Lone Jack Trail

by Owen Laukkanen

  Jess smiled. She liked Derry, what she’d seen of him. And if Lucy liked him, that was enough of a seal of approval. “You ask Lucy, she’d say this is work,” she told the Neah Bay deputy. “I guess she’d much rather be out chasing squirrels somewhere.”

  “Wouldn’t we all?” Derry said. He pushed himself to his feet and happened to glance at her computer screen. He chuckled. “Dougie Bealing,” he said. “That boy’s mighty popular these days. What’s your business with him?”

  Jess ran it down for him, the mustard hatchback and Dax Pruitt. How she’d hoped to get Bealing alone, maybe hear more of his story.

  Derry listened and nodded. “Well, Dougie’s hardly ever alone,” he said. “If it’s anything like he was in high school, he’s more or less inseparable from a guy named Chris Jordan.”

  “Chris Jordan.” Jess made to type the name into a search window. Derry stopped her.

  “Hell, let me save you the trouble,” he said. “Jordan and Bealing are holed up on some derelict freighter. Shipps and the state patrol were down those parts looking for Burke last night.”

  * * *

  “Chris Jordan,” Rengo said. “What I heard, Charlene Todd used to run with him for a while before she got too strung out on the glass.”

  Dusk in the compound now. Mason restless, having squandered another day on Rengo’s busted couch, waiting for the kid to come up with a story from town, some direction that would lead them to whoever’d killed Brock Boyd. He’d paced, tense, in the trailer until he grew so bored he felt physically sick, and then he’d gone out into the compound and tried to put a workout together, push-ups and sit-ups until his muscles ached.

  It didn’t help. Time was wasting, and sooner or later the law would be up here. And the trail from Charlene Todd to her killer would grow cold.

  “Chris Jordan,” Mason said. “Who the hell’s he?”

  “Chris Jordan’s a lowlife,” Rengo replied. “He’s a scumbag. Likes his women young—real young—and spent some time in lockup on account of it. Nowadays he mostly moves glass for his uncle.”

  Fetridge. That was the uncle’s name, Rengo said. Logger Fetridge, a tree poacher and all-around ne’er-do-well who Rengo couldn’t remember ever making any connection whatsoever with Brock Boyd. But that didn’t mean his nephew mightn’t have made his own history.

  “There’s one other thing,” Rengo told Mason. “Folks are getting wise to me asking so many questions. I could see it, Burke. With the state troopers so heavy down there, someone’s going to tell them how I’ve been around.”

  Whether they talked or they didn’t talk, Mason knew time in this compound was running extremely short.

  “So let’s find Chris Jordan,” he told the kid. “And maybe he gives us some answers.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Jess knew the ship. Burke had told her about it, an abandoned old freighter tied to a rickety dock, a patch of cleared land at the end of a dead-end gravel road, enough PRIVATE PROPERTY signs and razor wire to keep the curious at bay. It had been a cook spot, once, to hear Burke tell it, though by the time Sheriff Hart had seen fit to investigate, the ship was half sunk and nobody was aboard, no signs but trash and that acrid chemical smell to betray the hulk’s history.

  Amy Usen, the ship was called. Burke said he’d been here, once, when he was looking for Kirby Harwood. Said a man named Yancy had pulled a gun on him, suspicious.

  Burke said after he’d calmed Yancy down he’d bought a motorbike from him, of all things. Owned it half an hour before the damn thing was destroyed.

  None of that meant anything now.

  Jess brought Gillies down to the water with her and Lucy, in a Makah County cruiser this time. They parked at the tree line, just beyond the fence and a midden of rusted-out cars and fishing tackle and detritus, out of viewing range from the hulk. Mitch Derry had said the state patrol’d found Bealing and Jordan on the ship, their purpose for being there unclear, but it looked like they were camped out in a couple of the old staterooms. Said Sergeant Shipps had asked them if they’d seen Mason Burke and been answered in a resounding negative.

  “If we had any time, I’d go down there,” Derry had told Jess. “Clean out those boys and call the Coast Guard to haul that ship out and sink it. It’s a danger, what it is, and an eyesore. But I guess we’ve got bigger problems at the moment.”

  Derry might have had bigger problems. But Jess had figured she and Gillies might as well head down on behalf of the county.

  They left Lucy in the cruiser and crept toward the spindly dock, lit up here and there with camp lanterns, the hum of a generator from somewhere belowdecks. Amid the piles of scrap and rust near the dock were a couple of vehicles that appeared to be in working order, a big old Dodge pickup and Dougie Bealing’s mustard hatchback.

  Faint music carried from within the ship’s hull. It wasn’t a large freighter, a couple hundred feet, tops, a red hull and rusted, a white superstructure toward the stern. No rain tonight, but a soft wind overhead, rustling through the branches and blowing clouds around, obscuring the moon and rocking the ship on its tie-up lines.

  They’d driven out from the detachment and it had taken all of ten minutes, but Jess felt as though they’d landed on the other side of the world.

  She made it to the edge of the dock and paused for a moment to survey the ship again. No movement on deck or within the lit windows, and she wondered where Dougie Bealing and his friend Jordan were. Wondered what kind of a reception they might receive.

  “If it gets hairy for any reason, you walk away,” Sheriff Hart had told her when she’d called him up to okay the excursion. “Step back and let it rest for the evening. We’ll bring a whole crew out in the morning.”

  But Jess knew Hart didn’t have a whole crew, even if he could spare any from the manhunt.

  Jess squared her shoulders. Walked up the dock and braced herself as it wobbled beneath her feet. Reached the ladder that climbed the hull of the freighter to the main deck, and cupped her hands around her mouth and prayed she wouldn’t actually have to climb aboard.

  “Dougie Bealing, Chris Jordan,” she called. “Sheriff’s Department. Anyone on this boat?”

  * * *

  Mason heard Lucy whining before he saw her.

  He’d had Rengo drop him off at the highway. The kid had protested, but Mason had a decent reason aside from not wanting to drag him any further into what could turn into a fairly ugly night.

  “Watch the logging main line,” he told Rengo. “Sooner or later, those state troopers are going to find their way to the turnoff, and I’d rather know before we get back to the compound whether they’re waiting for us up there or not.”

  Rengo had protested and tried to hand Mason a pistol before he beat his retreat.

  “No guns,” Mason told him. “I didn’t kill Boyd and I didn’t kill Charlene Todd. I don’t intend to kill this Jordan fellow either.”

  Rengo stared at him. Shook his head and tucked the pistol away. “I’m thinking old Jordan might not be playing by the same rules, Burke,” he said. “But you suit yourself.”

  Mason hurried away from Rengo’s little Toyota, headed for the gravel turnoff he remembered marked the road down to the derelict freighter where Chris Jordan, apparently, made a squatter’s home. He came down the hill toward the shore and saw a vehicle in the shadows ahead of him, a car parked on the shoulder, and as he came closer he could make out the light bar on the roof and knew it must be a county cruiser, and he thought about turning around or at least hiding out somewhere, waiting for the law to finish their business with Chris Jordan.

  But then he heard Lucy whining.

  She was sitting upright in the driver’s seat of the cruiser, posed like the getaway driver waiting on Jess to come running out with the score. The way Lucy wagged her tail and pawed at the door, Mason could tell she’d heard him coming, sniffed him out and was waiting for him, and as he came closer and a stray lick of moonlight cast over the cruiser, he caught sight of the dog’s
face and that big lolling tongue, and he felt the dog’s absence like a knife to his chest.

  He’d missed the dog, and the dog had missed him, and Mason realized he hadn’t been sure he’d ever see her again. And now that he’d seen her, he couldn’t resist.

  The door to Jess’s cruiser was unlocked, and Mason opened it partway and pressed his body into the gap, blocking Lucy from leaping out at him, her tail whipping violently and her whole body wriggling with excitement.

  “Okay,” he told her as he nudged her back and slipped into the driver’s seat, reaching up to flick off the dome light. “Okay, girl, I missed you too.”

  Lucy licked his face nonstop, crowding him, pushing against him as though she, too, had worried he was gone forever. Mason petted her and scratched her and withstood the onslaught and tried to let himself just enjoy the dog’s company for a moment. But if Lucy was here, it meant Jess was paying Chris Jordan a visit herself. Mason didn’t know what Jess was looking for in Jordan, what she hoped the glass dealer would tell her, but he did know he didn’t like the thought of her out here without him. And he knew he wouldn’t be hiding in the woods until she was done.

  He pulled Lucy closer to him, touched his forehead to hers. Gave her neck a good scratch and then released her, held her back as he pushed the door open again and stepped out onto the soft muddy shoulder. Lucy watched him, watched the gap in the door, her ears perked and her eyes beseeching, like she was asking Mason to take her with him.

  “Don’t you worry about Jess, girl,” Mason told her. “I’ll make sure she’s all right.”

  Then he closed the door just firm enough that it caught, and ventured out past the cruiser toward the clearing beyond.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Chris Jordan was a short man, and ugly, that ugliness made all the more so by the sneer that marked his face and the condescension in his tone.

  “Evening, Deputy,” he said to Jess, peering down at the dock from the main deck of the freighter, his eyes roving down her body and then up again. “What brings you out here tonight?”

  Jess looked past him and up toward the hulk’s rusting superstructure. Smelled low tide and diesel and heard music still playing from somewhere inside the ship. No sign of Dougie Bealing.

  She’d debated how to play this. By rights, she and Gillies could evict Jordan and Bealing from their squat on this freighter, cite them for trespassing and probably a hundred other things besides. Jess was certain that if she searched Jordan, she would find something illegal, some reason to violate his probation, knew she could drag him down to the Deception Cove detachment, and Bealing too, wherever he was, lean on them for answers the old-school way, sweat Bealing’s story out of him over the course of a few long, uncomfortable hours.

  She supposed it might yet come to that, but she hoped it wouldn’t have to. Knew if she and Gillies came at the squatters strong, there was a possibility that violence might result.

  She was hoping to get answers without anyone getting hurt. Later, she’d wonder at how naive she’d been.

  “I’m looking for a friend of yours,” she told Jordan. “Dougie Bealing. He around?”

  Jordan’s expression didn’t waver. “Not here.”

  “That’s his car parked back there in the clearing, isn’t it?”

  Jordan craned his neck out from the deck, scanned back over the dock to the rusted black pickup and Bealing’s Chevette just behind it. Jess could smell something on Jordan now, overpowering the scent of the water and the ship: alcohol and stale tobacco and something else, something chemical. Jordan’s eyes seemed calm; she couldn’t tell if he’d been using, but she was thankful for her sidearm anyway, and for Gillies behind her with his own.

  “So it is,” Jordan said, rocking back on his heels and smirking down at her. “So?”

  Jess glanced back at Gillies. The deputy stood ready, a wide stance and his hand on his holster. He watched her, waiting on a cue.

  “Look, we could book you right now,” Jess told Jordan. “You’re trespassing on this vessel, and I’m sure you’ve got some things in there you’d prefer the law wasn’t aware of. All I’m asking is you let me talk to Dougie, then maybe my partner and I walk away and let you move off this wreck on your own time.”

  Jordan didn’t say anything. He just grinned his unpleasant grin and let his eyes wander down to her boots and back up.

  “You could almost pass for real law,” he said finally. “Dressed all up in your little uniform, asking your questions. Hell, it’s almost like you’re an actual deputy.”

  “I’m real, Jordan,” Jess replied, “and so’s Deputy Gillies behind me. This isn’t a game.”

  “What I don’t understand is how they let you walk around with that badge,” Jordan said. “Your boyfriend’s a fucking murderer, and you—ain’t you supposed to be fucked in the head?”

  Jess didn’t say anything.

  “Got that dog, don’t you? Supposed to keep you from, what, blowing your brains out? Hallucinating, seeing ghosts? How do you know I’m not a goddamn hallucination right now?”

  Jess kept her mouth shut. Could feel a hot kind of anger simmering up inside her, was afraid of where it might lead her.

  Then Gillies spoke up, before she could find out. “Forget this,” he said, stepping forward to the ladder. “Mr. Jordan, you have five minutes to get your ass off of this ship. Otherwise we’re coming up there and dragging you off ourselves.”

  “No, the fuck you will not,” Jordan said, and something changed in his voice, a menace barely restrained. And then Jess saw the gun.

  He’d had a pistol stashed somewhere, Jess didn’t know where, but she imagined it must have been tucked into his waistband, the small of his back, and it didn’t matter anyway where it came from. Jordan had a pistol, and that was a clear violation of his probation, and now, Jess realized, they had to take him in.

  But something in Jordan had been triggered.

  “You stay the fuck back,” he told the deputies as Jess pulled her own weapon and Gillies beside her hollered at Jordan to put the gun down.

  “Chris,” Jess said, fighting to be heard. Fighting to break through the fog and malevolence in his eyes. “Now, just wait a second, all right? Let’s just talk this out.”

  She could see in Jordan’s expression, though, that there wouldn’t be any talking, knew it even before the dealer raised the pistol he was holding and aimed it down in their direction. Jess saw it in slow motion, knew what must come next. But before she could call out or do anything, Gillies’s pistol was firing beside her, and then there was a hole in Chris Jordan, and the dealer was staggering backward and down to the deck.

  And then the porthole beside Gillies blew out with a sound like artillery fire. Gillies stumbled back a few steps, eyes wide, and collapsed on the dock, and Jess knew that somewhere behind that porthole was Dougie Bealing with a shotgun.

  She hit the dock and rolled, landed in the water and felt the shock of cold and rocks in her back, and she scrambled to stay afloat and wade her way back to shore, suddenly aware of just how perfectly the whole night had turned to shit.

  * * *

  Mason heard the gunfire, small arms and then the shotgun, and it was everything he’d worried he would hear. Two shots and then silence, and he ran into the clearing and the piles of junk that bordered the water, thinking he was bound to come across Jess filled with buckshot somewhere near the shore.

  He heard a man cry out like he was in pain.

  The wreck stood ahead, with enough light from the camp lanterns and Christmas lights on the ship to see the dock and the water and the body.

  The shotgun blasted again from somewhere inside the ship, and the man on the dock tried to pull himself to some kind of cover, and he couldn’t—rendered immobile by the way he’d been shot.

  The night flared as shots rang out beside Mason, and he looked over and saw Jess at the shore by the foot of the dock, opening up with her service pistol at the hull of the freighter. She was alive, and the po
wer of his relief nearly stopped him where he stood, but he forced himself to stay focused.

  “Jess,” he called out, during a break in the gunfire. She swung over with her pistol and damn near shot him, and in the light from the freighter and the moon overhead he could see her surprise and confusion.

  “We got to get that man off the dock,” he told her. “Cover me.”

  She stared at him a moment, blinked, like her thoughts were still trying to process just how and why he’d showed up here. But then Gillies screamed, and Jess seemed to get it; she nodded at Mason and took aim at the freighter again. He hurried to the edge of the dock, feeling naked and exposed and well clear of any usable cover, the dock stretching out long and open in front of him, and the man who’d been shot waiting at the end of it. Mason tensed his body to run and waited for Jess to start shooting again.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  She could have shot him. Accidentally, the first time, when he’d appeared from somewhere in the junk pile, calling her name, and then on purpose the next time, when her brain had processed the whole freaking fiasco and decided that, yes, not only had Burke showed up at her shoot-out, but he was proposing to go running into shotgun fire to drag Gillies off that dock.

  Jess could have shot him herself, to save the heartbreak later.

  But she didn’t shoot Burke. She kept her pistol trained on the wreck as he inched up toward the dock, and when he glanced over to where she crouched, half covered behind an old fishing tote, she waited until she saw him nod to her. Then she stood and opened fire on the ship at where she’d last seen the shotgun, and she fired and kept firing and could hardly bear to watch as Burke dashed down the length of the dock to where Gillies lay perforated and probably dying.

  Burke made it to Gillies at about the same time as Jess emptied her magazine. She glanced across the dock and saw Burke bend over in front of Gillies and grab him under the shoulders and start dragging him back down the dock.