab ceiling as I bounced along. The sirens grew louder. Just short of the creek bank, I hit the brakes, put the truck in park, and left it running. Jitters Creek flowed too fast to freeze thick. At this spot, not far from where Darlene’s bike had floated away, the water was deep enough to sink a pickup truck.

  I reached into my glove box for the roll of hockey tape I kept there. The engine revved as I taped the gas pedal as far down as it would go. I didn’t really know what I was doing; I’d seen it on TV. The grinding engine drowned out the sirens for a few seconds, but then I could hear them again, nearer still. The cops were probably having trouble getting their cars down the snowy two-track. I was hoping they’d have even more trouble getting back up.

  I should have felt desperate. I shou
ld have felt afraid. Instead I felt calm and in control. It was like my best nights in goal, when everything was chaos around me, shooters flying back and forth, the puck zipping at me from every direction, and I could slow it all down to where the skaters looked like they were running underwater and the puck grew as big as a Frisbee and no matter where I looked through the tangle of legs and arms and torsos in front of me, I could always find it and stop it. I grabbed the sandwiches off the dash, stepped out of the truck, and snatched the duffel bag I’d packed out of the flatbed. I hadn’t pictured myself leaving Starvation Lake this way. I was about to throw the truck into drive when I glimpsed Eggo on the passenger seat. The glove barely fit into the duffel bag.

  The bells jangled one last time as my truck plunged into Jitters Creek. I heard the cops screaming from up the hill, “Stop right there, you’re under arrest.” The truck listed on its left side and began to sink, burbling. The bells came unfurled and drifted away. A cop cried out, “Oh, Jesus, he’s in the river,” but by then I was scrambling down the bank with my bag under an arm, ducking beneath pine boughs for cover. I followed the bank until it swerved right. I veered left and angled my body into the hill, sidestepping upward as fast as I could in the snow. I crested a ridge atop a meadow of untrammeled snowdrifts. I had to get to the other side of the meadow and then it would be a short dash to my destination. The cops probably didn’t know these woods as well as I did, but I couldn’t take chances, so instead of crossing the meadow I skirted it to stay in the trees. On the other side I stood behind an oak and surveyed where I’d come from. There were no cops in sight, but I could see the glow of their flashers blinking against the sky.

  On the roof of Dad’s garage the tree house was invisible beneath snow. As I approached the side door, I automatically reached for my keys, but they weren’t there. They were in my truck ignition at the bottom of Jitters Creek. I grabbed the doorknob, knowing I’d locked it when I’d come to start the car on Sunday. It refused to turn. “Dumb shit,” I said aloud, and for the first time that afternoon I felt a twinge of fear. I hurried around the garage and looked back again at where I’d come from. Still nothing but trees and falling snow. “OK,” I said to myself. I snapped a branch off a dead tree and poked it through the lower left corner of the window. Delicately I brushed the glass shards away then reached in and unlocked the door.

  I raised the big garage door and climbed into the Bonneville. It started easily. In the rearview mirror I saw my escape route buried in a foot of snow. How would the Bonnie plow through that? I didn’t have time to shovel the entire driveway, but I hoped I could clear enough snow to give the Bonnie a chance. I grabbed a snow shovel hanging on a pegboard and cleared two parallel tracks extending about thirty feet from the garage. That would have to be enough.

  I tossed the duffel bag in the backseat and got back behind the steering wheel. I had to gather enough momentum before I hit the downslope so the big fat Bonnie might make it over the fifty yards to the plowed road below. And I had to do it in reverse. At least that meant the rear-drive wheels would be going down first. I slipped the car into gear and eased the back wheels out of the garage. I twisted my body around to see out the back and slammed my foot down on the accelerator.

  The Bonnie leaped out, gathering speed. Dad had told me many times that it was loaded with power, but I hadn’t really understood until now. I clung to the steering wheel to keep the car on the tracks I’d dug before it plowed into the deeper snow. The two-track dipped down and the Bonnie plunged down with it, churning snow left and right, the roof scraping against pine branches. “Come on, baby, you can do it,” I yelled. I let up a little on the accelerator, then punched it, then let up again, trying to keep the car moving without setting the wheels to spinning in the snow. Out the rear window I could see Horvath Road. The county plows had cut an opening there where the snow was shaved down to just a few inches deep. If I could just get there, I’d be out.

  “Come on!” I screamed. With twenty feet to go, I felt the left rear tire sink and grab and then spin in the snow. The Bonnie lurched out of my control and swerved left until the car was perpendicular to the two-track. I hit the brakes, rammed the gearshift into drive, and jammed the accelerator as I swung the steering wheel to the right. The Bonnie pitched forward a few feet and stopped, the left rear tire whirring.

  I was stuck.

  Leaving the car running, I stepped out and looked up and down Horvath Road, barely ten feet away. Nothing. But the cops wouldn’t be long.

  The Bonnie’s front wheels had made the snow shallower, but the left rear tire spun in the deeper stuff when I tapped the accelerator. The right rear wheel had fetched up on a bump that gave it some purchase. I’d been stuck like this before and escaped by rocking the car between drive and reverse. A push helped. But there was no one to push. I squatted next to the left tire. If I had something solid to stick beneath it, it might give me enough traction to get unstuck. On hands and knees I dug out as much snow as I could from under the stuck tire.

  I retrieved Eggo from my duffel bag. For old times’ sake I slipped my hand inside and waggled the glove as I had so many times. Then I jammed it under the tire until it was wedged tightly between rubber and packed snow. “Sorry, old pal,” I said. “One more save, OK?”

  As the Bonnie popped out onto Horvath Road, I saw my glove fly up behind the car in shreds. I thought about going back for it, but only for a second. The snow was falling harder. The road was slick. I pushed the speed to thirty-five and hung on. Whenever the Bonnie started to fishtail, I dropped my speed a little and tapped my brakes and prayed I’d stay out of a ditch.

  The quickest way out of Michigan was I-75, but the state cops would be lying for me there. I decided I’d take Old U.S. 27 as far south as I could and then wing it. The way the snow was blowing, I’d be lucky to make Ohio by 7:00 p.m. First I had to get to Old 27. I couldn’t chance Route 816, because the cops would be waiting there, too, so I figured I’d zigzag along some back roads they probably wouldn’t know. The falling snow enveloped me in a white cocoon. I pushed the Seger tape in and turned the volume up:

  Go ahead and call me yellow

  Two plus two is on my mind…

  The snow let up south of Clare. I drove all night, stopping only for gas and coffee. A little after five the next morning, I pulled the Bonnie into the snowless parking lot behind the Fairfax Ice House. The trees in Virginia were still mostly bare, but the grass was beginning to turn green. I stretched out across the enormous front seat of Dad’s dream car and fell instantly to sleep.

  twenty-nine

  The sun woke me a little after seven. The floor of the Bonnie was a mess of foam cups and cellophane wrappers. I sat up and rubbed my eyes and peered at myself in the rearview mirror. I couldn’t look much worse than anyone wandering into a rink at this hour.

  The lobby of the Fairfax Ice House was like most I’d seen. Black rubber mats covered the floor. Long benches waited for youngsters to sit and tie on their skates. The smell of popcorn lingered. To my right was a skate-rental window and hockey shop, closed at the moment, to my left a cluster of vending machines, video games, and pay phones. Facing me were two sets of double doors leading to the rink. Between the doors stood two banks of lockers, and over the lockers on the cinder-block wall hung five black-and-white photographs of people identified by name tags. Don Peacock managed the rink and Margie Peacock taught figure skating along with Kitty Petreault and Jeff Bender. Power skating was taught, appropriately enough, by Al Power. All of them wore white turtlenecks beneath purple nylon jackets.

  No photograph accompanied the sixth name tag on the wall. “Richard Blackstone. Hockey Skills Coach,” it read. I wrote it down in my notebook. On the wall next to the skate-rental window hung a bulletin board listing the week’s activities: public skating sessions, figure skating classes, hockey leagues. On this Thursday, I saw Richard Blackstone was scheduled to teach a hockey class for kids aged five to seven at eleven forty-five, and another for eight-to twelve
-year-olds at three forty-five. I wrote those down, too.

  On a traffic-choked road called Route 50, I found a banged-up old diner squatting beneath a sign that said simply, EAT. There was no egg pie on the menu, and when I asked for fried potatoes, the waitress, a tubby woman wearing a dirty yellow smock stitched with “Shirley,” said, “Don’t you want grits, sugar?” I ate them with a cheese omelet and drank coffee reading the Washington Post until 9:00 a.m.. By then I figured the Fairfax County Clerk’s Office would be open.

  The roads wound and twisted and doubled back in a bewildering asphalt pretzel. Wherever I turned, it all looked the same, clusters of townhouses squeezed between strip malls and fast-food joints and car dealerships. A perfect place to disappear.

  At the clerk’s office, I paid for copies of every document containing the name Richard Blackstone. I went through them line by line sitting in the parking lot. Now I knew where Blackstone lived and what he drove. One piece of paper linked him to Richard Ltd., the company that owned Jack Blackburn’s property near Starvation Lake. The clerk gave me directions to a nearby electronics store. There I bought a point-and-shoot camera, a video camera with a tripod and zoom lens, and a tape recorder that fit into my breast pocket. I stuffed it all in my duffel bag and headed back toward the ice rink, noticing a FedEx store along the way. At a Mobil station I filled the Bonnie’s gas tank. Inside, I bought a cap adorned with the logo for the Washington Capitals, the local pro hockey team. A bony codger in an oil-stained sweatshirt changed my five-dollar bill for quarters.

  I backed away from the gas pump and slid in next to a pay phone.

  “ Pilot. McCarthy.”

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Holy crap.” Joanie lowered her voice. “Where are you? When I got back from Audrey’s yesterday, there were four cops waiting. You didn’t give up your source, did you?”

  “Nope. What did you tell the cops?”

  “I told them to call Kerawhatshisname. What a jerk. He just called me and said he’d spike any story with the name ‘Blackburn’ in it.”