The students moving through the halls parted around an immov-able object ahead of him. Mitch Hakala wore a varsity jacket with a shoulder patch. Hockey. The word Captain was stitched across it.
His hunting boots dripped melted snow.
“Hiya,” he said.
“Hello, Mitch.”
“You want to know about Chris Deucette?” Mitch asked.
Harry nodded. Mitch’s eyes were serious as ball bearings and Harry absolutely believed they had been tracking him through a rifle scope up on the ridge.
“Talme won’t tell you all of it.” The incorruptible temper of hard youth was in his face and it reminded Harry of a whole generation of other young faces. GIs.
“So?” said Harry.
“C’mon,” said Mitch, “I gotta take a leak.” Harry followed him down the hall and into a tiled lavatory that smelled nostalgically of stale cigarette smoke. Mitch pointed to the toilets. “In there. Middle stall.”
Harry entered the stall, lowered himself to the seat, and HUNTER’S MOON / 241
closed the door. The interior had been freshly painted. A crude drawing of a vagina was laboriously sketched with pencil over the toilet paper dispenser. The walls were scarred with eroded graffiti beneath the paint.
One of them had been scratched deeply into the metal of the door with a sharp object. He angled around to use the light to see the scratches in relief.
CHRIS DUCETTE SUCKS DICK.
Mitch waited in the hall. He inclined his head, “You wanna talk?”
“I’m staying out at Maston’s,” Harry nodded.
“I’ll let you know when I’m coming,” said Mitch.
Karl Talme canted his shoulders sideways to fit through the door to the cafe, came to the booth where Harry sat, and tossed down a high school yearbook. Last year’s. A paper marker stuck from the pages. “Go on. Open it,” said Talme. A slender waitress brought coffee. Ginny Hakala was nowhere in sight.
The marked page showed small pictures of the sophomore class.
Harry scanned the young faces. “He’s not here,” said Harry.
“Sure he is, his name’s there.”
Harry found the name and backtracked through the block of pictures. His eyes raised to Talme. The picture, even in small scale, was not the Chris he’d met. The boy had shorter, tidier hair and a wry, devilish smile on his face.
“Here’s the class picture he handed out,” said Talme, putting the picture on the yearbook page. The resemblance to his sister was pronounced in the bone structure and the wide intelligent eyes. No raccoon circles. No morbid druggy smirk.
Talme lit a pipe and puffed while Harry flipped the picture over and read. “To Mr. Talme. Huzzah! For showing me the difference between commas and semicolons. Next year on to the ablative.” It was signed Chris “Hemingway” Deucette.
242 / CHUCK LOGAN
“Next year, on to the ablative…” Harry’s lungs caved in with a long sigh. “Not the kid I met,” he said.
“You killed,” said Talme. His smile was phlegmatic. “I’m not judging you, Griffin. The law does that, and they found you—what?—a victim of tragic circumstances.”
“When was this picture taken?”
“Over a year ago. He was my best sophomore English student. I have some things he wrote at home, if you’re interested. He had talent.”
“Where was he living then? I mean, who was his mother with?”
“Jesse.” Talme said heavily. A sound to conjure with. He sucked on his pipe.
“Who?”
“Larry Emery.” Talme struck a match and relit his pipe.
“Were they ever going to get married?” asked Harry.
“That’s one of the big local mysteries. They did go to Don’s church together.”
“Church?” Harry raised his eyebrows.
Talme studied the bowl of his pipe over his glasses. “I know what you mean,” he said. “She has a quality of animal magnetism. Or you could say she’s a cunt.”
“They broke up,” said Harry.
“On a regular basis. She started tending bar at the VFW. To spite Larry.”
“You know Jay Cox?”
“Drifter…good carpenter.”
“Jesse take up with Cox?”
“They were never an item. Cronies maybe. Chris was close to Cox.
They did things together.”
“Did Emery try to get her back?”
“Larry’s our local paradox. He’s solid as a wall. But he lets Jesse walk all over him.” Talme shrugged his sloping shoulders. “When Chris was living with Emery he was an A student. Then Jesse moved out and he grew his hair and started wracking up C s and D s. Played rebel.”
“Bud Maston arrived,” said Harry.
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“Exactly,” said Talme. “Our own hundred-proof millionaire. He had the biggest house in the county and a lake to boot. Jesse saw him coming a long way off.”
“That simple?”
“No, in fairness, she blossomed at first with Maston. They were going to change the world, those two.”
“Karson told me about their plans for the mill.”
“Then Maston quit on her. Just went to hell.”
“And the kids?”
“After Jesse moved to the lake, Chris really went off the deep end.
Truancy. Drugs. Maston couldn’t enforce discipline, you ask me.”
“What about Becky?”
“Genius-range. Four-point-oh grade point average. Maxed the SATs. She’s talking to Carleton College about a scholarship. Becky will land on her feet.”
Harry leaned forward. “Will she? She’s gone missing.”
“Maybe,” said Talme. “Or maybe she’s just grabbing for attention.”
He busied his stumpy fingers, digging at his pipe bowl with a shiny tool. “Oh, she’s comfortable with being bright. It’s puberty she runs from.”
Harry cocked his head.
Talme shrugged. “Just my admittedly chauvinist opinion. Now that she’s developed tits and an ass, maybe she’s nervous that her mother will hatch out in her hormones.”
“And Chris?”
“The opposite. Becky has her negative role model to measure herself against. Chris had confusion.”
Harry waited for a full minute. Talme fixated on his tool, folding it and twisting it.
“Something turned in Chris. He developed a…hatred for everybody who tried to help him,” said Talme softly. “It was a horrible thing to see in a boy.”
“He pulled a gun on you?”
Talme raised his shoulders. “Ah, yeah. About a month ago. He came to school stoned in the middle of the afternoon. I grabbed him and pushed him into the teacher’s lounge. He
244 / CHUCK LOGAN
stuck the gun in my face and said if I ever touched him again, he’d kill me.”
“What’d you do?”
“I
