White Birch Graffiti (White Birch Village Book 2)

by Jeff Van Valer

  Karen: “My niece is up there with a laptop and scanner. Beyond that, I have no idea.”

  Hoss: “We can figure it out when we get up there. Send the images right from the office. Then we can get on the phone and call the news peop—… You do have internet up there, don’t you?”

  Karen pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Internet this far out here’s like science fiction.”

  Hoss pouted instantly. “How nineteen nineties. You’d think by now—”

  Karen: “Last month it was the nineteen nineties.”

  Hoss: “Nicely stated… good to see a smile on your face, Ted… okay, Karen. Where’s the nearest internet access?”

  Karen: “Offices in The Village—White Birch Village—might have something. But maybe we’d have to go all the way to Traverse City.”

  Hoss: “Shit.”

  Ted: “What’s that? Twenty minutes?” Karen nodded.

  Hoss: “All right. Gimme five minutes, give or take, to get my car over here. Tedski. I bet I can get back here before you can cut out that board.”

  Ted figured the back of the archery range would be five minutes at a brisk walk. “I doubt it, but you can try,” Ted said. He gauged Hoss. Back in the day, Hoss was only about five percent trustworthy, but he was convincing at least ninety percent of the time. Over thirty years of practice, the guy could teach himself the remaining ten.

  Hoss started toward the emergency door and stopped. “Hey, Ted?” he asked. “Could you slip me back my Bond piece?”

  Karen’s face whitened as Ted handed over the gun, and Hoss disappeared. Ted walked back to the wooden floor and climbed onto Hoss’s old bunk.

  Karen said, “He sure got out of here in a hurry when he found out we have another list.”

  “Yeah,” Ted said, weaving his way through the struts to the loft. “I guess he did.”

  Still looking out the windows, Karen said, “Do you think he’s really going to come back?”

  “Yeah,” Ted said. “I actually do.” He grunted once or twice, twisting himself into position beneath the rafter. Karen handed the saw up to him, between the loft’s floorboards. “Now I gotta figure out how to cut this thing with the saw upside down,” he said. A few scraping sounds overwhelmed the outside bluster as Ted set the blade. In another second, he was at steady work with the saw.

  Pure adrenaline drove him and distracted him from his hobbled knee, his gunshot wound, and the thought of turning loose his life’s biggest secret. In thirty seconds, Ted was halfway through the rafter’s width.

  “How ya doin’ up there?” Karen asked, pacing.

  He was doing very well, as a matter of fact. His arm was on fire, but it still worked. In another minute, he put the saw down and rolled onto his back. With a right-legged kick to the rafter, the section he’d cut broke loose. After another kick, the board was loose enough to pull down by hand, leaving exposed nails and roof planks behind.

  “You got it!” Karen said, moving to the sink area. Ted passed the board to her between the slats and climbed back down. The last record of its kind on this earth was a little clunky, but it would do.

  And as though on cue, Hoss pulled his car up to the north of the cabin, at the far end of Cabin Row.

  “Hoss made it back in a hurry,” Ted said. “But I still won the bet.”

  He and Karen strolled up to the counselor area, to meet him. It was door-to-door service.

  “Who are you going to call first?” Karen asked.

  “After we e-mail these names all across the country, I think I’m going to call a man named Frank Bruska.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Detective at home. He’s the one man after me the most. Blue River doesn’t take handouts from the McDaniels. He’ll be okay. I almost miss the guy. What about you?” he asked Karen.

  “Nobody in partic—”

  She froze on her next step as glass in the front door shattered and fell to the floor.

  Ted mouthed the words, What the hell?

  A dark-complected hand sporting flecks of dried blood reached through the broken glass and draped a handkerchief over the doorknob.

  CHAPTER 59

  Mr. Gray stood on the Cabin 7 stoop. He put down his five-gallon gasoline can to wrap a rag around his hand. “Why am I doing all the fuckin’ work here?” he whispered to Lewis, as though Mr. Green himself might be listening.

  Lewis offered his best example of a sheepish grin. Huh. Look who’s acting all casual now. “Come on, man, let’s just burn this thing and get out of here.”

  Mr. Gray punched and shattered one of the windowpanes and used the rag to unlock the door from the inside. He opened the door, picked up the full, red plastic gasoline can, and walked in. Lewis watched him closely. The first thing Mr. Gray did when he neared the threshold to the cabin’s bunk area was look up and to the right.

  Lewis followed the gaze. From low left on a rafter strut was a timeline. 1968, ’69, space, ’71. That clinched two things. One, the men they’d traipsed all over the country to eliminate were connected to this cabin in 1970. And two? Mr. Gray’s been here before, and he tried to hide it.

  When Mr. Gray got done incriminating himself by glancing at the empty space in the rafters, something at his left startled him. He gasped and spun in that direction. In a rush of pure instinct, Lewis yanked his .45 from its holster, leaving his 9mm against the other side of his ribcage.

  In his surprise, Mr. Gray dropped the gas can, which ruptured somewhere along its bottom. The gasoline seeped into a puddle.

  “I hear Al Michaels talkin’,” Mr. Gray said.

  “Al… what?” Lewis had already leveled his weapon and crossed into the cabin area.

  “‘Do you believe in miracles?’” Mr. Gray said.

  Then Lewis saw him. The doctor. Crouched next to the cheaply-built, plywood closets, he looked like a hunted animal with no options left but to hiss.

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Lewis said, ready to solve a couple of big problems. “I believe in miracles now.” It was also do-or-die. In this jump-scare surprise, Lewis’s partnership with Mr. Gray had just become obsolete.

  Two minutes earlier

  The phone rang again, and Bradie snatched it up. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Bradie. It’s Frank Bruska again.”

  “Yeah. Hi.”

  “So tell me. Are you the only one in the office?”

  “Mm-hm.” Bradie hadn’t moved from her seat at the desk, except to check the locks on both doors. She straightened her back and lifted her chin to see over the counter. Except for a shape-shifting pocket of snow blowing down the highway, it was quiet.

  “Just to update you,” the detective said, “I’ve called your county sheriff’s department and asked them to visit your camp as soon as—”

  “Ted’s not going to hurt my aunt, is he?”

  She wasn’t quite ready to give up on Ted, but her throat seized a little with every millisecond the detective hesitated. “Bradie, I can’t say for sure, but I know this guy. He’s a doctor, a good guy, and I have some documents in front of me that suggest he’s pretty fond of your aunt. They seem to have known each other a long time.”

  “That sounds better. So you said somebody’s after Ted?”

  “Yeah. Looks that way.”

  “Wonder why he’s come all the way up h—”

  Bradie froze as a midnight-blue pick-up stopped in the highway. The driver side window rolled down, and a deeply severe-looking bald man with a swollen nose glared at the office cabin.

  The fluorescent lights were off, the cars out back. The office had a fair chance of looking closed from the highway. The bald man seemed to survey the cabin and the ground around it. He was a predator, and all she could do was remain still. Fresh snow, she thought. No footprints. No lights on inside.

  Don’t move a muscle.

  “Bradie? Are you there?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Some
guy. Looks like two guys, in a truck. They’re just stopped in the road, looking at the—okay. He put his window back up. He’s moving.” Rolling south. But not accelerating very much. Through the south window, she could see the sandy road leading to Cabin Row. Speed up, she thought.

  Just hit the gas pedal and get out of here. Don’t. Turn.

  The truck turned toward Cabin Row.

  “No…” she moaned.

  “What is it, Bradie?”

  “They just turned toward the cabins.”

  “All right, Bradie. We’ve called the sheriff. Let’s get you to hang up and dial—”

  Click, went the line. Bradie dialed 911.

  CHAPTER 60

  “I believe in miracles, too,” Ted said to Trashcan Face.

  “You better, you slippery bastard,” the man said back. “You’re gonna need a big one about now.”

  Ted remembered the 1980 Winter Olympics. The United States played Russia in hockey and won. Jim Craig, the goalie, wrapped himself in an American flag, his hair matted with sweat. With seconds left in the game, announcer Al Michaels asked a simple question. “Do you believe in miracles?”

  Ted had always wanted to see Lake Placid, New York, where those games took place. He and his dad planned on going there some day. It was the first time in Ted’s life he knew for certain he wouldn’t live to make good on a dream.

  This is gonna hurt Dad. Suzanne, too.

  Ted’s hope, though, was for a different miracle, a better one. Don’t make a move, Karen. For everything that’s important in this world, please survive this.

  It’d been possibly under three minutes since Hoss left. It might be several before he returned, even if he did walk briskly. Ted figured the little Bond piece would be of no help at this point.

  The dark barrel of Ironman’s gun opened toward him. This bullet would do the job. Ted always wondered if what they said was true. Would he see the muzzle flash before he died? Would he hear the blast? Did Kathryn feel anything when she left this earth? He doubted it. The bullet was so fast, the wound so massive. For one microsecond her sympathetic expression would’ve gone unchanged, even as the bullet exited her head. Like that old science-book image of a high-powered round exploding out of the far side of an apple, in which the apple itself had not yet lost its shape, the freeze-frame image of Kathryn’s head wouldn’t go away. Maybe it was good the same was about to happen to Ted.

  He didn’t feel fear, just disappointment, anger. Hate. He was flooded with it. He was beat-Frank-Bruska-half-to-death livid.

  Ted figured, at the very least, he was not going to exit the world quietly. Taking his chances on seeing how many words he could get out before Ironman pulled the trigger, Ted said, “You guys look like you’ve had a bad day. You should see a doctor. Especially you, Trashcan. Have you gotten a load of your face in a mirror?”

  The man didn’t respond, but something almost imperceptible crossed the working parts of his macerated face. His eyes rolled toward Ironman, but his head remained still. A drop of runny red fluid (serosanguineous is what Ted would call it in the ER) traced a red line down the man’s cheek. A silenced pistol hung at his side, against his right thigh.

  Where Ironman couldn’t see it.

  “Whatcha lookin’ at, Trashcan? Whatta you hidin’ from Ironman?”

  Ironman focused for a second on Trashcan Face.

  “Just do the honors,” Trashcan said, “and let’s get outta this fuckin’ place.”

  Each man in the dubious triangle could see the other two. But they had to turn their heads to do it. Concentrate on one, and you couldn’t see exactly what the other was doing.

  Ted faced Ironman and refused to look away. Ironman, though, kept his gaze equidistant between Ted and Trashcan Face, appearing to concentrate on both.

  Trashcan lifted his weapon vaguely toward Ted. “Fine. If you can’t do him, I w—”

  Ted saw the muzzle flash after all.

  ~~~

  Lewis figured he had to shoot two men, and it only made sense to aim first at the man hired to kill him, the deadly shooter with the gun in his hand. He spun to his right with a speed and precision that made his move instantaneous. Then he drilled Mr. Gray. Double-tap to the head. The second shot exploded from the far side of his partner’s skull before the first even made the man fall. Mr. Gray would’ve approved of runny, red goop—someone else’s goop, anyway—splattering on the cabin wall, but Lewis didn’t much care for it.

  Now all Lewis needed to do was pull the trigger one more time, drop a match on the gasoline, and get the hell out. Tall Man or no Tall Man, Lewis wasn’t going to wait around. This was as close to perfect as this crime was going to get. Before training his gun on the doctor, he checked again, in his usual knack for self-preservation, on Mr. Gray.

  Motherfucker was dead.

  A bloody halo grew around a mangled and surprised face with some of the head missing behind it. Lewis would rather have used a shotgun and blown the guy’s head apart, leaving nothing but a face. And maybe some ripped-out optic nerves resting on the floor like bloated worms in the rain. But you can’t have everything. Sometimes, when you have to shoot somebody in the head, all you have is a .45.

  “Hey, Doc,” he said, opting to say something a little unprofessional to celebrate. “That what your wife looked l—

  In a flash of pure reactivity, Lewis spun again, this time to his left, as though spring-loaded and just released. As he did, he aimed his gun accordingly and fired.

  Right before something like a wrecking ball smashed into the side of his head in a blinding starburst of pain, Lewis registered someone else in the room—a woman with her head on fire—and a small, open door. Then, with not even time enough to stagger, a truck or train smashed him from the side.

  ~~~

  When the bald man said, “Hey, Doc,” Karen burst out of a plywood closet. Before she and Ted delivered a powerful list of former campers to the world via the internet, she was determined to show it to the bald guy. Up close, so he could see it. Right foot first, she side-stepped into a proficient delivery. In an explosive pelvic rotation, core twist and arm extension, she sent everything she had into a left-handed swing that drove Ironman’s right temple home with the graffiti board’s sweet spot.

  His gun fired more or less the same time the board cracked into it. The gun flew across the cabin as Ted took flight.

  ~~~

  By the time Karen delivered her little message, Ted was already airborne, embarking on a murderous, ten-foot journey to Ironman. Karen spun around and fell face first. The board tumbled across the floor, well past the spilling gasoline puddle. It resonated in the hollow cabin like the dropped, wooden bat it had become. The back of Ironman’s head hit the floor with a big THUNK!, a little crack, and no bounce.

  After Ted mangled Ironman’s face with three or four punches, he realized Karen had been shot.

  CHAPTER 61

  In the last four days, Ted lived through blood, black horror, and a sense of loss he couldn’t begin to process. It got that much worse and desperate with Karen’s body on the floor. Ted ransacked Ironman’s jacket like Lloyd looking for his whiskey. He found a holstered pistol and slid it across the cabin floor. Trashcan Face couldn’t possibly be more dead, he figured. So Ted bounded over to Karen.

  He wanted to grab her shoulder and turn her over to see her face, to look at those green eyes, to make sure she was all right. But he knew otherwise. She’d been shot. With a .45, the same kind of bullet that dropped Trashcan. Ted leaned down to talk to Karen, hoping she was coherent in some way, hoping she could be saved. He felt his desperate, impotent hatred returning.

  Hoss. He set us up.

  Karen was going to die. He was sure of it. Either that, or she was already dead. He had a flash notion to take one of the guns, blow Ironman’s head off, and turn the gun on himself, to end this whole thing once and for all. Somebody would come and find the board, and take care of all this McDaniel business.

  Hope he makes a
good president.

  But something automatic made Ted act the way he would as a doctor, not moving Karen, not taking a chance at turning her head and making permanent some possible neck injury.

  He leaned down to her, checking for any motion that would indicate breathing. “Karen,” he tried to say. He cleared his throat and tried again. The next thing he heard was a string of expletives harsh enough to embarrass any truck driver, sailor, or emergency physician.

  Then Karen spoke again. “He shot me!”

  Alert and oriented is how the ER would describe Karen’s mental status. Inside Ted, a parachute of ambition snapped open. It pulled him up and gave him instant purpose.

  “How bad is it?” he asked, putting his hand on her left shoulder, making gentle little circles with his palm.

  Karen rolled over and sat up. “Pretty damn bad, if you ask me.” Down feathers poked out of a few holes in her jacket, above and to the right of her right breast. Ted put one palm on each side of her face and wrapped his fingers around to her hairline. He gripped her head gently, controlling it, as though to kiss her. He ran his fingers through her hair and down her neck. Nothing but dry hair and intact skin.

  “Does your neck hurt?”

  “No.”

  He turned her head to each side and flexed and extended her neck. “Looks good.”

  “I can move my fingers.” She flexed her elbow. When she lifted her arm at the shoulder, she winced, but she could do it.

  He unzipped her jacket, pushed it off her shoulders. Each of several little holes in her sweater sat at the center of its own little nest of red. Her blood oozed. It didn’t pulse. “You’re bleeding but not hemorrhaging.”

  No gross bleeding. Full strength. Neurovascular pretty good.

  “Hold still and rest your shoulder.”

  He reached for her chest…

  “Ted?”

  …and put both sets of fingers into the V-neck of her sweater.