Bonegrinder

by John Lutz

  Howe sat quietly for a long moment, the sky and valley like a sweeping three-dimensional mural behind him. “Are you asking me to withdraw the reward, Sheriff?”

  “I’d appreciate it, Mr. Howe.”

  Howe seemed to squint at something in the distance beyond Wintone. “Do you know anything about trajectory?”

  “Like a bullet’s trajectory?”

  “Not just a bullet’s, Sheriff … Life is a series of trajectories, some of them intersecting, either fortunately or unfortunately. Either way, perhaps it is no accident that Bonegrinder should make his appearance at this time, in this place, where I am. Perhaps you’re asking me to refute my destiny, Sheriff.”

  “That’s a mite strong, Mr. Howe. One man’s already died by accident, an’ that was before this end of the lake was crawlin’ with people with guns.”

  “You’re interested in people, Sheriff. I’m interested in facts.”

  “But don’t you care if somebody gets killed?”

  “Good Christ, yes! But should the Panama Canal not have been built because of yellow fever? Should the legions of Japanese not have been turned back because the task demanded blood? Stop looking through that microscope of yours, Sheriff. Try to take the larger view.”

  Wintone shifted his weight on the soft leather sofa. “I can’t,” he said, “maybe ’cause I’m under that microscope myself. Maybe all of us are.”

  Something changed in Howe’s wide-set blue eyes, a hard, deep, flipped-object kind of turning. “In any case,” he said, “I can’t do as you request.”

  “All right,” Wintone said. “Leastways you been asked.” The unnatural silence of the big room was beginning to annoy Wintone, as if the real world were being held at bay outside the thick glass of the window behind Howe’s chair.

  “Consider,” Baily Howe said, “that you also are eligible for the reward.”

  Wintone shook his head. “County don’t allow us to accept reward money, Mr. Howe.”

  “There are possible arrangements …”

  “Fraid not.”

  Howe set his glass on a table, sat back cross-armed in his chair. “What are your intentions now, Sheriff? Regarding Bonegrinder?”

  “Why would you ask?”

  “I’m interested. I know the man who appointed you quite well. Mayor Boemer.”

  Wintone felt his face flush with a tingling of anger. “I’ve heard you do. You threatenin’ me, Mr. Howe?”

  Howe raised his eyebrows in middle-aged boyish innocence. “I thought you were threatening me, Sheriff.”

  “I only came up here to head off trouble.”

  Howe stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles to reveal blue silk socks, threw back his head. “In a sense that’s my militia down there, my mercenary militia, doing my bidding to accomplish the first step of discovery. In Africa … but never mind. You’ll thank me when this is over, Sheriff—as will they all.”

  “Could be you’re right,” Wintone said, placing his damp beer mug on the carpet and standing. “I just don’t want none of your militia to get killed.”

  Howe stood to escort the sheriff to the door. Despite his elegantly casual attire, there was something disturbingly military in his bearing.

  “Is there anything I can do to make you change your mind about that reward?” Wintone asked, stepping out onto the cement porch.

  “Not so that I wouldn’t change it back,” Howe said seriously.

  Wintone nodded. “I thank you for the time.” He walked to his car, past the intent gaze of the Doberman that was still sitting where it had been when Wintone entered.

  “Come back again, Sheriff,” Howe called as Wintone was getting into the patrol car.

  “I expect I might.”

  As Wintone drove away from the house, he looked in the rear-view mirror and saw the Doberman lie down in sections, as large dogs do, still watching him.

  Wintone breathed easier on the other side of the gate with the No Trespassing sign. There was no point in trying to reason with Baily Howe, he realized. But at that Howe was saner than some of the people he’d lit a fire under with his reward money.

  To a degree the situation took care of itself, but only to a degree.

  Within a few days it became obvious to many of the hunters on and around the lake that they were bucking odds greater than they’d imagined. Monotony took its toll, as did the sun. Gradually the ranks of the reward-seekers thinned, and each day that he checked Wintone saw the lake dotted with fewer boats.

  Wintone was standing outside Mully’s, watching an overloaded old station wagon, its roof luggage-rack stacked high with tied-down cartons, pulling a trailer as it headed toward the main highway, when he heard someone walk up behind him.

  “They’re running out of money,” Holt said, “and patience.”

  Wintone watched the trailer sway as the station wagon slowed, then took a corner. “Still plenty of ’em left, though.”

  Holt gave his ready smile. “More than enough—the fanatical ones who’ll do whatever’s necessary for the reward. Still, your task should be easier. Mine, too. I’m thinking about going out on the lake tomorrow to take some soundings.”

  “Wear something bulletproof.” Wintone didn’t say that he couldn’t see that much difference between Holt and the rest of them out on the lake. Maybe Holt was just as fanatical as they were, but wanted a different kind of reward.

  “Have you turned up anything new on Bonegrinder, Sheriff?”

  “I talked to Baily Howe. He refused to withdraw the reward offer.”

  “Did you explain to him that someone was liable to get killed?”

  Wintone nodded. “That don’t seem to be one of Mr. Howe’s concerns.”

  “If his serious concern is in finding Bonegrinder, you should convince him that what he’s doing is self-defeating. Whatever Bonegrinder is, it’s not likely to show itself with an army of ignoramuses in the area.”

  “Nobody convinces Mr. Howe but Mr. Howe.”

  “Then he’s as eccentric as they say?”

  Wintone traced a zigzag pattern in the dust with his boot toe. “Them callin’ him eccentric would be his friends.”

  The late morning sun was beginning to bear down, foretelling another hot, dry day. Wintone excused himself from Holt and turned to go into Mully’s. He noticed that Holt walked away in the direction of Doc Amis’s.

  Half an hour later, seated at the bar in Mully’s, Wintone heard a dull explosion, like someone smacking the meaty part of a fist on a thick door. His empty beer mug inched sideways across the smooth bar.

  Mully tilted his head to one side, tucked a corner of his ragged white bar towel into his belt. “What the hell was that?”

  Wintone couldn’t answer at first, and then he placed the sound.

  “They ain’t got the God-given sense of a horsefly,” he said, getting down off the bar stool. He walked quickly outside, then jogged to where the patrol car was parked in front of his office.

  As he opened the car door, another dull explosion told him which direction to drive in and gave him a hint of distance. He started the patrol car and steered it in a tight U-turn through its own dust.

  Near Lynn Cove half a dozen parked cars and pickup trucks caught Wintone’s attention, and he pulled to the road shoulder behind a truck with a metal camper mounted on its bed.

  Even as he got out of the car and looked around, Wintone could feel the heat draining him. Instead of jogging, he walked at a fast pace down the hard dirt path toward the bank.

  There were several people standing on the bank, looking out at the wide lake. Every head turned, without surprise, at Wintone’s approach, as if they’d been expecting him. Then they turned their faces back toward the lake, as if indicating to him where to look.

  The object of everyone’s attention was a small Jon boat well out on the lake. Wintone squinted and held a cupped hand to his forehead to ease the glare of sunlight reflecting off the sparkling blue-green water.

  There were two m
en in the boat, seated facing each other. As Wintone watched, the man in the bow suddenly straightened and threw something off to the side away from the bank with a straight-armed, slinglike motion. He sat back down, and Wintone noticed that the man in the bow was cradling a rifle.

  A geyser of water rose on the other side of the boat and a moment later another dull whump! like the two earlier explosions, only louder, reached the bank.

  Without speaking Wintone reached over and borrowed the binoculars from a man standing nearby.

  “Dynamitin’ in fishin’ water’s illegal, ain’t it?” someone asked.

  “It is that,” Wintone said, pressing the binoculars to his eyes. Around the distant boat he could see the glinting silver bodies of concussion-killed fish, bobbing on water still in turmoil from the last explosion.

  Wintone drew his revolver from its holster and fired a shot into the air to attract the attention of the two men in the boat. As they both turned toward him, he holstered the revolver and waved them in to shore.

  The two men looked at each other and seemed to be talking, as if debating whether to bring the boat in. Wintone felt a surge of anger, placed his fists on his hips.

  Then the man in the stern twisted his body. Wintone saw the out-and-backward motion of his elbow, and the sputtering drone of an outboard motor came faintly across the water. The boat moved in a large circle, dead fish bobbing in its spreading wake, until its flat prow was aimed at the bank.

  The water was extremely shallow off the bank where Wintone was standing, so he moved down to where he knew it was deeper, and the half-dozen people who’d been watching the dynamiting walked with him.

  Even here the lake was shallow near the bank, and fifty yards out the man in the boat’s stern killed the outboard motor and tilted it up to free its propeller from bottom weed. Both men worked to get the boat in closer to the bank, poling with the oars. Then the man in the bow, who was wearing dark green wading boots, jumped into the water and pulled the boat in close enough to tie the rope he was gripping around the trunk of a crooked sapling. The man in the boat’s stern wasn’t wearing boots, but he lowered himself into the hip-high water and, with a great deal of unnecessary splashing, waded toward Wintone. He was a slender, long-haired man wearing a rumpled gray hat with a blue, flowered band. Wintone remembered seeing him in Turper’s Grill.

  “Bring what’s left of the dynamite,” Wintone ordered.

  The other man was already standing on the bank, working the thick suspenders of his wading boots from around his shoulders. “We was only tryin’ to bring Bonegrinder to the surface so as to get a shot at him,” the man said angrily.

  Wintone didn’t answer, watched the man in the rumpled hat wade back to the boat and lift out a small, metal tackle box. The man waded back to the bank with the box up on one shoulder, held there with both hands. When he reached the bank, he laid the box in the mud, then moved away from it and stamped some of the water from his shoes and pants legs.

  Wintone stooped and opened the tackle box, found a waterproof oilcloth packet containing three long-fused orange sticks of dynamite.

  “You two know dynamitin’ in fishin’ waters is against the law?” Wintone asked, standing.

  “We wasn’t doin’ it for the fish,” the man with the wading boots said.

  “There’s sure a hell of a lot of dead ones on the surface,” Wintone said flatly.

  The man in the rumpled hat shook his head as if finding it incredible that Wintone should question their actions. “Two people’s been killed. These ain’t exactly usual circumstances, Sheriff.”

  “If you can convince the State Police of that you got no worries,” Wintone said. He jabbed his thumb backward over his shoulder. “Your car parked up there?”

  The man nodded, looking disgusted. He removed his rumpled hat to reveal a sunburned half-dollar-size bald spot on the crown of his head.

  Wintone carried the dynamite in the tackle box and followed the two men up to where the cars were parked on the grassy road shoulder. He was annoyed to realize that the scene was being photographed by a short man with a detached yet intent expression beneath a head of unruly reddish hair. With the man was a young girl, more a woman really, who drew so much of Wintone’s attention that he slowed his pace, then had to walk fast to catch up with the two dynamiters.

  At first Wintone didn’t know what there was about the girl that had so caught his eye, then with a pang of emotion he realized that there was something of Etty in the girl, in the calm, dark eyes and the smile sketched with light about the wide, full lips.

  The man in the rumpled hat stopped, and Wintone almost walked into him. They had reached an old, rusted Pontiac. The larger man opened the car’s trunk, cursed and threw his wading boots in on top of a bald spare tire.

  Wintone took their driver’s licenses, then instructed them to drive ahead of the patrol car into Colver. As the sheriff slid behind the sun-heated steering wheel, he tried to ignore the young man with the thirty-five millimeter camera, now down on one knee to photograph at an upward angle. The girl was standing directly behind the man, seeing what the camera saw but with seeming disinterest. Wintone started the patrol car and followed close to the rear bumper of the rust-scarred Pontiac.

  When they reached Colver, Wintone locked the two men in the back room holdover cells and phoned the State Police.

  Wintone thought that the arrests, along with the passage of time, would calm things in the Colver area. But apparently Holt was right; those searchers left were too fanatical or oblivious to danger to be discouraged. If anything, the fervor of the search picked up.

  Until the day of the shooting.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “YOU BETTER COME DOWN here to the doctor’s, Billy,” Sarah said to Wintone on the phone. There was an irritated concern to her voice.

  The sheriff felt no surprise, only an unreasonable anger at himself for being unable to prevent what he suspected had happened. “Who and how bad?” he asked.

  “Man named Flynn. It’s more painful than serious; the bullet passed through his arm.”

  “I’ll be there directly, Sarah.”

  Wintone tucked in his tan uniform shirt and walked from his office. The afternoon taunted with the possibility of rain. Lead-colored, bloated clouds hung in the sky above a hot, humid stillness. The thick air was charged as if presaging a thunderstorm, but it had been that way most of the morning and no rain had fallen. As he walked, Wintone looked at sun-parched brown grass, at fine zigzag cracks in the earth like cracks in brittle china, and at the implacable gray-mottled sky. Maybe it would never rain again, only hint at it.

  In Doc Amis’s waiting room sat three men wearing dusty outdoors clothing, guardedly anxious expressions on sunburned faces—probably friends of the wounded Flynn. They interrupted their subdued conversation to look at Wintone with distrust.

  Sarah glanced up from where she was working at her desk. She looked cool and clean in her white uniform, younger, as if she’d just taken a shower and somehow washed away worry and years. Standing, she smiled at Wintone, walked to the door behind her desk and held it open for him.

  “In here, Billy,” she said, and when he walked through the doorway she followed, closing the door behind her with a soft click.

  Doc Amis was standing at a small washbasin rinsing his hands with a doctor’s smooth dexterity. He turned only his head and nodded at Wintone. “Sheriff Wintone,” he said, “this is Ed Flynn. A large-caliber bullet passed through his upper left arm this morning, missing the humerus bone by a quarter of an inch.”

  Flynn was a stocky man in his forties, with a paunch and work-worn brown hands. He was wearing boots and bloodstained gray pants, sitting bent forward on a vinyl-covered padded table. His upper left arm was thickly bandaged in white gauze and held against his bare chest in a high sling. There was a stubborn, anticipative jut to his heavy jaw when he looked up at Wintone, but pain had taken something from his eyes.

  “How’d it happen, Mr. Flynn?” Wi
ntone asked.

  Flynn gingerly touched his injured arm with his free hand. “We were out in the boat, barely moving with the trolling motor on the down leg of our pattern, when some asshole in another boat opened up with a rifle and shot me.”

  “Down leg of what pattern?” Wintone asked.

  “What we did is take a map of the south end of the lake and break it into sections.” Flynn swallowed loudly and his eyes narrowed, and Wintone realized that the man was in great pain. “Each day we run the boat in a pattern over one or two sections, dropping weighted lines with deep-sea hooks baited with beef. We were almost finished with our first section today when I heard six or seven shots and my arm felt like it was hit with a hammer. They tell me it was some clown in another boat blasting away with a rifle into the water. One of the bullets must have ricocheted off the surface and hit me.”

  “They’ll do that,” Wintone said. “They can skip on the water like stones. What about the man in the other boat? What did he say?”

  “When we started yelling that I’d been hit, the boat came over by ours. The fella who’d done the shooting said he thought he’d seen something just under the surface of the lake, moving deeper, and he wanted to hit it while he could still see it.”

  Wintone angrily let out his breath. “What was the man’s name? Where is he now?”

  Flynn clenched his teeth and shook his head. “Can’t answer either of those questions, Sheriff. When the men in the other boat saw I wasn’t hurt bad, they revved up their outboard and went off toward the big part of the lake.”

  “How many men were in the boat?”

  “Three.”

  “What did they look like? Especially the one that did the shootin’?”

  “The guy with the rifle is the only one I really paid any attention to, a bald man with a mustache, wearing a red shirt. That’s all I remember about him.”

  Doc Amis dried his hands thoroughly with a few quick motions of a white paper towel. “Flynn here won’t be the last casualty if something’s not done,” he said to Wintone.