Lone Jack Trail

by Owen Laukkanen

  Mason rolled down the Blazer’s window. “Rengo,” he called. “We’ve got places to be.”

  Rengo waved him off. “Come on out here a sec, Burke,” he replied. “Want you to meet someone.”

  The man, whoever he was, looked markedly less thrilled to have come across Rengo than vice versa. He looked down at the kid with undisguised impatience, and there was an air about him that suggested this whole situation wasn’t unfamiliar.

  Mason sighed and killed the engine, climbed out of the truck as Rengo stepped back from the newcomer, beaming and gesturing like he was auctioning a prize horse.

  “Mason Burke, meet Bad Boyd,” the kid said. “Closest thing our shit-ass town ever had to a bona fide celebrity.”

  So there: he was famous, and as Mason came closer, he pegged Boyd for a pro athlete. He was taller than Mason, for one thing—and that was no small feat. Built out too. And he carried himself in a certain way: precise, economical. No wasted movement as he stepped forward, hand outstretched, a politician’s smile everywhere but his eyes.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Burke,” Boyd said, and his grip was firm. He looked Mason in the eye, and Mason met his gaze and held it, as tough as that was. He’d spent almost half his life in a place where eye contact was a challenge, an invitation to fight, and even now, six months out of prison, he was still trying to teach himself a new code.

  “Burke was in prison too,” Rengo said, catching both men off guard. Boyd dropped the handshake; his smile flickered a little, and there was something underneath, a glimpse of the real man behind the facade.

  “Murder,” Rengo said, grinning at Boyd. “First degree, right, Burke?”

  Now it was Mason’s turn to feel like the specimen on display. He started, “Kid—”

  “Where’d you do your time?” Boyd asked, interrupting. “Wasn’t Coyote Ridge, was it? I’d remember you.”

  Mason hesitated. The integrity of the upright guides them, he thought, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.

  He’d resolved when he came out of prison that he’d be open and honest about his life when he talked about it, take responsibility for what he’d done and own up to the punishment he’d endured. He forced himself to take ownership, even when it was hard.

  But this? This sounded like bragging.

  “I was back in Michigan,” he told Boyd. “Upstate. The Chippewa pen.”

  Boyd nodded. “How long?”

  “Fifteen years,” Mason told him, and Boyd whistled. “Been out about six months now.”

  “Well, hell,” Boyd said, grinning. “Compared to you, Burke, I’m just a baby. Served three and a half and I about lost my mind.”

  “It’s tough,” Mason agreed.

  They let that sit for a beat, Boyd still nodding and smiling and sizing Mason up, Rengo grinning like a fool between the two of them, and finally Mason figured he might as well ask, figured Boyd was waiting for it, figured this was what conversation between ex-cons was supposed to look like.

  Figured it wasn’t much different from the way conversation was like on the inside.

  “What’d you go in for?” he asked, and Boyd smiled wider.

  “Hell, it was nothing like murder,” he said. “It was just a little bit of dogfighting.”

  “He’s a hockey player,” Rengo said as Mason drove, tight-lipped, up Main Street toward the highway. “Was a hockey player, anyway, until the dog stuff happened.”

  The dog stuff.

  Mason didn’t say anything. Didn’t trust himself to speak, didn’t know what he would say, but it wouldn’t be pleasant. He’d seen how Lucy’d looked, the day the lady from the rescue agency brought her into the prison for training; the dog had been terrified, pitiful, too scared to come out of her cage, even.

  It was men like Boyd who had done that, instilled the fear in her, and Mason had worked hard to cure Lucy of it. To hear the rescue lady tell it, Lucy had been one of the lucky ones; they’d found dogs in that fighting ring that had been treated so savagely there’d been no choice but to put them down.

  Dog stuff, Mason thought. Just a little bit of dogfighting.

  “He was a damn good hockey player too. Scored eighty points in the show one year, plus he could fight.” Rengo was rambling, happy, watching trees pass by the window without a goddamn clue. “A guy like that—tough guy, good hands—hell, he could have been a Hall of Famer. And then…”

  Rengo trailed off, clucked his teeth like it was some kind of tragedy, and Mason busied himself concentrating on the road. Hoped the kid would run out his spiel and shut up for a change, put Bad Brock Boyd in the rearview.

  The kid seemed to catch his expression. “Aw, hell, Burke,” he said. “It’s not like that; you don’t have to worry. Boyd wouldn’t do anything to Lucy.”

  Mason kept driving. Winding two-lane road, the Pacific Ocean visible in glimpses through the forest, the truck’s engine revving coming out of the corners.

  He focused on the road, on the turns of the highway. On the feel of the steering wheel in his hands.

  “You’re right,” he said finally. “He won’t.”

  FOUR

  Mason was alone the second time he met Boyd. No Rengo, no Lucy. A rainy day, and Joe Clifford’s wonky back starting to ail him, so they’d agreed to take an off day at the jobsite and just rest and relax some. Jess was at work, with Lucy riding shotgun in a Makah County cruiser, so Mason more or less had the day to himself.

  He’d eaten breakfast at Rosemary’s, two eggs over easy, sausage and hash browns, a cup of black coffee, in the corner booth. Then he’d browsed for a while in Chase Ogilvy’s marine supply store, shot the breeze about the weather and the Mariners and the state of Joe Clifford’s boat. And Mason had wandered around town awhile, thought of dropping in on Hank Moss at the motel, just to say hello. Besides Rengo, Hank was about the only friend Mason had in Deception; the rest of the town seemed to still regard him as an outsider at best, and at worst, as the man who’d helped murder three of Deception’s sons.

  Mason figured the average citizen probably saw him as a convicted killer from back east who’d somehow sunk his hooks into the town’s decorated war hero, but either way, he’d grown used to eating his meals alone, to the slow sidelong glances in his direction, the hushed voices. To the people who saw him coming and quickly crossed the street.

  He was alone in Deception, more or less, but as long as Mason Burke had Jess Winslow, and Lucy, he figured he’d be just fine.

  He wound up back at the Nootka, curled up on the settee with the stove running and a book in his hand, rain spattering against the wheelhouse window and the harbor outside a monochrome of gray sky and black water and faded reds and blues. He tried to read but couldn’t fully focus, caught himself looking up every page or so, thinking the dog should be snoozing at his feet somewhere, but of course the dog was with Jess and Mason was alone, so he spent the afternoon alternately reading and watching the rain.

  Until he heard the footsteps on the wharf outside.

  There wasn’t much of a fishing fleet in Deception Cove anymore, certainly not many boats that were operational, and visitors down Mason’s stretch of dock were rare. He set down his book and listened—heavy boot steps on wet lumber—and he slid off the settee and reached for the baseball bat, just in case, slipped on his boots, and pushed open the top half of the Dutch door in back of the wheelhouse to see who was coming, and why.

  The visitor was Brock Boyd. The hockey player was dressed for the weather, his motorcycle jacket replaced by a fancy hiker’s raincoat in electric orange. Mason watched Boyd scan the dock, read the name on the stern of Joe Clifford’s boat, and look up toward the wheelhouse. Watched him see Mason and smile, raise his hand in greeting. “Burke,” he said. “They told me I’d find you here.”

  “Guess they were right,” Mason replied. “What can I do for you, Mr. Boyd?”

  The too-friendly smile only widened. “Brock, please,” he said. “Hell, call me Boyd if it suits you. Was won
dering if you might want to go up to the Cobalt, drink a beer together. Trade war stories, kind of thing.”

  Mason shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “You busy?” Boyd asked. “Some other time, then. Hell, maybe you’ve got a bottle on that boat of yours, save us the trip up the dock.”

  Mason realized he was still holding tight to the bat. “That’s not going to work for me,” he told Boyd. “Not here or the Cobalt, I’m afraid.”

  Boyd studied him, from out in the rain on that dock in his expensive designer raingear, eyeing Mason like he wasn’t sure what to make of him, his smile fading slightly, and the rain wreaking havoc on his haircut.

  “Some other time, then,” he said again. “Listen, Burke, I’d really like to talk. Maybe you’ve heard, but I’m not the most popular man in this town, not anymore, and I doubt very much that you are either. Seems to me we could both use a friend.”

  Mason forced himself to hold the man’s gaze. Wished he could see another way out of this but figured he was better off cutting Boyd loose right here and now instead of letting this fester.

  “I won’t ever be your friend, Boyd,” he told the dogfighter. “I don’t mean any offense, but that’s just how it is.”

  Boyd opened his mouth to reply. Closed it again. He blinked.

  “You’re shutting me down?” he said finally. “What am I, not rough enough for you, Burke? Because I’ll tell you, I never killed anybody, but—”

  “It’s the dogfighting,” Mason replied. “I don’t think you and I could ever find common ground, not if you’re the type to find sport in that kind of thing.”

  Boyd stared at him, still partway smiling, incredulous. And Mason figured there was no point in prolonging the conversation any further.

  “No offense,” he told Boyd. “But I reckon I’ve said all I need to. Good luck, Mr. Boyd.”

  He leaned out, took the top half of the Dutch door, and closed it. Set the bat against the bottom half and kicked off his boots, returning to the settee. Picked up his book and opened it to his page, stared at the words but didn’t read anything, not until he’d heard Bad Boyd’s boots beat a tattoo on the wharf boards, the dogfighter retreating to dry land again.

  * * *

  “You couldn’t just pretend to be nice to him, Burke?” Jess asked later, propped up on her elbow in bed—her bed, this time—watching Burke’s face as he relayed the story.

  Burke shook his head. “I just don’t like him,” he told her. “I don’t like what he stands for, or what he’s done in his life. There’s no point in pretending otherwise.”

  Jess exhaled, rolled onto her back. Looked up at the ceiling—Hank Moss’s best room, and still the odd stain up there. Hank had offered her a sweetheart deal on the room, so she’d taken it; she liked Hank, for one thing, and she liked having a space of her own, somewhere she and Lucy could be alone if she wanted, where she could work on the exercises the VA doc had assigned her, mindfulness stuff to go along with the therapy, some way to move on from Afghanistan—and move on from Afia, specifically.

  Whatever Burke thought about their separate living arrangements, he didn’t complain, and Jess knew he wouldn’t. He’d have gone back to Michigan if he believed it was best for her and the dog.

  Instead, he was here in her bed, his powerful body stretched out beneath a tangle of sheets, one strong arm wrapped around her, pulling her close enough that she could feel his heart beating, steady, in his chest.

  “Seems like you know a lot about the guy for someone who never struck me as a hockey fan,” Jess said, lifting her head slightly to study Burke’s face. “How’d you get caught up so fast?”

  Burke let out his breath. “Rengo introduced us the other day,” he said. “Seemed mighty proud of the both of us, how we’d both spent time inside.”

  Jess laughed. “Rengo,” she said. As far as she was concerned, it was one of Burke’s best qualities, how he’d more or less adopted the kid, found him something to do, brought him out of the woods and into some semblance of civilized life.

  Burke had never had that kind of help, Jess knew, and she knew, too, how it was important to him that he give back to someone what he’d learned in prison. She knew he hoped to help kids like Rengo, kids like he’d been, hoped to guide them away from the choices he’d made.

  She liked Rengo too, skinny and scrawny and fierce and good-hearted. She suspected that Burke got nearly as much from their time together as the kid did.

  But Burke wasn’t laughing. And Jess knew Burke was right, knew he couldn’t pretend to get along with Boyd. He wasn’t the type to blow smoke up anyone’s ass; he valued honesty above just about anything, and she admired him for it, but damn him, there were times when a little white lie wouldn’t hurt.

  “Well, he’s not Kirby Harwood,” Jess told him. “Could be he’s just trying to rebuild his life and do better, just like you, Burke. You ever think about that?”

  Burke thought about it. Then he grumbled. “I just wish he’d go about doing it in some other town,” he said.

  Jess laughed. Leaned up and kissed his lips, the line of his jaw.

  “Well, you’re going to have to learn to coexist,” she told him. “This far out in the hinterlands, that’s just how it works sometimes.”

  FIVE

  Mason kept his distance in the days after that awkward encounter on the wharf, caught sight of Brock Boyd’s big Cadillac truck in town now and then, saw that luxurious blond haircut leaving the Cobalt Pub or maybe pumping gas at the ARCO up by Hank Moss’s motel, but it was nearly a week before the men exchanged words again.

  And this time, it was something less cordial.

  It happened outside Spinnaker’s, the gluten-free, organic gourmet restaurant that Tim Turpin was running out of the old customs house over the water. Mason had never seen the place before Tim got hold of it, but he could see how the restaurateur had made the space his own. The restaurant was situated on pilings set out over the harbor, its double-high picture windows looking out onto the wharf and the Strait of Juan de Fuca beyond, the interior all reclaimed timber and iron, saw blades and fishing lures tacked up on the walls for decoration.

  Tim catered to tourists, mainly, especially in the summer months; in the winter, he dropped his prices fifteen percent and just managed to keep the lights on. People in Deception figured Tim had to have money coming in from elsewhere—he was said to have been an investment banker back east, in a previous life—but nobody seemed to care one way or the other, as long as the restaurant kept serving Tim’s signature gluten-free fried halibut and chips.

  It was the combination of off-season low prices and Joe Clifford being fed up with the BLTs over at Rosemary’s that brought Mason and Rengo to Spinnaker’s that afternoon. Another beautiful day, sunny but crisp, a chill wind blowing in from over the water. Work was proceeding nicely on Jess’s new place; the first floor was framed up and ready for walls, and Joe seemed to think that if the weather held out, he could have the place mostly finished by Labor Day.

  The weather might not hold out, of course; from what Mason had seen, it rained in Deception Cove more or less every day ending in y, and though the locals swore they saw more sun than not in the summertime months, Mason figured he’d have to experience the phenomenon for himself before he believed them.

  He had not only Rengo with him but Lucy too. Jess was working nights this week, running patrol in a county cruiser, sleeping all day. The dog could nap just as well on the jobsite as in Jess’s motel room, so he took Lucy along with him, let her roam Jess’s property, supervise, get her own feel for her new home.

  He parked the Blazer at the foot of the pier that led out to Spinnaker’s, let Lucy out of the back seat to sniff around the docks and have a pee while Rengo lit a cigarette, then led her up toward the restaurant’s front doors and looped her lead around a guardrail just out front. Rengo flicked his cigarette over the rail into the water in the boat basin beneath, and the two men went inside, ordered three orders of f
ish and chips to go, and made small talk with Tim Turpin as they waited, gazing at the white-capped water way out in the channel and breathing in the smell of fish frying in the kitchen behind them.

  Mason was halfway out the restaurant’s door, paper bag in hand and stomach growling, when he caught sight of Boyd’s flashy Cadillac parked up the pier by the Blazer.

  He felt something when he saw the truck, an unpleasant electricity that wasn’t quite fear but anticipated confrontation, a feeling he recalled from days on the yard, a sense that something wasn’t quite right, an impending violence. And the feeling only got worse when he found Boyd outside too, down on his haunches and his hands on Lucy.

  He was play-wrestling her, batting her around a little bit, the dog wagging her tail but more confused than engaged, from what Mason could see. Lucy looked up and saw him and her tail wagged harder, recognition, but Boyd didn’t notice, kept kind of slapping her around.

  “You want to step away from her,” Mason said, and if he hadn’t been holding lunch, he might have helped with the process.

  Boyd looked up, grinned when he saw Mason, Rengo behind. “Oh hell,” he said. “Howdy, Burke. This your dog?”

  “Sure is,” Mason said. “And I’d prefer if you kept clear of her.”

  Boyd looked from Mason to Lucy and back again. Mason held his eyes firm on the man, and this time it wasn’t difficult to keep his gaze.

  “I’m not going to fight her, Burke, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Boyd said. He still hadn’t moved.

  Mason said, “I know you’re not. But I’ll ask you to walk away anyway.”

  Boyd didn’t answer right away. He stood, slowly, looked Mason up and down. “You know, you’re awfully high-and-mighty for someone who’s killed a man,” he said. “Don’t make off like your shit doesn’t stink just as bad as mine, Burke.”