Dark Tiger

by William G. Tapply

  Then the sheriff emerged. Right behind him was Franklin Redbird. Calhoun went over and held up a hand to Franklin, who took it and allowed Calhoun to help him climb down onto the dock.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” said Calhoun.

  Franklin nodded. “Me, too.”

  “Did they treat you okay?”

  “Fine,” he said. “No complaints.”

  “Your lawyer did a good job, then.”

  “Guess so. I’m here.” Ralph was sniffing Franklin’s cuffs. The guide reached down and scratched the dogs’s ears. “Nobody talks to me,” he said, “but I gather there was an accident here this morning.”

  Calhoun nodded. “Curtis Swenson’s Cessna exploded out there in the middle of the lake. He was taxiing for takeoff, on his way to get you and bring you back. Hit something, looked like.”

  “The sheriff brought a team of scuba divers,” said Franklin. “To recover his body, I guess. Damn shame. Not that Curtis Swenson was any great friend of mine, but still . . .”

  “It was hard to watch,” Calhoun said.

  The sheriff and Marty Dunlap were conferring. Three other men had emerged from the plane. They unloaded some diving gear—wet suits, air tanks, swim fins, face masks—and organized it on the dock.

  After a few minutes, Marty yelled, “Listen up, please.”

  The crowd on the dock quieted down.

  “I need some guides to take these divers out. Ben, Peter, Mush. Step up here, please.”

  The three guides went up to Marty and the sheriff, who proceeded to give them their instructions.

  Pretty soon the divers had donned their gear. Each of them then climbed down into the front of one of the lodge’s Grand Lake canoes. The three guides lowered themselves onto the stern seats and started up the outboard motors, and then the three canoes were heading for the middle of the lake.

  Everybody on the dock stood there watching the canoes until they were dark blurs against the midday glitter off the water. Calhoun noticed that the canoes turned toward the foot of the lake rather than stopping at the area where the plane had exploded, where he and Kim had searched in vain for Curtis Swenson.

  It took him a minute to understand why the divers were ignoring the site of the explosion. Loon and Big and Little Hairy, and the entire string of connected lakes, all were links in a great riverway that moved toward the sea. Subtle currents ran through them all. In the several hours since the Cessna blew apart in that sudden orange bloom, Curtis’s body could have drifted quite a distance down the lake. Even if the lake currents only moved half a mile per hour, it had been over four hours since the explosion. Curtis might be down in the narrows—or already into the next lake in the long chain of lakes.

  After the canoes disappeared around a point of land, Marty yelled, “Everybody listen up. The sheriff wants to say something.”

  The crowd quieted down and turned to the sheriff.

  “Me and Henry, here, my deputy,” he said, “we’re gonna need to talk to each and every one of you. I guess it’s probably too late to ask you not to talk with each other about what happened this morning, but I am asking you not to share with each other what me and Henry ask you or what your answers to our questions are. We’ll be up at the lodge. I’m asking you all to make yourselves available to us for the next few hours.”

  There were a few grumbles from the crowd, but they all began shambling off the dock onto the path that led back to the lodge.

  Calhoun waited until everybody else had left. Then he and Ralph fell in behind them.

  The sheriff came up beside him. “Mr. Calhoun,” he said.

  Calhoun stopped. “Hello, Sheriff.”

  “I understand you were an actual witness.”

  “That’s right. I was standing on the dock when the plane blew up. Saw it happen. Kim was there, too. She’s also a guide.”

  “Just the two of you?”

  Calhoun nodded.

  “Before I start with all the guests and other guides,” said the sheriff, “I’d like to get your story.”

  “You got questions,” Calhoun said, “fire away.”

  “I need a place to sit down, take notes. Someplace where we can be private.”

  “My cabin, if you want.”

  “That’ll do,” said the sheriff.

  Calhoun and the sheriff, with Ralph trotting ahead, followed the path to his cabin. Since no hare jumped out of the bushes, they made it without incident.

  “We can talk out here on the porch,” Calhoun said. “Want a Coke?”

  “Wouldn’t mind,” said the sheriff. He sat in one of the chairs at the table. He took off his hat, put it on the table beside his elbow, and wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist.

  Calhoun was back a minute later with two cans of Coke.

  The sheriff took a long swig. Then he plunked the can down on the table, took a pen and a notebook from his pocket, and said, “All right, Mr. Calhoun. Why don’t you just tell me what you saw this morning.”

  Calhoun told his story, beginning when he asked Curtis Swenson if he could accompany him to fetch Franklin Redbird, and ending with his futile efforts to find Swenson’s body.

  The sheriff listened without interruption, jotting an occasional note, nodding now and then, and arching his eyebrows a few times.

  When he was finished, Calhoun said, “That’s about it. That’s how I remember it.”

  The sheriff frowned at his notebook for a moment, then looked up at Calhoun. “Let’s go back to when the plane exploded,” he said. “Tell me again exactly what you saw, step by step. Go slow. Don’t leave anything out.”

  “Actually,” said Calhoun, “it all happened so fast, it seemed like everything happened all at the same time.”

  “Things hardly ever really happen all at the same time,” said the sheriff. “Mostly they happen one after the other. Cause and effect. Try to remember, will you?”

  Calhoun leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He summoned up the moving pictures of the minute or so before Curtis Swenson’s Cessna blew up. This was a peculiar gift of his, the ability to remember something as if it were a movie he could slow down and replay in his head. He’d done it before, and he suspected he’d been trained to do it back before lightning obliterated his memory, back when he worked full-time for Mr. Brescia.

  So he flicked on the projector in his head, and the images began to play behind his eyes in slow motion—the plane taxiing up the lake, bouncing on the riffled surface, slowly elevating until the pontoons seemed barely to be skimming the tops of the wavelets, and then the sudden mushroom burst of dark orange flame under the nose of the plane. The muffled whoompf of the explosion came to his ears a measurable instant later. Then the plane’s tail lifted, and the nose dipped, and the Cessna did a flip, ending up on its side with one wing pointing up at the sky. Then came the second burst of orange flame, and again the delayed sound of the explosion traveling across the water to his ears.

  Calhoun opened his eyes and looked at the sheriff. “The explosion came before the plane flipped,” he said.

  “Before,” said the sheriff.

  “Yes.”

  “You sure of that?”

  “That’s how I saw it.”

  The sheriff nodded.

  “That what you suspected?” said Calhoun.

  “I wondered,” said the sheriff.

  “It means the explosion caused the accident,” Calhoun said, “not the other way around.”

  The sheriff shrugged.

  “Meaning,” said Calhoun, “it wasn’t an accident at all. Somebody booby-trapped the plane.”

  “Well,” said the sheriff, “not necessarily. Lots of things can cause an engine to explode.”

  “Somebody rigged the plane to blow up,” Calhoun said. “Somebody set out to murder Curtis Swenson.”

  “Murder Swenson?” The sheriff shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “What do you mean, maybe? What else could explain it?”

  “Didn’t you say you h
ad planned to be on the plane with Swenson?”

  Calhoun frowned. “Sure, but . . .”

  “Everybody knew that, right? You spoke to him about it at dinner last night.”

  Calhoun nodded. “I see what you’re getting at—but why?”

  “You tell me,” said the sheriff. “Don’t forget, whoever killed Elaine Hoffman—assuming it wasn’t you—used your gun and planted it in Redbird’s cabin.”

  Calhoun considered telling the sheriff about his quest to find out what McNulty had been investigating at Loon Lake, and his assumption that Elaine’s murder, and now, apparently, Curtis Swenson’s, were all connected.

  So maybe the sheriff was right. Maybe the plane’s explosion was aimed at Calhoun, not Swenson. Or maybe it was a convenient way to get rid of both of them.

  He decided to keep these thoughts to himself for now. He wasn’t sure how much he could trust this sheriff. He trusted himself more.

  So he shook his head. “I don’t know why anybody would want to kill me,” he said. “I haven’t been here long enough to make enemies. I’m just a fishing guide. I don’t know anything or anybody.”

  The sheriff gazed up at the ceiling. “Well,” he said, “it’s mighty odd, if you ask me. You been here at Loon Lake—what, all of four days?—and in that short amount of time we got two deaths. One definitely a murder, the other might be. Don’t that strike you odd, Mr. Calhoun?”

  “How do you expect me to answer that question, Sheriff?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t a question, I suppose.” He turned and looked hard at Calhoun. “An observation, I guess you’d call it.”

  “Well,” said Calhoun, “I agree with you. It is mighty odd.”

  “You can understand how it would make me think twice about you.”

  Calhoun shrugged.

  “I took the liberty of giving my colleague Sheriff Dickman down there in Cumberland County a call,” said the sheriff. “He speaks well of you, said as far as he knew you were up here guiding. Doing no business for him, he said.”

  Calhoun spread his hands. “Well, there you are, then.”

  “Makes me wonder,” said the sheriff. “That’s all.”

  “The deputy thing is just now and then,” Calhoun said. “When the sheriff thinks he needs some help. He doesn’t pay me or anything.”

  “Sheriff Dickman tells me you’re damn good at it.”

  “He doesn’t need me,” said Calhoun. “He just likes my company sometimes.”

  The sheriff closed his little notebook and stuck it in his shirt pocket. “One of these days,” he said, “I’m gonna figure out what you’re up to, Mr. Calhoun.”

  “I’m just a fishing guide.”

  “If you’re just a guide,” said the sheriff, “then I’m just a short-order cook because I make breakfast for me and my wife every morning.” He stood up and put his hat on. “We’ll no doubt be talking again, Mr. Calhoun. Thanks for sharing your recollections. You’ve been a big help. Now I guess I better get up to the lodge, see what the other folks have to say.”

  He stepped over the sleeping Ralph, pushed open the screen door, left the cabin, and started up the path to the lodge.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  After the sheriff left, Calhoun lay down on his bed, laced his fingers behind his neck, and stared up at the ceiling. He was thinking about the possibility that what happened to Curtis Swenson was not an accident, that somebody had booby-trapped the Cessna so it would explode on the water. The way the movie of it played out in his head, that’s what it looked like.

  He also considered the idea that he, Calhoun, and not Swenson—or maybe he along with Swenson—had been the booby-trapper’s target.

  He shut his eyes. He was suddenly very tired. Watching airplanes explode and diving into the water for survivors and evading the difficult questions of a suspicious sheriff was exhausting work.

  Calhoun had plenty of questions of his own, such as: If not Swenson, then who shot McNulty and Millie Gautier, and who killed Elaine Hoffman, assuming it was the same person who blew up the Cessna with Curtis Swenson in it?

  And especially, to all of those questions—why?

  And whoever it was, did he now have Stoney Calhoun in his crosshairs?

  He had no answers to these questions, and right now he didn’t have enough energy to think about them.

  He slept for a couple of hours and woke up feeling disoriented and fuzzy-brained and vaguely depressed, the hangover from another dream, this one instantly forgotten. A quick, steamy shower helped. He put on some clean clothes and grabbed a Coke from the refrigerator, and he and Ralph left the cabin and headed in the direction of the lodge.

  As he approached the dock, he saw that Robert Dunlap was coming down the path from the lodge. The sheriff’s Twin Otter was still tied up there. Calhoun went out onto the dock, and Robert came along beside him.

  “The sheriff coming up with any answers?” Calhoun said.

  “If he is,” said Robert, “he’s not confiding in me. I don’t think anybody knows anything. We just had a horrible accident this morning. That’s the only answer.”

  Calhoun nodded. “I guess you’re right.” He shaded his eyes and peered down toward the foot of the lake. “Those divers have been out there a long time.”

  “Don’t know whether that’s good or bad.”

  “I suppose if they found Curtis,” Calhoun said, “they’d bring him right in.”

  As he was looking, a low, dark shape materialized on the water, coming from around the far point of land down toward the foot of the lake. Then two more shapes appeared, and as the shapes moved closer, they began to look like canoes. A minute later the drone of the three outboard motors crossed the water to Calhoun’s ears.

  “There they are,” he said, pointing.

  Robert tugged down the bill of his cap, squinted against the glare of the water, and said, “Yes. I see them.”

  About ten minutes later the three canoes pulled up alongside the dock. The guides—Ben, Peter, and Mush—climbed out and tied off the canoes. The three divers in their wet suits and swim fins hauled themselves awkwardly up onto the dock.

  There were no dead bodies in any of the canoes.

  “No luck, huh?” Calhoun said

  “We went all the way down to the foot of the lake,” Ben said, “and through the narrows, and into Muddy. Not a sign of Curtis. No scrap of clothing, no, um, no body parts. Nothing.”

  “He must’ve got blowed up in a million pieces,” said Mush. “No other explanation.”

  “We just weren’t looking in the right places,” said one of the divers, a young guy with a red beard who was sitting on the dock peeling off his wet suit. “The visibility is real good in these lakes, and they ain’t that deep. Lots of rocks on the bottom, but hardly any weeds. If the man had gone down where we were looking, we’d’ve spotted some sign of him.”

  A minute or so later the sheriff and his deputy, along with Marty Dunlap, came strolling down to the dock from the lodge. The deputy went over to talk to the divers, while the sheriff pulled Robert aside and engaged him in a private conversation.

  Marty sidled up to Calhoun. “They didn’t find Curtis, huh?”

  Calhoun shook his head. “Nope.”

  After a few minutes, the sheriff went over and spoke to the divers, who then began to load their gear back onto their float plane.

  Henry, the deputy who was also the pilot, climbed into the cockpit and got the two engines started.

  The sheriff came over to where Marty and Calhoun were standing and leaned close to them. “You keep in touch,” he said to Marty. He was yelling over the roar of the airplane engines. “I’ll be back. Meanwhile, be sure to let me know, anything you learn, any thoughts you have.” He turned and looked at Calhoun. “You, too, Mr. Calhoun. We ain’t quite done with this, I don’t think.”

  Calhoun nodded. “Always happy to help,” he said.

  The sheriff climbed into the cockpit and took the seat beside Henry. The divers piled in thro
ugh the side cargo door and slid it shut. Ben and Peter cast off the plane’s lines, and then it taxied out onto the middle of the lake, pivoted, and began to accelerate with its nose into the wind. A minute later it lifted off, tilted its wings, and disappeared over the treetops heading east to Houlton.

  Calhoun realized he’d been holding his breath the whole time.

  After dinner that night, Robert Dunlap took Calhoun and Ralph around to one of the many decks that jutted off the front of the lodge, giving an excellent view of the vista that Loon Lake and the surrounding hills and forests offered, especially toward sunset.

  Two men were sitting at a small round table sipping after-dinner drinks. Robert introduced them as Jack and Harry Vandercamp from Chicago.

  Calhoun shook hands with both of them and sat down with them. “This here’s Ralph,” he said, laying on the Maine accent. “He’s a bird dog and a fish dog, and I hope you don’t mind if he joins us in the canoe tomorrow.”

  “We like dogs,” said Jack, who looked to be somewhere in his forties, a lumbering bearlike man with a pleasant smile. Harry was considerably older—pushing eighty, Calhoun guessed—a wiry little guy with sharp blue eyes and wispy white hair.

  “Anything special you like to eat, or don’t like to eat, or are allergic to?” Calhoun said.

  “We’re meat and potatoes men,” said Harry.

  “Not fussy,” said Jack.

  Calhoun looked at them. “You’re not brothers.”

  “Jack’s my son,” said Harry. “This is his treat. I grew up in the Midwest, spent a week in Maine when I was a boy. Stayed in a one-room log cabin on a lake with my brother and father. We fetched water from the lake, cooked on a woodstove, shat in the outhouse, and fished all day every day, and I’ve been dreaming about it and talking about it ever since. It’s not bad when a son can make his old man’s dream come true.”

  Jack was looking at his father with a softness in his eyes that Calhoun couldn’t quite read. There was more going on here than just a man treating his elderly father to a father-son fishing trip.