After the Rain

“This is where Ace Shuster lived when he was a kid.” He pointed south. “Our house was about two miles that way, and it’s in worse shape than this place.”

“What are we doing?” Broker asked.

“Figured I’d bring you up to speed on Ace, since he’s become the object of all this intense interest.”

Broker had to grin at Yeager’s style-laid back but relentless.

“What? You got something better to do?” Yeager grinned back.

“So you’re going to take your time, give me the county tour. Spend half the day out in the tullies and maybe my cell phone will ring and I’ll have to go somewhere and you’ll just have to take me there.”

“Hey, Broker, you got a suspicious mind. You should be a cop.”

“I already met Ace.”

“What’d you think?”

Broker thought about it. “At first he seemed like this aging hell raiser, and then…”

“Yeah?”

“His eyes. His eyes were…sad.”

Yeager nodded. “The whole family is just a little bit”-Yeager gently waffled his hand-“off center. His sister, Dorsey, was the one who showed it most. And then, I guess, the kid brother, Dale. The dad, Gene, he was crazy but disciplined. Always cooking these wild schemes to get rich, but always worked like hell. Now, Gene’s dad, Asa- he had the outlaw gene. A regular bomb thrower, back in the days of the Nonpartisan League…”

The term bomb thrower got Broker’s attention. He’d been sitting back, hands crossed in his lap. He came forward, opened his arms, draped one back on the rear seat. Put the other hand on the dash. More attentive now, he said, “Sounds like some family.”

“Yeah. I think their mom, Sarah, she just checked out and went on automatic pilot. Like one of those women you read about back in the old days: too much work, too much prairie. The wind gets to some people. The winters…” Yeager chewed at the inside of his cheek, looked off across the fields. “Ace, he was the oldest kid. Thing I respect about Ace is the way he fights to keep that outlaw gene at bay. Gets up every morning and has to choose twenty-four hours of not breaking the law. That’s a tough one. Another thing, he pretty much looks after everybody.”

“You saying Ace has real psychological hang-ups?”

Yeager shrugged. “Hard to tell with German farm stock. Everybody keeps it in. Then they get behind with the bank, have a couple bad years, and we get a call from an anxious wife with supper cold on the table. Sometimes find the guy’s body out in the corner of a field with his shotgun next to him. Ace? He ain’t exactly your Prozac kind of guy, so he maintains with alcohol.”

The question was on his face so Broker went ahead and said it: “Not the bomb-throwing type?”

“Ace? Is that what they think?”

Broker decided to take the chance that Yeager was waiting for. “Okay, here we go…”

Now Yeager was sitting forward. “Yeah?”

“They got a picture of Ace standing near McVeigh at Waco.”

Yeager rolled his eyes. “They’re basing this whole circus on a fucking picture?”

“I didn’t say that. But they have a picture.”

“Hey, man, these people gotta do their homework,” Yeager said, getting more animated. “Remember I mentioned his sister, Dorsey? Well, she was wild as hell in high school and then did one of those come-to-Jesus flip turns. She started chasing religious cults. Word got back she was hanging out in this wacko compound in Texas. Turned out to be Koresh’s operation. So Ace went down there, just about the time the ATF did their famous ninja walk in their pretty little black suits.”

Broker braced himself. “So?”

“Once Ace got down there, he found out that Dorsey had been there but split a month before. Ace eventually found her in Seattle, working in a Starbucks coffee bar. Married some guy and is still there, as far as I know. A happy ending.” Yeager squinted at Broker. “If I was you, I’d put a little more faith in what people say over coffee at Gracie’s diner and less in the people who breeze around in black helicopters.”

“Okay, maybe he doesn’t want to blow up federal buildings-could he be the kind of guy who would run anything across the border for money?”

Yeager kind of sidled closer, on the scent. “Anything? Like something real dangerous?”

“C’mon, Yeager…”

Yeager wagged his finger in Broker’s face. “No. Ace wouldn’t do that. But that little creep Gordy Riker would. In a fucking heartbeat.”

“Why you so sure Ace wouldn’t?”

“ ’Cause I’ve known him all my life. Look, we played Legion ball together. Jesus, could he hit. He was eighteen and people were saying he was another Maris. He had a shot at the majors, hurt his knee in a tryout camp, and never went back. Just bad luck. That’s the story of Ace’s life. Nothing ever worked out right for him.” Yeager shook his head.

“He killed a guy in a bar fight.”

“More bad luck. Goddamn loudmouth Bobby Pease down in Starkweather. Came at Ace with a beer bottle, and Bobby musta been loosey goosey flatfooted when Ace hit him. Broke his neck. Ace did eleven months on the state farm for involuntary manslaughter.”

“What about Dale, the equipment dealer?”

Yeager shook his head. “Jeez, I don’t know. Parts to that guy are missing. Like, the key to the ignition. Guy is gonna live and die in his folks’ basement. He’s gonna follow them to Florida.”

“And Gordy?”

“Cunning little fucker. And greedy. I been trying to catch him running meth precursor for over a year. He has grandiose dreams of being a big dope dealer.”

“Violent?”

Yeager grinned and eyed Broker. “You tell me. Story going round is he knocked you on your ass.” He paused, still grinning, then said, “That’s how we know you’re in on this thing. We figure it was for show. No way in hell a guy like you’s going to let a Gordy Riker put you on the ground, shot hand or not.”

As Broker was composing his comeback, the car radio squawked: “Two-forty, where are you?”

Yeager keyed his mike. “Six north.”

“Your ten-seventeen just showed up at the SO.”

“Ten-four.”

Yeager quickly wrote his cell phone number on the back of a card and handed it to Broker. Then he put the cruiser in reverse and backed out of the driveway. “We’ll have to finish saving the world later,” he said. “My wife just dropped my son off at the office. I gotta coach T-ball.”

Chapter Twenty-two

Ace came down the stairs two at a time; edgy, snapping his fingers, shaking it out. Gordy assessed him. Uh- huh. So much for mellow. Ace’s serotonin was definitely headed south. It was not a coffee day.

He tossed the cup of coffee he’d prepared and set a bottle of Wild Turkey on the bar with a glass. As Ace sat down and poured his breakfast, Gordy pointed to the Grand Forks Herald.

“Inside section. They’re scaling back the search for Ginny Weller,” he said.

“Ginny was your basic land shark, but she didn’t deserve this,” Ace said, taking a drink. He produced a Camel from his chest pocket in a snappy display of dexterity, lit it, and inhaled. He pushed the newspaper aside, blew out the smoke, and looked around. “Okay, where’d she go?”

“Out front. On her cell,” Gordy said.

Ace took his glass to the window and saw her pacing on the trap rock with her head cocked over in the New American Silhouette: neck straining to cup a cell phone. Ace thought how a whole lot of orthopedic surgeons were