near the stove.
Call the sheriff ’s office and say what? Speculate that Klumpe knifed his tire and tried to poison a dog Broker didn’t own? How would that sound to a rural sheriff? Like some wimpy overreaction.
He turned away from the phone and walked into the living room. This was the kind of community where a certain amount of solving one’s own problems was the norm.
Which brought him in front of a red-and-black-patterned Hmong quilt hung on a portion of the wall. Nina had picked up the quilt in a Hanoi street market, back in ’96. Broker tacked the hems to dowels top and bottom and rigged a cord-and-pulley system so the quilt could be raised.
The purpose was functional, not decorative. He raised it now, tied it off on the hook on the wall, and stared at two stout oak cabinet doors three feet long. Griffin had crafted this locker with stout hasps that Broker kept fastened with a thick Yale lock. He carried the key to the lock on a leather thong around his neck.
The lock and hasps were untouched.
But he withdrew the key and opened the lock, slipped it from the hasps, and opened the sturdy doors. A faint scent of solvent and gun oil seeped from the cabinet.
The interior was taller than the dimensions of the doors suggested and held a built-in gun rack and some shelves, two drawers across the bottom. The rack held a.12-gauge pump shotgun, the heavy-barreled.257 Roberts that Broker favored for whitetail hunting, and an AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle. A green canvas case lay on a shelf and contained Nina’s Colt model 1911.45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Four cleaning kits, one for each weapon, were stacked on the shelves. The drawers held empty magazines for the assault rifle, clips for the pistol, and several boxes of ammunition.
His hand briefly touched the black plastic stock of the assault rifle. He selected the shotgun and a box of.00 buck. Then he closed the cabinet, replaced the lock, snapped it shut. Lowered the hanging. Then he set the shotgun against the wall and paused at the foot of the stairs, listening to Nina’s voice, reading to Kit.
The bunny would turn up. Always did. Christ, man, settle down. The bowl could have been on the back deck, and the tire could be a slow leak. A defect. The antifreeze in the bowl was real enough. A thrown elbow. Petty payback for his morning. Okay. He could play that game if it came to that.
But he had to find the cat. Kit was right; there were things in the woods that would scarf her up.
So he climbed the stairs, entered the bedroom, and kissed his daughter good night, Nina on the cheek. He reassured Kit that cats always land on their feet. It really wasn’t that cold. The kitty would come home to eat. And Old Bun would turn up, like she always did.
After he had helped deliver the necessary cliches, he left them curled up with an American Girl Doll book. He came back down the stairs, put a bowl of cat food on the back deck, rattled it a few times, went inside. As he retrieved the shotgun, he stopped and solidly faced the fact he hadn’t kissed his wife on the lips for months. Nor had she offered those lips to be kissed.
Broker pulled on his boots, coat, a felt hat, and gloves. He stepped into the garage and pushed four shells into the shotgun, racked the slide, and set the safe. His gut told him that the door didn’t open by itself. The snow had stopped. Four fresh inches made a clean slate of the back deck. Switching on his flashlight, he walked out into the yard. Looking up, he saw that the lights in Kit’s bedroom had been turned off. A fitful northwest wind grumbled across the lake. Iron waves muttered on the shore.
Okay. So walk the property. Shotgun slung over his shoulder, flashlight in one hand, he shook the stainless- steel bowl of cat food. The rattle disappeared on divots of wind. As did his voice, mouthing words he never thought he’d ever be saying:
“Here, kitty, kitty…”
Chapter Thirteen
Gator went and got what he needed and then found himself making the drive across the Barrens for the fifth time that day. Getting dark now, night creeping down like a black garage door.
He felt lucky; if he’d lived a different kind of life, he might say blessed. This Broker guy, the cop, had fallen into his hand like a gift, he thought as he watched the familiar jack pine and muskeg filling in with ink. He could afford to be magnanimous with Jimmy and Cassie. And besides, giving Cassie her piece of cheese to nibble on would bolster her incentive to keep Jimmy on task. He was shaky, but he’d hang in. Just had to keep them focused on the money…
Coming up on the crossroads. Hmmmm?
What’s that? Alert behind the wheel, squinting in the twilight. Headlights knifed about a mile through the gloom. On the right side off the road…looked like they were over near the old Tindall place.
Gator shut off his headlights and turned off on Z going west, in the direction of the lights. There was just enough reflection off the snow to drive by. Soon he determined that the lights had indeed turned in at the Tindall place. About three hundred yards from the house, he pulled to the shoulder and turned off the engine. Several flashlights dipped and swung, outlining the windows of the old house.
Gator slouched back behind the wheel, reached for his smokes; decided to wait and watch. File it away for future reference.
There were five deserted farmhouses on Z alone. Another dozen sprinkled through the Barrens. Several times a week he would do a drive-by. Sometimes kids from town partied in the houses. And sometimes outsiders slipped in for less convivial reasons. Gator made a point to run them off. He kept the Barrens free of intruders. It was his buffer zone.
Sometimes outsiders coming in could be tough-guy wannabes, so Gator took more than a flashlight along on these nocturnal forays. Technically, as a felon, he had lost his right to own firearms. But Keith had sat down with Gator’s parole officer and the game warden and worked out an accommodation. As long as Gator continued to sniff out meth operations in the remote north end of the county, where Keith didn’t have the manpower to patrol, he could carry a gun north of Z to hunt in the big woods.
Tonight, he’d left his pistol back at the shop. Hell, being in such a good mood, Gator didn’t feel like stomping in and wrecking somebody’s party.
He started the truck, made a U-turn, headed back to 12. Half an hour later he was coming down Lakeside Road on the west side of the lake, thinking as he drove how he could spin this playground tiff with Teddy into something useful. Seeing’s how Keith had already been on the scene…
He was good at plans. Hell, he figured out most movie plots in the first half hour.
Plus he could give Jimmy some responsibility. Jack him up.
Jimmy Klumpe. Gator shook his head, leaned back in his seat, and ran through Jimmy’s story. Like the regulars at Skeet’s Bar observed after a few beers: Jimmy Klumpe had won the Moose Lottery.
