Homefront pb-6

by Chuck Logan

  No more medals. Just outside lanes.

  Her soldier days were over.

  It was time to come home.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Broker sat in his truck in front of the school, showing no expression as Kit moped out to the truck, sagging under her book bag. Then she climbed in the backseat and squealed when she saw her bunny propped up in the corner, its stubby arms arranged around a taboo Snickers bar and a plastic bottle of Gatorade.

  “Dad! Where was she!”

  “Way under the front seat. I told you, nothing gets lost in the house.”

  “She was in the truck, Dad; not in the house,” Kit announced.

  “Well, I was close,” Broker said.

  Kit sat back, hugging her battered toy as the fleet of yellow school buses receded behind them and they headed out of town on County 12. The afternoon punched up clean and sharp under a blue sky. The welcome sun hung in the west and stamped crisp black shadows on the softening snow cover.

  Broker slouched back, one hand draped over the wheel, actually feeling pretty good. For a change. Nearing the lake, they drove past the busy Mexican carpenters who were now putting down the underlayment on the roof of the new house-Keith Nygard’s original meth bust. Until that meth lab blew up in his face. Probably the biggest thing ever happened up here. And he had, what, one full-time deputy…

  Thinking how Nygard had mentioned taking Griffin along to help out. Didn’t know if he approved of that. Once Griffin got started, he only had one forward gear…

  Broker glanced around. Great scenery, superb fishing, and not a lot of backup. Broker didn’t hold with most city cops who rolled their eyes at their rural counterparts, making cracks about Andy of Mayberry operating mostly solo out in the boonies.

  Hell, he’d spent seven years undercover operating without a net-The train of thought switched abruptly. Suddenly he was remembering the old continuing fight with Nina; his angry sarcasm at her uphill gender war with the military. Xena the Warrior Princess syndrome. A Joan of Arc complex. She countering, pointing out that his undercover police role was his flight from reality, called him a frustrated actor…

  Got that from his mother.

  Christ. That’s what had been missing these last months.

  The fights.

  They’d be apart for most of the year while she ran around saving the goddamn world, and when they finally did get together for a birthday or Thanksgiving or Christmas, the brawl started. Kit at five, six, seven-standing with her hands over her ears.

  The arguments could start about almost any topic, but it always came down to, essentially, who was in charge of their marriage; like it was a fucking unit in the Army, and she, being a fucking major, outranked him.

  It had taken unipolar depression to shut her up.

  Now she was getting better, which meant they’d inevitably start fighting about something. Preoccupied with years of pyrotechnic flashbacks, driving on automatic, he wheeled around the last turn on the road, coming up on the long stretch about a half mile from the house…

  “Dad!” Kit shouted, lurching forward so hard she hit the tension on the seat belt.

  Broker instinctively toed the brake, jerked alert, scanned the road, the surrounding trees.

  He caught a jerk of movement at the far end of the road, breaking in and out of the deep lattice of shadows.

  “Deer?” he said.

  “Runs like a deer,” Kit said.

  Broker squinted, put up his hand to shield the glare of the sun. He couldn’t compete with his daughter’s 20/10 vision. Then. Well, no shit. It was her, back at it, loping along. But not like a deer-more like a predator chasing a deer, more like a cougar.

  “Dad, stop, please.” Kit flung off her seat belt and yanked the door handle. Broker braked the truck, but Kit had already leaped out as the tires stopped rolling and hit the slushy snow in a dead run. She opened up her stride, racing up the road.

  Broker followed slowly, idling along the shoulder, and stopped by the mailbox. He could see Nina clearly now, red ponytail bouncing as she ran steadily, a little off her old gait. He could see the gray sweat suit, could read the hard-edged prophetic black type on her chest. Christ. Her lungs must be a trash fire. Three months of nicotine burn. She’d be a mess of cramped sore muscles in the morning.

  He turned off the truck, got out, and waited, watching Kit bound, closing the distance, and then jump to hug her mother around the neck. Broker noted how Nina stooped to lift her, using her left arm. The right arm hanging back, guarded.

  After the brief hug-fest they continued up the road, running now side by side. Snatches of girlish laughter carried on eddies of breeze, bounced off the trees, ringing in and out of patches of light and shadow.

  Broker felt the stranglehold of the last three months release and fall away, like dropping a heavy ruck and gear at the end of a long forced trek. We did it.

  Knock on wood.

  But there it is. She was moving more like her old self. When he jogged to meet them, his feet were light, almost dancing.

  “Wipe off that grin. You’ll cramp your face,” Nina panted as she stopped and leaned forward, bracing her hands on her knees. No mistaking the flush of healthy sweat on her freckled cheeks and forehead, the gaunt energy steady in her eyes. Broker wrapped her in his arms, and as she buried her forehead in his chest, Kit hurled herself between them, joining the huddle. Then she tugged on Nina’s arm.

  “C’mon, Mom; race you to the house.”

  Nina rolled her eyes and set off after Kit, who was sprinting up the driveway. Broker got back in the truck and drove up to the house, collected Kit’s backpack and the errant bunny, and went inside.

  “Take off your boots,” Nina admonished as he came in through the door from the garage. Broker grimaced and kicked off his boots, seeing the spotless maple floor, smelling the lingering scent of Murphy’s Oil Soap. Nina had been busy this afternoon. The kitchen was more than spruced up, it was squared away like a barracks before an inspection. No cigarette smoke. No TV. Even the exhausted snake plant seemed to stand taller.

  Nina leaned against the counter, drinking a glass of water. Straight ahead in action, she was forever indirect about intimacy. It always snuck up on them. But the signals were there in the way she stood now, head tilted a little to the side, eyes slightly lowered.

  It always surprised him, the way the silent shadow of desire appeared, not unlike seeing a ten-point buck slip through the trees opening morning. Felt the movement quicken in his chest.

  He smiled. Going on fifty, and he could still feel the excitement brand-new.

  He put his arm around her, and she leaned into his chest. No kiss yet. Or even words. Too many ragged edges needed to be knitted together. He had a lot of questions. But they could wait.

  “How about we get cleaned up and all go out to eat,” he said.

  “You know,” Nina said, fingering the binder from her sweaty hair, “let’s hold off till tomorrow. I’d kinda like to get out the phone book, see if this burg’s got a beauty shop-”

  “Beauty shop?” Like a foreign language coming out of her mouth.

  “Yeah, you know; get this rat’s nest fixed up,” she said, tossing her hair, combing her fingers through the tangles. Then she put out her hand and placed it, open palm, on his chest, feeling the slow steady chug of his heart through his shirt. She raised her eyes and said, “You should smile more, Broker; does wonders for your face.”

  Her eyes were wise, deep, and deadly. Athena climbing back on her pedestal. Whatever. Or as Griffin put it, his crazy sexy wife…

  …was back in play.

  Chapter Thirty

  Griffin wheeled into the parking lot of Skeet’s Bar and parked his Jeep next to Teedo’s truck. Two drinking establishments in town stayed open in the off season; the Anglers, where you could take a family out to eat and which Keith and his deputy did not keep an eye on, and Skeet’s, a strictly beer and bar whiskey hangout, where they patrolled on Friday and Saturday nig
hts.

  Griffin walked through the front door. Just a long room, bar on the right, tables on the left, pool table, two booths, and the johns in the back. Five guys sat at the bar, watching boxing on the satellite TV hookup.

  Teedo leaned over the pool table, shooting a solitary game of eight ball.

  Griffin ordered a ginger ale, asked Willie Skeets what Teedo was drinking. Willie opened a bottle of Linnies. Griffin paid for the drinks and took the bottles back to the rear of the bar, set them on a table. Took off his coat. Teedo, intent on lining up a shot, did not look up.

  Griffin selected a cue, acknowledging with a nod that the shattered cue from that night years back, when he helped Keith break up a fight, was still gathering dust at the end of the rack; it had become part of the local lore. He flipped a quarter on the table. Teedo pocketed the balls, inserted the coin, and started racking. Still not saying a word, Teedo broke.

  Stripes. He sunk three balls and missed. Griffin lined up on the cue ball, eased back the stick. Teedo’s square hand closed over the white cue. They locked eyes.

  “So you gonna buy me a beer?” Teedo said with a trickster glint in his brown eyes.

  Griffin reached back, picked up the Linnies, and placed the bottle on the green felt with an emphatic thump. Teedo picked up the bottle and nodded at the rear booth. They put their cues back in the wall rack and sat down.

  “Thought you might come. Wasn’t sure you’d buy the beer,” Teedo said.

  “So you gonna tell me what you meant about Gator not being ‘true’?” Griffin said.

  “You ever been out to his place?” Teedo asked.

  “Drove by it a few times, during deer season.”

  “So think about it-he’s out there all alone now, huh?”

  “Yeah”-Griffin narrowed his eyes-“since his cousins got burned out.”

  Teedo tipped the bottle to his lips. “Kind of convenient. Them not being around. Kind of people who snoop, steal stuff. Could pry into your business, big-time.”

  “C’mon. What are you getting at?”

  “Kinda storybook, don’t you think?” Teedo said. “The way everybody gives Gator plenty of room, since the meth house burned? Made him into a local hero, their avenging angel, for Marci Sweitz. It’s an open secret Gator’s snitching for Keith. They busted those Mexicans. Fact is, in the last year, Gator’s run all the nickel-dime meth dealers out of the county, especially anybody setting up shop in those empty houses north of Z.”

  Griffin nodded-it was common knowledge. “The way people tell the story, Gator’s trying for a fresh start up here.” Hearing the words come from his mouth in the context of this conversation, they sounded too good to be true.

  “Yeah, right, he’s fuckin’ Robin Hood. Or maybe”-again, the sly smile-“he’s knocking off the competition, huh?” Teedo said it quietly, raising his eyebrows slightly, conjuring a depth of hard-knocks insight into the backwoods drug scene. He’d done six months in Beltrami County for selling grass couple years back before he cleaned up his act. Knew the players.

  Griffin leaned back, mulling over it. “Teedo, you got a suspicious mind.”

  “No,” Teedo said, “I got a cousin, Jerry, who brews that poison. Remember that cold snap last month, hit twenty below?”

  Griffin nodded.

  “Yeah, well, Jerry figured nobody’d be out in that weather, so he snuck into one of those old houses to cook. And Gator shows up, knocks him around, and chases him off at gunpoint. Jerry didn’t run far-he pulled off into the trees to watch what Gator would do. See, Jerry didn’t have a shopping bag from Fleet Farm and a few cans of solvent. He had a whole truckload of supplies, two big boxes of pseudoephedrine he smuggled in from Canada. Jerry was looking to cook a couple pounds of that shit.

  “So Jerry waits, freezing his ass, for the sheriff to show up. No sheriff. Instead, Gator loads all the chemicals and stuff in his truck and drives it north on Twelve, toward his place.” Teedo leaned forward and pointed his beer bottle at Griffin. “One of the ways you catch meth heads, is you follow them when they run their trapline, picking up supplies, huh? But if you’re fucking Robin Hood, you just steal from the meth heads and give to yourself.”

  “So-no exposure.” Griffin thought about it.

  “Plus, he’s got what amounts to police protection. Way Jerry tells it, Gator brings Keith in on the little fish, but if he finds a big stash, he keeps it for himself.”

  “So, say something. Anonymous tip, 911,” Griffin said.

  “Oh, right,” Teedo shook his head. “Uh-uh, not me, man, word’d get out. I believe those stories about Gator. He kills people and gets away with it, going way back. Some people even think the way his folks died was no accident.”

  Teedo drank a few swallows of beer in silence, smacked his lips. “But I did go out there to Gator’s and take a look.”

  “Hey,” Griffin said, “you’re the one blowing smoke about staying clear.”

  Teedo lifted a hand. “I had an excuse. This time of year, I go back in the woods near his farm. ’Bout two hundred yards in from one of the fields, there’s this grove of birches. Put in some test taps. Been so warm, I figured the sap might be early. Not as good as sugar maples, but you can still make syrup. Not bad if you cook it twice.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Teedo…”

  Teedo took another pull on his beer, stretching it out. “You know how to find Camp’s Last Stand?”

  Griffin nodded. “Turn off Twelve east on County Z. Go in on the old logging road.” It was a local landmark set back in the woods.

  “Two miles past the crossroads. Clock it on your odometer, ’cause it’s grown over, hard to find. When you get to the stand, take the trail that forks to the left, that’ll bring you up to the grove, you’ll see some tin buckets I put out.”

  “Yeah?” Griffin hearing Teedo give him directions…like he’s sure I’m going out there…

  “You’ll be a couple hundred yards from his house. That’s where I was two weeks ago when I smelled it.”

  “Smelled what?” Griffin asked.

  “A smell like a big litter box full of cat piss and shit. This real stink. I went in closer and heard the generator running…”

  “Generator?”

  “Yeah, he’s got a big-ass generator going in the shop. Now why do you suppose that is? He’s got enough four-forty to run all his tools coming in on the line. Had the fans running in the paint shop. So I went in closer, along this windbreak of pines that goes from the woods, stops about fifty yards from the shop.” Teedo leaned forward on his elbows, taking his voice even lower. “You know how Gator is supposed to be out there all alone?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Not that day. Jimmy Klumpe was there, bigger’n shit, sitting in his garbage truck, had Gator’s trash container up on the lift. Top open. Just sitting there, engine running…

  “Then this person comes out of the shop. Got this paint suit and breather mask on. When they took off the hood, saw it was a woman. Thought it was his sister, Cassie, at first. She had this black hair, same build.”

  “Really?” Griffin said, “I heard Cassie never goes out there, hasn’t been back since their folks-”

  Teedo shrugged. “Wasn’t Cassie, though. ’Cause little while later Gator and her brought these black heavy-duty garbage bags out from the shop and loaded them in the Dumpster. Jimmy hoists her up and drives off. But he goes north, not back toward the town dump. Goes into the woods. And Gator, he starts up his Bobcat and moves all these boxes and big plastic drums from the shop into the garage part of his barn. Then him and the woman went into the farmhouse…

  “Wind was right, could hear them in there. Windows musta been open. Was the bathroom, ’cause the shower was running.” Teedo flashed a grin. “Heard the kinda noise you ain’t suppose to make with your sister.”

  “So you think he’s cooking dope out there?”

  “Cooking dope?” Teedo laughed. “Man, when’s the last time you were on the streets?” He raised his beer.
Before he got it to his lips, Griffin clamped his hand over the bottle top and looked Teedo directly in the eyes.

  “Why you telling me this?”

  Teedo shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because you’re the only person around who’s crazy enough not to be afraid of the guy.” Then he set the bottle down and reached for his wallet. “Hey, and I got this.” Teedo took his wallet from his hip pocket and withdrew a salmon-colored slip of paper. An old Powerball lottery ticket. He handed it to Griffin. “That woman? She drives a silver Pontiac GT. Never seen that car in town. Had it hidden in the barn. Look on the back.”

  Griffin turned it over; three letters and three numerals printed in ballpoint. Set it on the table.

  “License plate on the Pontiac,” Teedo said.

  Griffin narrowed his eyes, waiting.

  Teedo shrugged. “You know people, those guys who come up from the cities to hunt sometimes, Broker’s pals. They’re cops, right.”

  “So? Keith Nygard’s a cop.”

  Teedo shook his head and said cryptically, “Him and Gator’s high school buddies. When the meth house blew up and all Gator’s cousins burned, Keith, he looked the other way.”

  Teedo finished his beer, set the bottle aside, leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “So. Jimmy was there, using his truck for something Gator’s up to. Just saying-if Broker was my friend, and he’s messing with Jimmy, the person who comes back at him might not be Jimmy. Might be someone who needs Jimmy. In which case it might not be about kids fighting on the playground.”

  Griffin exhaled, picked up the slip of paper, and turned it slowly, weighing it. He looked up at Teedo. “You willing to go back out to Gator’s farm?”