“I called Beltrami County to get some advice, the State Health. Was waiting on some Beltrami cops and firemen who had the training, who had protective suits. That’s when the call came in.”
Nygard grimaced, swallowed the last of his coffee, and said, “The way we reconstructed it, we figured the Bodines musta snuck back in after we left, to collect their stash. And got careless with fire, somehow ignited all that volatile mess. Got trapped in the building about ten that night when it burned. Marci died the next day in the hospital, respiratory failure.”
Broker continued to listen patiently, seeing an obvious payback scenario. He pictured a posse of citizens marching on the house like the peasant mob in
Nygard inclined his head down the road in the direction of the pyre of wreckage. “One of the four.”
After a moment, Broker hunched his shoulders and shivered slightly, even though the heater was going full blast; his street nightmares were confined to the time when he was single, before he had a child. He didn’t ask, but Nygard probably had kids. “So what you’re saying is-Cassie and her husband have local sympathy when they go a little crazy paranoid and overprotective about their own kid.”
“Wouldn’t call it sympathy, exactly. Small town’s cruel. More like audience participation. Watching to see what’s next.” Nygard put the Ranger in gear and carefully backed out onto the road. They drove in silence until they exited the thickest part of the woods.
“Not a good place to break down,” Broker finally said.
“You got that. Next place to gas up is sixty miles, South Junction, Manitoba.”
When they came out into the jack-pine barrens, Nygard said, “Next stop is closer to town. See, there’s a second act.”
“How do you mean?” Broker said.
Nygard gestured out the window. “The next couple miles is all swamp, empties into Little Glacier two miles north of the big lake.” He lapsed into quiet for a while, then slowed and pulled over next to a barely visible turnoff snaking off into the swamp. “When Pollution Control showed up to do water tests, they talked to the older Bodine children. Kids told them their parents had been dumping the cook waste in the swamp at the end of this trail for years.” Nygard pointed off the road, to the right. As they continued down the road, the snow tapered off.
“You see, Jimmy had sunk his windfall into buying half the lakefront on Little Glacier. Divided it into lots and started building a model lake house. Bank got so excited they connived with the county board, rerouted some of the Homeland Security money to put up another cell-phone tower.”
More silence ate up the road. Broker looked out the window into the pitch-dark, lonelier now, more empty without the snow falling. Just the spindly black trees. They came to the end of the open barrens, and Nygard turned right down a hilly road. A few minutes later they drove out from the tree cover and stopped overlooking an expanse of faintly shining water hemmed by granite bluffs.
“Pretty,” Broker said. Then his eyes adjusted, and he saw the blond wink of a naked lumber frame.
“Jimmy’s model house. Construction stopped when the pollution folks found the water table full of junk that leached out of the meth dump up in the swamp. Bank called in his construction loan. He bet everything he had on this development. Now he has to come up with the money to clean it up before he continues construction.”
Nygard craned his neck toward the south. “And people are pissed he hasn’t cleaned it up. Whole town’s scared shitless the crap will travel over to the big lake. Kill the summer trade. Any rate, Jimmy lost his boat, his sled, and one of his garbage trucks. Had to lay off half his help. Now he drives routes twelve hours, six days a week to cover the county. They’re still holding on to Jimmy’s dad’s house on the lake. Don’t know how they’re making their other payments. The Sweitz family retained a lawyer, trying to sue over their daughter’s death.” Nygard laughed without humor. “People call this place the Skeleton House. Kind of a local monument to Cassie Bodine’s vanity and overreaching. But any rate, there it is. What you stepped into.” Nygard looked away, deliberately leaving it there without editorializing.
He turned around and headed back for the main road. “Getting late, let’s get you home.”
Broker and Griffin stood in the driveway and watched Nygard’s taillights fade off around a turn in the road.
“Story from hell, huh,” Griffin said. “So what do you wanna do?”
Broker heaved his shoulders. “Guy’s got enough problems. Hell, I’ll let it go if he will.” The fact was, Broker felt a tremendous sense of relief. The stops on Nygard’s night tour had moved him off his tight loop of anger. Gave him some perspective.
“Okay, but you may have to toss Klumpe a softball, some little gesture. You handle that? I can talk to him,” Griffin said.
“Whatever. Let me know.” Broker cuffed Griffin on the shoulder. “Say. Maybe I’ll drop by the lodge and help out tomorrow. Nina’s feeling better, and I’m the one who’s starting to go nuts. I need to get out of the house, man. Work up a sweat. Shoot the shit.”
“Cabin fever, I can dig it,” Harry said.
“Yeah, whatever,” Broker said.
“Great, see you in the morning,” Griffin said. Despite Broker’s swing into elevated banter, he watched him closely in the harsh yard light. “Now go home to your crazy but very sexy wife,” he said, waving good night, walking to his Jeep.
Chapter Twenty-three
Harry Griffin drove toward his house nearer to town, on the south end of the lake, something Broker said sticking in his mind. He just couldn’t see Jimmy coming in stealthy through the woods on skis. Jimmy was strictly a tub-of-guts, snowmobile kind of guy.
Have to think about that. Then he turned his attention to Broker. Edgy, sure, but above all, a measured control freak. Throwing that choke hold on Jimmy in a schoolyard in front of the sheriff? That was looking like a loose cannon. Very un-Broker-like.
Harry knew that Broker believed in walling off his ghosts and personal monsters in a system of compartments. Well, it looked like the locks on his control method were starting to go.
In Harry’s estimation, Broker had been running damn near thirty years of rope. And now he had reached the end of his tether. In fact, Broker’s life had come to resemble a proof of the old Chinese adage: be careful what you wish for. You might get it. He had wanted to reunite his splintered family ever since Nina returned to active duty after Kit was born. Now he had. And look what it was doing to him.
The quiet snow-cloaked woods slid by, his asylum and buffer to a world spinning out of control. Being in proximity to Broker the last three months had started to pry at Harry’s own system of controls. The life choices he’d made.
He had walked away from the madness. Broker and Nina were still out there trying to fix it.
And Broker had that judgmental cop streak; never actually came out and said it, but sometimes Griffin got the feeling Broker thought he had turned tail and run.
Griffin swung into his driveway, drove past the pole barn that housed a rock splitter and the long attached shed with bins for fieldstone and masonry sand. Coming up on the house, he smiled and shook his head when he saw Susan Hatch’s tan Honda CRV parked at his back door.
Susan, his on-again, off-again girlfriend. Broker said she’d taken him aside at school this morning. Damn. The woman was more curious than a cat. Her ex-husband had taken their daughter to visit his parents in Bemidji, where he now lived. Susan had the night off.
He went inside, removed his boots and parka on the mud porch, and entered the main living area; one long vaulted room with a kitchen at one end and a massive stone fireplace at the other. A stairway led to another level below, built into the bluff overlooking the lake.
Susan rose from a chair by the hearth to greet him. She’d built up the fire, burned some incense, and made herself comfortable, stripping out of her school clothes and pulling on the shiny threadbare black silk kimono he’d
