by John Lutz
Sarah took the wet towel from Doc Amis and dropped it in a lined waste can on her side of the room. “I hear they were even usin’ dynamite to try bringin’ somethin’ up,” she said.
“Heard true,” Wintone said. “The only thing comin’ up is their court date. But the damn fools are probably out there again on the lake right now tryin’ somethin’ else while they’re waitin’.”
“One thing for sure,” Flynn said with painful resolution, “I don’t intend to give up.”
Wintone looked at him, at his tense, stocky body and his Hollywood expression of determination. If the bullet had been a quarter of an inch over and had smashed bone, Wintone knew Flynn would be less brave and more sensible.
“Where you from, Mr. Flynn?” Wintone asked.
“Wood River, Illinois. I work in a refinery there but I’m on leave of absence.”
“What you best do is go back to Wood River, back to what family you got.”
“Where he should go is to a hospital,” Doc Amis said. “He should get that wound looked at by a specialist.”
“It’s not that serious,” Flynn said. He got down off the padded table and winced in pain. Sarah picked up a bloody checked shirt, draping it over his shoulders like a shawl.
“There’s no way I can make him go,” Doc Amis said to Wintone.
“No there’s not,” Flynn said. “I got something personal against Bonegrinder now.”
“You got somethin’ personal against some idiot in a boat who blasts away at lake water without thinkin’!” Wintone said angrily.
Flynn shook his head. “It was an accident.”
Wintone felt the anger heat up and spread through him. “A goddamned predictable accident!”
Flynn’s jaw jutted farther and his ruddy face set with renewed stubbornness.
“Billy….” Sarah said in a soft warning voice, placing her fingertips on Wintone’s shoulder.
Wintone realized he was holding his breath, exhaled in a long sigh that eased tension, not just in himself but in the tiny, green-walled room. “I need you to come down to my office,” he said to Flynn, “to sign a written statement. Your friends have to come, too. I need their account of what happened.” Wintone held the door open for Flynn.
In the waiting room the three anxious men stood up, looked at Flynn and Doc Amis questioningly.
“Nothing serious,” Flynn said.
One of the three men, a bearded giant with small, sleepy eyes, whooshed out an exaggerated sigh of relief. They walked over near Flynn, looking at the bandaged arm. Despite his pain, Flynn seemed to be enjoying the attention.
“Bullet went right on through,” Flynn said, sucking in his paunch. “We’re not going to let this stop us.”
“Damned right we’re not!” the bearded man said in a bass voice. “We shoulda shot back at the bastard!” The four of them laughed at what was right now a joke. One of the men took off his glasses, as if he no longer needed them now that everything was all right.
“You got state fishin’ licenses?” Wintone asked suddenly.
Laughter stopped. “I do,” the smallest of the four said.
“We weren’t fishing,” the man with the glasses said.
“You was out on the lake in a fishin’ boat, an’ accordin’ to Flynn there was fishin’ equipment in that boat.”
“Was,” the bearded man repeated, his eyes less sleepy.
“And not for catching fish,” Flynn said. “You don’t catch lake fish with our equipment.”
Wintone’s voice was soft but meaningful. “Next time you’re out in that boat with so much as a hook you all better have your state licenses; if you got a handgun you better have a permit for that; you better be at or under your limit if there’s fish in the boat; you better not have nothin’ out of season or nothin’ in the boat or car or on your person that constitutes a dangerous weapon.”
The bearded man drew up to impressive full height. “You goin’ to harass honest citizens, Sheriff?”
Wintone walked to the outside door, opened it and stood waiting for the honest citizens. “I’m gonna uphold the law like I never done before.”
In Wintone’s office the four men gave their statements. Flynn’s story was corroborated. Nobody was able to describe in any detail the men in the other boat—only the scant description of the bald, mustached man wearing a red shirt.
After the four men had left, Wintone sat at his desk thinking of Baily Howe and his reward money. Word would soon reach Howe that Wintone was applying the law to the letter, discouraging the hard-case searchers who were left—the militia. Probably Mayor Boemer would be on the phone to Howe by morning.
Let them try for his job, if that was their decision. Wintone wouldn’t make it easy for them. Howe might be rich, but he still had his limitations. And Mayor Boemer was afraid of Wintone, for what he might know, and for what he might do. Boemer’s reelection for term after term had been almost automatic, unopposed. It didn’t have to be that way.
The office seemed to have gotten smaller around Wintone. He got up, filed the statements on the Flynn shooting, then went out and got in the patrol car.
Wintone drove to several points on the lake shore, scanning the water and the bank with binoculars, looking for a bald man, or a man with a hat, wearing a red shirt. He had what luck he expected: none.
But as the sheriff was driving back to Colver, near Higgins’ Motel, he rounded a dusty bend in the road and saw the young photographer and the girl.
They were standing alongside a dented, white Volkswagen that was jacked up on one side and tilting away from the road. The left rear wheel had been removed and was lying flat near the elevated side of the car, and the photographer suddenly squatted over it, his elbows on his knees and his head bowed. The girl was standing near the front of the car. She appeared worried and was gnawing her lower lip.
Wintone braked and pulled the patrol car to the side of the road, twisted to look over his shoulder, then backed the car to park in front of the crippled Volkswagen. He got out of the car and walked back.
The photographer, his bushy, reddish hair matted and glistening with sweat, was standing now over the detached wheel. “Flat tire,” he said simply.
Wintone smiled. “Got a spare?”
The young man mustered what feeble laughter he could and shook his head. “This is the spare. When I got it out I found it had gone flat. Looks like a leaky valve stem.”
Wintone looked at the girl close up then for the first time. He felt a wave of emotion break through him. She didn’t really look like Etty, and she was much taller, but still there was something … the eyes, maybe … the lips definitely … and something in the way she held herself, the tight arch to her back. But she was very young, in her early twenties at most, a very young girl.
“We’re almost within walking distance of the motel,” she said, seemingly to both men.
“Hot day,” Wintone said. “No point in walkin’. I’m Sheriff Billy Wintone.”
“Alan and Kelly Greer,” the photographer said. There was something about him Wintone liked, and envied. He wished Alan and Kelly Greer more luck than had been his and Etty’s.
“We’re from Kansas City,” Kelly said, as if that explained what they were doing standing next to a broken-down old car at the side of an Ozark road. “We saw you earlier this week. The dynamiters. Remember?”
Wintone smiled again and nodded. “I remember.” He looked down at the tire at Alan Greer’s feet, “Why don’t I drive you into Colver, get that valve stem replaced an’ the tire aired up? We can drop your wife at the motel on the way.”
Alan grinned. “All right. Listen, Sheriff, I appreciate it.”
Wintone waved the thanks away, walked to the rear of the patrol car and opened the trunk so Alan Greer could put the Volkswagen tire inside. With very little effort Alan lifted the flat spare tire and walked back to lay it sideways in the trunk. Then he brushed his hands and took a few half-running steps back to the white Volkswagen. He reach
ed inside through the rolled-down window and pulled out his camera in its leather carrying case.
“Nothing else in there of value,” he said, as he slung the case’s strap around his neck and returned to the patrol car.
Alan Greer got into the front on the passenger’s side while Wintone held open a rear door for Kelly. She edged onto the seat with a flash of tan inner thigh.
“I’ve read a few things about you in the papers, Sheriff,” Alan Greer said as the car accelerated and rocks pinged off the fenders. “I’m a free-lance photographer, here to put together something on Bonegrinder. I’d be interested in any of your opinions’ or suggestions.”
“Only so much you can photograph around here,” Wintone said. “Shouldn’t take you long.”
Alan Greer shook his head. “To a photographer’s eye there’s a world of variety in this area, Sheriff. What do you think Bonegrinder is?”
Wintone stared straight ahead through the dust-streaked windshield. “I don’t expect we’ll ever know. Like you said, there’s a world of variety in this area, and strange things have a way of happenin’.”
“It’s beautiful around here,” Kelly said from the backseat, “but it scares me. As if in an Eden like this there must be a serpent.”
“Snakes a’plenty,” Wintone said. “More likely the biggest danger’s from all the armed fools still roamin’ around here. Man was accidentally shot out on the lake earlier today. Only in the arm, but he’s too dumb to know it coulda been otherwise. Tell you the truth, I’d advise you to leave. I aim to put a stop to some of what’s goin’ on, but it can’t all be stopped.”
“What do you think’s going to happen, Sheriff?” Kelly asked.
“I think somebody else is goin’ to get hurt or killed, and I’d as soon it wasn’t either of you two.”
They had reached Higgins’ Motel, and Alan Greer pointed to their cabin. Wintone braked the patrol car close to the front door and waited while Kelly got out. Alan handed her the cabin key through the car window, telling her he’d be back soon. She bent low for a better view of Wintone through the open window and told him thanks again and it was nice to have met him. He glanced at her graceful figure as she walked toward the cabin, and sensed that her husband had anticipated his look. Wintone quickly turned away and tapped the accelerator.
“I meant what I said,” he told Alan Greer, when they were back on the road and dust was finding its way in through the still-rolled-down window. “Both of you should leave, but you should at least get your wife outa here. Let her wait for you in Kansas City.”
Alan hastily rolled up the window and wiped dust and perspiration from his eyes with his soiled sleeve. “Kelly won’t leave while I’m here, Sheriff, and I have to stay until I finish my work.”
“She leave if you ask her?”
“I doubt it.” He folded his hands over the camera case in his lap.
“What if you tell her?”
Alan Greer laughed. “Kelly’s nothing if not stubborn, Sheriff, and in her own way she considers herself as capable as I am. She’d say if it’s too dangerous here for her, it’s too dangerous for me—we both go or we both stay.”
“That’s a shame,” Wintone said.
Alan Greer shrugged. “I don’t think I’d want her any different.”
Wintone smiled. “Guess not.” He took a curve in the road with his gentle touch on the wheel. “She reminds me of my wife.”
“Oh? I’d like to meet her.”
“She’s dead,” Wintone said. “A fool’s victim.”
Wintone could see that he’d surprised Alan Greer, and the young man chose to keep his silence the rest of the way into Colver.
Just as well. Wintone felt like being silent himself.
TWENTY-THREE
BILL PETERSON SAT ON the edge of the motel bed and watched his wife browse through some travel brochures they’d picked up at a souvenir shop. She was seated at the small writing desk near the window, and her lean face appeared tranquil in the light diffused by the closed blue drapes. Peterson had been able to talk to her lately, and as long as they could communicate, he knew there was some hope for their marriage.
He studied her elegant, lean figure, the curve of her hip on the chair. Melanie was at the lake fishing. The desire to make love to Cheryl here in the quiet motel room while they had the opportunity awakened in Peterson’s loins, but he was sure she’d reject him. And an unsuccessful attempt at seduction might undo whatever rapport they’d achieved in the last few days.
The opportunity for reconciliation was eluding him. They would be starting for home soon, probably tomorrow evening. A quiet panic moved through Peterson.
Footsteps sounded on the pavement outside. Peterson thought it might be Melanie returning from the lake, but it wasn’t. “Glad we came here?” he asked his wife.
“Melanie seems to be enjoying herself. You were right about that.”
“Only that?”
“I think so, Bill.” Cheryl put the stack of color brochures aside on the small desk. She had hesitated.
Peterson reached to the table by the bed for his pack of cigarettes and lighter. As he touched flame to tobacco, he watched Cheryl’s thin shoulders, the line of her cheek against the sun-bright drapes. “Carl isn’t for you,” he said.
Cheryl turned in the small wooden chair to face him squarely, the light at her back. “I haven’t changed my mind, Bill.”
“But you’ve thought about it.”
“I’ve never really reconsidered …”
Peterson shook his head. “You must have. The very fact that you’ve thought about the matter means you’re not sure.”
“It means I’ve thought about it,” Cheryl said simply, “as I promised you I would.”
“If you’ve thought about it objectively,” Peterson said, “you know Carl isn’t for you—not on a permanent basis.”
Peterson felt a dark frustration as he saw Cheryl’s face assume its now-familiar dispassionate mask, this time the smiling variation that revealed nothing.
“Not much in this world is on a permanent basis, Bill.” She sat very still against the light, as if solidified by the truth of her statement.
“But some things are certain,” Peterson said firmly, “and one certain thing is that Melanie will be harmed by what you’re proposing.”
“Maybe not in the long run—maybe it will be just the opposite. I’m as concerned as you are with Melanie’s welfare, but she wouldn’t be the first child of divorced parents.”
“But damn it, I’m her father! Me!” Peterson stood up from the bed. He was getting excited, and he didn’t want that. “You just don’t seem to realize the seriousness of what you’re considering,” he said in a softer but vibrant voice. “I don’t want Melanie to suffer.”
“I don’t want anyone to suffer,” Cheryl said, “either her or you. This isn’t easy for me.”
“And it isn’t right for you.”
“That’s for me to decide.”
“But you can’t decide, can you? Not for sure.”
Uncertainty shattered the mask of her set features. “What you’re doing to me …” she began, but the doorknob rattled and she broke off.
Melanie rushed through the opened door, dropping her fiberglass fishing rod outside with a clatter. Her chest was heaving and her thick glasses magnified the fright in her eyes.
“Did you run here all the way from the lake?” Cheryl asked.
Melanie nodded, more frightened than breathless from running. “I was fishing and I heard something….“
“Heard what?” Peterson asked, moving next to her and resting his hand on her shoulder. He didn’t know if the heartbeat he felt was Melanie’s or his own pulse.
Melanie looked up at him. “I heard some splashing, real near me, then a—” She made a low, gravelly, moaning sound from deep in her throat.
Cheryl’s face was older now, creased with concern. “The stories in the papers, Bill …”
“That’s ridiculous!” Peter
son snapped. He bent and patted Melanie’s back, pressed her to him for a second. “You probably heard a fish or frog jumping,” he said gently, “or some quirk of the wind.”
“But I did hear something!”
“Nature is never quiet, Melanie. There are always things to hear if you’ll listen.”
“Maybe you ought to listen to Melanie,” Cheryl said.
“I’m telling her there isn’t any reason to be afraid,” Peterson said, “and there isn’t. But if it’ll make you feel better,” he said, stooping to talk to his daughter, “we’ll go to some other part of the lake. I know a place where they’re supposed to be biting on any kind of bait.”
“Is it close?”
“No, pretty far.”
“Good.” Melanie had calmed down now. She raised the tail of her cotton shirt to wipe the perspiration from her forehead and eyes while Peterson held her glasses. He kissed her on the cheek and she smiled. It made him feel proud and useful to be able to erase her fears with his reassurances.
“Why don’t we go out and get some breakfast first,” Peterson said, glancing up at Cheryl.
“Pancakes?” Melanie asked.
“Pancakes it is,” Peterson said. “But definitely fish for supper!”
He was glad to hear Melanie laugh, gladder still to receive the hint of a smile from Cheryl.
When they’d finished breakfast the Petersons returned to the motel to change clothes and get their fishing equipment. Then they drove down a rutted, tree-lined road to the boat dock where their flat-bottomed aluminum rental boat was tied.
After loading the boat Peterson cautioned Melanie to stay seated, unknotted the docking rope and pushed away from the worn-out automobile tires lashed as buffers to the wooden dock. He started the outboard motor, adjusted the throttle and steered the boat out into the lake, then headed south parallel to the increasingly rugged shoreline. The lake was relatively calm today, a blue-green reflective plane of wavering, distorted images. Formless clouds drifted overhead casting vast indistinct shadows.
The motor wasn’t very powerful, but the flat-prowed boat managed surprising speed, the small waves spanking the aluminum bottom with metallic slapping sounds.
