The Best American Mystery Stories 2017

by John Sandford

  He frowned. “Do you think it’s a good idea to have Red involved with this? I got enough on my mind without worrying about Red.” Hank’s eyes had been hungry for Red for as far back as he could remember.

  “She’s here because she’s a cop with a special relationship with Lee, just like you. She could come in handy, help talk him out maybe. She’s steady. You know that.” He eyed Hank. “Make sense?” Hank nodded grudgingly.

  The puddles of blood on the Yamaha were baked black like tar. Frenchie laid a big hand on a Mud Wolf tire. “How’s it work that the mess in Iraq kills the Zuckerman kid here on the beach? Man, that’s the long way around.” But they all knew how it worked. You trip and fall in Iraq and hit the ground in Michigan. Or anywhere.

  “Thanks for coming, Hank,” Red said.

  “Hey, Red,” Hank said. He grinned and in a herky-jerky dance shed his cargo shorts. “Damned if I won’t get something good out of this trip. Be right back.”

  In his navy boxers he charged into the gently rolling surf. Home was not people to Hank. Home was a place. This place. Woven into the fabric of his childhood. He was home.

  He high-stepped a few yards, then dived into the shockingly cold water. Breaking the surface with a gasp and a whoop, he lay still, floating like mercury in space with his face toward the icy bottom, his back absorbing the friendly warmth of the sun.

  Hank was a superb athlete. He had reached his height of six foot three while still in high school. At 190 pounds he was fast, rangy, and strong. He and Lee, under Frenchie’s tutelage, had honed their considerable genetic gifts to become small-town sports phenoms, as close as you can get to canonization. Everybody knew the guy who caught forty-yard passes that beat the bigger schools from down south. Passes that came from Lee Weir.

  The athletic prowess of the two boys brought them to the attention of Frenchie Skiba. He brought them stability, affection, and discipline. They brought him championships.

  Hank kept swimming straight out until his veins opened up. On the job, over time, his veins collapsed. Oh, he stayed gym-rat fit. But his standards were higher: boot-camp hard, survival-training hard. What the world throws at you doesn’t get thrown at you in a gym.

  Chest heaving, tiring a little, he stopped his machinelike strokes about a quarter mile out. He was completely relaxed, a natural part of the spectacular panorama around him. Returning to shore was a frolic. Diving here and there, holding his breath as long as he could. Close to shore, where the water was shallow and warm, he flopped on his belly, crawling with his fingertips and letting the little waves nudge him along.

  He staggered up the beach, fatigue from the long drive and hard swim coursing through him. He dropped on his back, making an angel in the hot sugar sand.

  Red and Frenchie were smiling. It was quintessentially the Hank they used to know.

  “Feel better?” Frenchie asked.

  “Much.”

  “Your secret playground is now a crime scene.”

  Hank sighed and rose to his elbows, surveying the quiet blue bay. “Yeah. Can’t believe it. So what are you thinking, Coach? What’s the plan?”

  “That you search alone, but keep Red close. Whether you use her or not is your call, but communicate through her. She’ll communicate with the rest of us. She knows all the contacts we might need. We’ll try to keep the place locked down for however long you say.”

  Hank recognized that it was a good approach, using Red to handle the problem of his being an outsider. “If I don’t catch him or cut a hot trail in three days then I don’t have an edge and I’m gone,” Hank said. “I won’t hang around for the tally-ho enterprise, thank you very much.”

  “Can’t keep the lid on this much longer than three days anyway,” Frenchie said.

  “I thought I’d take Potawatomi Trail and camp tonight at South Point. Start out first light. Red can drop off at Pewabic on the way there.” Negwegon had four pocket parks along its shoreline, all consisting of a small open beach, picnic table, privy, and firepit: Pewabic, Blue Bell, Twin Pines, and South Point.

  “I got a two-seventy with a big Zeiss in the prowler if you want it.”

  Hank considered. The moment was like so many that had occurred in the last decade. Utterly incredible. Four-ton Humvees tossed in the air like toys. Half-conscious terrified souls getting their heads sawed off in front of cameras. Endless streams of impoverished refugees. Now, here, take this rifle son and go shoot the guy who used to be your best friend and by the way since you’ve been gone your house is only worth half of what it used to be.

  “I’m not here to be a sniper. I’m here to try up close and personal. Putting one into him at three hundred yards is a job for someone else.”

  “Lee is not a job,” Red said.

  Frenchie looked hard at her. “Take a knee,” he said. Without hesitation Red dropped to a knee. Hank pulled himself up from the sand and took a knee beside her. It was a familiar position for them and they couldn’t help exchanging a smothered smile at Frenchie’s unique mixture of coaching style and law-enforcement leadership. He didn’t look particularly impressive standing there in his Little League outfit.

  “Feel kind of awkward,” Hank said. “I’m the only one not in uniform.”

  Frenchie ignored him. “You said Lee’s not a job. You’re wrong. That’s exactly what he is. You’re not here because you’re friends of his. You’re here because you’re cops, cops who have an advantage that just happens to be friendship.

  “A good argument could be made that you’re exactly the wrong people to do this job—too close to the perp. Judgment will be for shit. But I figure my job is to minimize bloodshed and you two have the best chance of doing that. I won’t have this command for long. Crime’s too big. If I have to bring in the pack, my jurisdiction will be the smallest and they’ll take command away from me in a heartbeat. This is my only chance to do the job my way . . . and you’re the best tools I’ve got. The goal here is to avoid a manhunt that could become a shootout. The goal here is to protect yourselves. The goal here is not, I repeat, not, to protect Lee. The goal is to get Lee.

  “Time to imagine,” he said. “Time to imagine.” He let the words hang in the air.

  Red and Hank recognized the introduction. It was the visualization exercise. See yourself launch the three-pointer from the cheap seats and hear the swish as the buzzer sounds. See the pigskin drop from the sky into your hands as you outjump the defensive back and cross the goal line as time expires. See success in your mind and then go make it happen. It won’t be a surprise. It will be an expectation.

  “See yourself killing Lee,” Frenchie said softly. He waited a moment. “See yourself killing Lee. If you can’t, go home, because for all we know he’ll kill us all if he gets the chance.” Hank and Red remained where they were. Frenchie left in his prowler.

  They unloaded Hank’s Jeep, lashing the kayak, a few supplies, and Red’s backpack to a two-wheel cart. They didn’t talk. They were thinking about what Frenchie had said. They headed out on the northern branch of Potawatomi Trail, which started at the end of the parking lot. There could be no awkwardness between them. They had grown up together, been through too much, most of it filled with extraordinarily fine moments.

  “Life used to be simple,” Red finally said. “Used to be Lee’s biggest concern was whether he’d work in the lab or in the field and my biggest concern was how many kids we’d have.”

  “Life was never simple,” Hank said. “We were. Young, simple, and having a hell of a good time.”

  “We’re not young anymore?”

  Hank patted her shoulder. “Haven’t been young for a while now.” Hank had never touched Red, never made a move. Would have blown their wonderful triangular friendship sky-high. Fortunately, he’d always had girlfriends around to take the edge off.

  They continued walking down the sun-splashed trail, the cart an easy pull. It dawned on Hank that Lee could be around anywhere. Maybe even near this trail. He began looking around more warily,
watching for signs of movement in the woods or unusual shapes. He did that for a while and stopped in his tracks.

  “There’s something screwy about the woods,” he said. “Looks different somehow. What am I missing?”

  “Look at the ash,” Red said.

  Hank picked out a tall ash among the oak and maple and birch and pine and spruce. Its normally dark bark was mottled with tan streaks and large tan areas that looked like rub marks. He looked at other ash. Their dark bark was also mottled in various degrees, and he noticed that some branches were entirely without leaves.

  “What is that?”

  “Emerald ash borer. Invasive species from Asia. It’s killing all the ash in the park. If we were in one of the ash swamps, you’d have noticed right away. All those trees are dead already.”

  “Jesus, if Lee’s been wandering around through all these dying trees, maybe we can lure him out with Prozac. Red, did Frenchie give you any tips about how to handle this thing?”

  “Yes. He said not to take any chances with Lee and not to take any chances with you.” She cast him a sideways smile.

  Hank laughed. Shit, he’d probably always been an open book to Frenchie and Red. “So what’s your take on this? Frenchie’s sure Lee did it. Are you?”

  They walked a bit. Red said, “I would have killed that kid myself if I saw him tearing up our beach with that rig.”

  “Amen,” Hank said, glancing at her. The black-red hair against her fair skin always got to him, as did the memory of watching those smooth slabs of muscle at work in basketball and volleyball games. What a specimen she was. Some women are the flame and you rail against being the moth but you never quite make it.

  “I made a big mistake,” Red said. “You know how pissed I was at you guys for enlisting. Both of you. You acted like it was a lark, just another sport to go be heroes at. But I had watched my dad walking home from Vietnam all his life. He never made it, so my mom and I didn’t make it either. I didn’t want Lee to bring that kind of life home to us.”

  Which is exactly what happened to a lot of vets, Hank thought. Christ, how many times do we have to see this movie?

  “When he got back I wanted to punish him. I always intended to go back to him. Just couldn’t bring myself to act like nothing happened. So I froze him out for about six months. By the time I tried to make up, he was way weird. Dancin’ with himself. No room for a partner.”

  “As a general rule, vets don’t need any more punishment than they already got.”

  “I know that now. I shouldn’t have done it. Lee and a family was all I ever wanted.”

  “So what’d you do finally?”

  “Tried seeing him for a few months. Mostly couldn’t find him or we’d go out and he would immediately get drunk. Couldn’t get a fix on him. Last time I talked with him he was nowhere to be found. Started dating a little.”

  “What was that like?”

  “Like meeting strangers with problems they wanted to make mine.” She shook her head. “Why on earth did he reenlist? Why didn’t he get out when you did?”

  “Don’t know. Never figured it out. Might have got hooked on war-think—it’s like a drug. Or might have believed in it. They’re not the same things. Some guys couldn’t care less about the mission, they just crave the action.”

  “What are you going to do if you find him?”

  “Try talking sense to him. Of course, he might be short on sense. Way I see it, he doesn’t have any real options. Can’t play Master of Negwegon forever. He must know that. If that doesn’t work, I’ll just have to wing it.” He thought about some of the vets he had counseled. Good days, bad days. Catch them on a good day, everything’s cool. Catch them on a bad day—way, way past common sense.

  Red looked like she was tearing up. A small sob slipped out, but she kept striding straight ahead. No Jody had warmed her bed while Lee was away or since he came home. She loved Lee, always had. She gripped Hank’s arm hard. “You know he’d never hurt you.”

  “Right,” Hank said. “I wonder if that’s what the kid on the Yamaha thought.”

  When they reached Pewabic, Hank gave Red a hug and said he’d call a couple of times a day. He lugged the kayak the remaining mile to South Point, crossing a little bog with planks for steps and his favorite cedar-lined meadow. Alone on Potawatomi Trail a feeling was creeping up that was not much different from the ice in his gut when he was driving a Humvee down a dirty street in Fallujah.

  Hank was tired and didn’t bother organizing his little camp. He tossed his mummylike sleeping bag on top of the picnic table, curled up in it, and was out.

  He awakened in the cool predawn mist and put his hunch into action. He carried his weathered Necky across the marshy fringe of South Point, a rocky finger that jutted out into Thunder Bay. When the marsh gave way to calf-deep water and tall green reeds, he slipped into the boat, using the light, double-bladed graphite paddle to push himself along. He positioned himself at the end of the point but remained a few yards back in the marsh to conceal the boat. From this vantage point he could use his binoculars to scan the entire sandy beach of the horseshoe bay, almost two miles point-to-point.

  The sixteen-foot sea kayak was essentially a light, hollow fiberglass and Kevlar tube with a centered cockpit. Hank’s weight was spread out over such a long, light surface that water displacement was minimal, allowing the craft to float and maneuver in extremely shallow water.

  Hank knew Lee could be sitting in an open, breezy birch grove or hiding out in the low, huddling cedar swamps. He could be lying on his back in a meadow. But it was August. He wasn’t hiding out in Negwegon for the muggy forest. He was hiding out in Negwegon for the open water.

  If Hank was right, Lee would show up on this beach. Seeing that it was deserted, he’d come out of the woods for a swim. He’d come out to bask in the sun. He’d come out to walk along the fresh, bracing shoreline. He wouldn’t linger—too exposed—but he’d have to get his big-lake fix. And when he did and after he left, Hank would paddle quickly across the bay and pick up his trail. At that point Hank would be minutes away from catching up to him and Lee would be ignorant of his pursuit. Surprise would be on his side.

  The antithesis of the desert is not the ocean. You can die of thirst in either place. The antithesis of a vast, arid desert is the magnificence of a great sweet-water lake. Hank and Lee had both swallowed the gritty sand of the high desert and the rocky dust of the low desert. Their skin had been dried out by desert winds, like dried plants in a florist’s window. Immediately after his discharge, Hank had camped on the beach at Negwegon for several weeks. He couldn’t get enough of the big lake. The craving was deep and abiding. You didn’t shake it. He was betting Lee felt the same way. Hank’s impulsive swim upon arrival had not been entirely within his control.

  Hank took a quick look at tiny Scarecrow Island to the east. His glasses went by a couple of black ducks as he returned to study the beach. He scoped the beach carefully, then let the binoculars hang from his neck as he folded his arms and leaned back. His lower body was stretched out comfortably inside the boat. He sat perfectly still. He was “still hunting,” just as if he were waiting for a nice eight-point to walk into his line of sight. The dawn had broken clear and calm. It would be straight, fast, flat-water kayaking this morning—if he did any paddling at all.

  He smiled to himself. If Lee didn’t show, this might turn out to be the best stakeout he’d ever had. Damn near a vacation. Kayak as prowler, marsh as darkened street, the tree line a doorway from which Lee could emerge at any moment. He should have brought a fishing pole, try to pull a big tasty smallmouth out of the reeds. He dozed a little, rousing himself just enough to scan the beach with the binos.

  For a change of scenery he occasionally looked at Scarecrow Island and was doing that when he realized he’d been suffering from what the shrinks call “inattentional blindness,” where you see what you expect to see rather than what’s really there. The black ducks he’d been passing over weren’t blac
k ducks. Now, brought into better focus because they were closer, he saw a swimmer with a partially submerged stowfloat bag behind him on a dragline.

  Hank’s binos froze on the swimmer. There was no doubt. He couldn’t believe his luck. Instinctively he reached down to the waterproof bag nestled by his seat and took out his little “get off me” .38 Smith backup and stuck it in the waistband of his cargo shorts. Then he called Red.

  “Cecil.”

  “Red, the best thing that could have happened has happened. He’s swimming toward the beach from Scarecrow Island. Must have been holed up there. I’m hidden in my kayak at the tip of South Point watching him. Come to the edge of the woods about one hundred yards south of the point. If I’m not in yet, stay out of sight. Don’t come out on the beach until I bring him in. Seeing you might set him off. I don’t want any distractions until he’s cuffed.”

  “Roger that . . . Try not to hurt him, Hank.”

  “Christ, he’s in the water, Red. Never had a better drop on anybody. It’s going to be all right.”

  Hank sat for a few minutes waiting for Lee to swim deeper into the bay and past his hideout at the point. He wanted to paddle up behind him, remaining unnoticed as long as possible.

  He watched Lee swim through the dark blue water with strong, rhythmic strokes and it was as if he were swimming back through time. Hank was struck by a powerful sense of déjà vu. The moment itself was singular and beautiful and like so many shared before. Lee’s bronze face bearded and hard but still somehow boyish. Sky and lake and beach from years ago, but this time no scholarship waiting, no bright future. What was waiting was a cage somewhere, a cage that was going to be his home for a long, long time. His pulse quickened as he slid the paddle into the water and pushed the boat out of the reeds.

  The turquoise craft moved swiftly across the calm bay. In silence Hank came up about thirty yards behind Lee and shipped his paddle, just drifting along. He could hear Lee’s heavy breathing; the distance Lee had covered would be almost two miles. Then Lee rolled over to move into a backstroke, saw the kayak, and his motion stopped. He began slowly treading water.